

Ask HN: Best books, blogs, podcasts on shipping more/being more prolific? - lionhearted

It's a topic near and dear to my heart. Not just doing a lot more stuff, but shipping it out the door.<p>Kindly recommend your favorite books, blogs, podcasts, and other resources and materials. How-to's and nonfiction are good. Biographies of prolific people are good. Links to blog posts, sites, tools are good.<p>What say ye, HN, on shipping more?
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scottyallen
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. It's short but sweet. It's a writers
description of "the resistance", an invisible, ever present force that
actively works against you when you're trying to ship. More generally, it
works against you when you "[try to do] any act that rejects immediate
gratification in favor of log-term growth, health, or integrity."

The first part is titled "Resistance: Defining the Enemy" and is a great
description of what the resistance is and the ways in which it works to defeat
you.

The second part is about how to conquer the resistance by "going pro". There's
a lot of pieces to this, but basically, it means figuring out how to show up
every day and doing the work, day in and day out, with the explicit goal of
conquering the resistance.

The third part is a higher level discussion of the resistance, and at least to
me, was not as relevant.

Highly recommended book if you struggle with the resistance when trying to
ship.

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philiphodgen
I hate to say it (no I don't--I am loving this) but why don't you check out
this website of a guy named Sebastian Marshall who talks about taking teeny
tiny iterative steps and making remarkable improvements that way?

In other words you already know what to do. Don't read books. Do.

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NonOrthodox
Sebastian Marshall's blog is realy great. He inspired me to start tracking my
time on a daily basis, and I am certainly benefiting from it.

Here is an introduction page that he posted for newcomers:
<http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?page_id=288> You can see that there is many
topics under "Want to get more done?"

Though I know that most books are a waste of time, these were actually filled
with great information, in my opinion:

<http://www.web-books.com/Classics/ON/B0/B580/TOC.html>

<http://amzn.to/Getting-things-done>

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XFrequentist
Sebastian Marshall == lionhearted

~~~
NonOrthodox
lol, I hadn't seen he was the OP.. Sorry...

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timruffles
Less with the extremely unhelpful 'just ship more' messages....

I'm sure you've read getting real, but anyway:
<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php>

I've always liked Emerson's 'Self Reliance':
<http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm>

Otherwise just pick any random productivity technique. I don't think it
matters which one, they're all just codifying the things you already know, and
stick with that for a while. If it doesn't work, maybe something else is
preventing you from shipping things? I find I'm too quick to swap what I'm
doing in my personal projects, and thus have lots of prototypes.

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joshklein
Are you already highly productive, but want to be even more productive? You
should read about systems and methodologies, and implement one rigorously.

Recommended: 4 Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank - breaks down the customer
development lifecycle into actionable deliverables.

Do you feel like you're not being productive or shipping? You should read
about procrastination and then diligently work to fix it, not spend more time
studying GTD-type systems.

Recommended: Procrastination by Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen - the
essential book on understanding and correcting your procrastination.

~~~
timruffles
I second Steve Blank for the very useful checklists. You can always open it to
the back to find a whole task list in bite sized chunks.

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iuguy
Don't read up on how to do more, just do more.

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nswanberg
No one is as focused on "shipping it out the door" as a news editor, according
to Paul Ford in this essay (<http://www.ftrain.com/editors-ship-dammit.html>)
posted to HN yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891392>

Merlin Mann at <http://www.43folders.com/> started out writing about David
Allen's GTD system, but then turned away from "productivity porn" and started
writing more focused essays about creativity.

This isn't necessarily related to shipping products, but I love this Jeff
Atwood quote: "If you can’t come up with at least one interesting thing to
talk about every day, you’re not trying hard enough! The world is just full of
fascinating stuff." from this interview:
[http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/aspnet/archive/2010/10...](http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/aspnet/archive/2010/10/24/video-
interview-with-jeff-atwood-aka-codinghorror-com.aspx)

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grantlmiller
it seems like this question is a setup for the answer to be what seems like
the hot tech book of the month: "Do More Faster" by the guys that run the YC
like accelerator TechStars in Boulder... anyway: [http://www.amazon.com/Do-
More-Faster-TechStars-Accelerate/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster-
TechStars-Accelerate/dp/0470929839)

