Thread by @raulpacheco

On self-help books: Rest, by @askpang really shook me to my core. I almost died (as in literal loss of life) from overwork, twice in the past 7 years. Pang forced me to rethink my approach to taking days/time off. Pang’s “deliberate rest” has improved my life and I’m grateful.

I absolutely loved @gretchenrubin ‘S Better than Before because it reaffirmed in me the importance of good habits (I’m an Institutional theorist, I believe in the power of routines, rules and norms)

I come from a military family and I’ve had a quasi-militarized education and training, so nothing @cduhigg said was new to me, but both The Power of Habit and Smarter, Faster, Better reaffirmed in me the importance of good habits (see Rubin above).

Here are the @cduhigg ‘s books that I like.

I struggle with prioritization, so The One Thing reminded me that it is important that I analyze what’s the one thing that I can do today to push my work forward. I usually expand it to the 3 most important things, but Keller and Papasan’s principle stands. FOCUS. 1 THING.

.@danielpink’s When and @benjaminspall and @michaxndr ‘s My Morning Routine were again, big reaffirmers of why I love mornings and why my morning routine is important. WHEN is particularly valuable when self-analyzing your best times during the day.

I also bought the two Marie Kondo books because obviously raulpacheco.org/2016/07/konmar… and I own several other books on why being organized is useful. If you have noticed a pattern, this is why I don't recommend books. Most just reaffirm what I already know, or the strategies I use.

Exhibit B: all these books basically justified why I am so systematic and organized and why I meticulously clean my office and get rid of stuff regularly and I keep all my writing implements in their place and have home and work offices that invite me to work (clean desk, etc.)

I have two books that were total surprises. Since I loathed the self-help genre, I had never heard of Damon Zahariades. One time, Amazon offered this book on the very, very, very cheapo. So I bought it. Excellent read on how to break down the work in manageable pieces.

I mean, AGES before I bought any self-help book I already had recommended that people should break down the work in manageable pieces (see: raulpacheco.org/2016/05/my-dai… and raulpacheco.org/2018/04/the-ac… and raulpacheco.org/2016/10/granul…) so this book was a "yay I knew I was doing something right"

And.. final book as I have a ton of things to do. Hollins was a surprise. I speed read, right? His book is on finishing what you started. It took me A WEEK (203 pages) to finish it. It was too dense with good ideas and I could not speed read it. I had to go word by word.