Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.
I don’t have any idea how many times I have read this book at certain times in my life.
2 Likes
It’s an unusual book. It’s full of ideas more than recipes. It’s really an approach to thinking about how we prepare and organise food. Hope you find some good things in it.
Thanks! That was my impression and that’s exactly why it appealed to me.
1 Like
Didn’t want to start a new thread just for this book, but wanted to pass it along too, so…
While the book is based on the author’s own experiences and supported by interviews with others, it has no illusions that acting like Whomever will make you successful like Whomever. It’s also not a “story” book, so doesn’t have chapters devoted to this or that person that you can emulate. It’s a practical book that presents a framework for figuring out what works best for you.
The book is divided into four parts:
- The bad parts of ADHD
- The harsh truths about ADHD
- A better mindset
- Build your strategy
The strategies look to be very practical, and don’t require any special apps, etc. and look like an antidote to all the app chasing we sometimes do. I look forward to gradually putting these strategies into practice, and building my knowledge of things that work for me.
On Amazon: ADHD Pro: Sustainable Productivity for People with ADHD
6 Likes
I’ll definitely check this one out. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid 30’s, and for me, getting coaching and proper medication made an enormous impact on my life.
1 Like
As a counter balance to suggesting yet another productivity manual, I’ve just read Oliver Burkeman’s new book, Four Thousand Weeks (published Aug 2021) Four Thousand Weeks, which I found interesting and worthwhile. In it he suggests that our current way of thinking about time management and productivity is both skewed and ineffective. I thought others may find it interesting, too.
The basic argument is:
- life is unbearably short (80 years is only 4000 weeks). It is also full of events (sometimes very painful) over which we have no control. These are inescapable facts, yet we often don’t recognise them, or worse struggle against them and fail.
- we are all increasingly under external and internal pressure to do more with our time, though we will never be able to everything we want or need to do
- we tend to spend so much of our lives striving to get through this impossibly long list - essentially living for an impossible future when we will have ‘succeeded’, when we finally will have control over our lives - that we forget to ‘live’ in the present
- time management / productivity systems promise a way of cranking through the infinite task lists more effectively as though there will ever be an end to them, while in reality all they do is move the unending conveyor belt of infinite tasks along faster to the next task.
- The result is that for the vast majority of people, these systems end in the failure to impose control, when control is never obtainable in the first place. Naturally we blames ourselves, or move on to a new system, adding more stress. In reality, these systems are mostly trying to answer the wrong problem.
There is no easy solution to this: tasks will always have to be done, life will always be unfair and out of our control, so Burkeman doesn’t have any grand method to make things right.
Instead he suggests some ways of thinking about the problem which may reduce stress and anxiety and help us to live more fully in the present, rather than the future. None of these are revolutionary: some have been known for centuries. The book is an attempt to recalibrate how we look at current destructive trends, so that we get to use what’s left of the four thousand weeks better, rather than touting a method to follow rigorously (twenty week course, only £700 now!) To be clear, it’s the overselling of the productivity methods which is wrong (the claims that full control is only a few steps away) — that doesn’t mean that they don’t contain useful day to day tactics.
As someone who has just started the final 1000 weeks (if I’m lucky), I thought there is a lot which makes sense in the book. I don’t agree with it all, but I wished I’d considered many of the points years ago, rather than chasing the latest productivity trend.
I hope some may find it useful and/or interesting as well.
7 Likes
It’s interesting that this is actually the underlying goal behind GTD, per David Allen. Of course looking at most modern GTD apps you’d never know that. 
2 Likes
‘Mind like water’… indeed!
Burkeman actually mentions this part of GTD favourably — his problem was that he failed with this and (many) other methods to achieve that state:
The same self-defeating pattern applies to many of our attempts to
become more productive at work. A few years ago, drowning in emails,
I successfully implemented the system known as Inbox Zero, but I soon
discovered that when you get tremendously efficient at answering
emails all that happens is that you get much more email. Feeling busier
thanks to all that email I bought Getting Things Done, by the time
management guru David Allen, lured by his promise that it is ‘possible
for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still
function productively with a clear head’ and 'what the martial artists
call a “mind like water”. But I failed to appreciate Allen’s deeper
implication that there’ll always be too much to do and instead set
about attempting to get an impossible amount done. In fact, I did get
better at racing through my to-do list, only to find that greater volumes
of work magically started to appear. (Actually, it’s not magic; it’s simple psychology, plus capitalism. More on that later.) (Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks, from the section ‘Life on the Conveyor Belt’)
The bit I’ve emboldened is one of the things I’ve failed at as well, and I suspect others do too…
1 Like
I’ve been strongly considering reading that book - this seals the deal. I’ll be grabbing it. 
Thanks for the recommendation!
Excellent!
As I said, I don’t agree with everything in it, but it’s thought-provoking and it’s dealing with a real problem.
I hope you enjoy it!
1 Like
Thanks, having a major work crisis related to my problems with ADHD right now. Your tip made my day. Looking forward to read this.
2 Likes
I just try to “eat the frog” every day.
I use only one calendar (the default in Apple) and plenty of alarms (notifications).
Routine helps. Place stuff in the same spot. Wear similar clothes. Reduces spending mental energy.
2 Likes
The struggle is real.
A little over two weeks in, and I’ve read the book again and took notes, then laid out some rough frameworks of a system. Since then, I’ve made notes about just about everything, and incorporated that feedback back into my system.
E.g. parked at a garage at school, didn’t have my wallet (credit card, etc.). Called parking services who were nice enough not to cite me $40, and let me out for free. I made a note in the one place I make notes that I needed to figure out a way to prevent that from happening again. And then I ordered phone cases, but wound up going back to my BookBook case.
E.g. needed a way to be sure I take things with me to school that I need. After a lot of interesting thoughts, I just made a checklist and put it in my backpack.
E.g. I was kind of blindsided in a patent meeting. I made a note for later, then created a template for meetings that I will use from now on. One of the items has to do with not being blindsided.
I also put reminders of how I do things into Anki and review them every morning. “When I have a new meeting, I will create a meeting note using the template, then fill it out.”
I wouldn’t have done these things before reading that book. I would have just said to myself, “Yeah, I need to not forget my credit card.”
I’m also learning to moderate my hyper focusing when it happens, so that I don’t work on something for 10 hours straight, and then feel burned out for 3 days. Also from the book.
Rather than forcing myself, I am now helping myself.
It’s really the most practical book I’ve read on ADHD, and I hope it will help you and others too.
6 Likes
I see the book is available as both book and audiobook. In your opinion, is it the sort of book that benefits substantially from the printed format? Or would the audio be just as good for somebody who does audiobooks more than printed?
Hm.
Well, this is one of the books I go all in on, and have Kindle, Audible, and paper copies of.
I would probably prefer printed or Kindle, as there were some things I used to set up my system, and it would have been tedious to find them again in the Audible book.
I haven’t listened to the Audible book, but plan to while commuting.
Ah, it’s a “both/and”. Those are fun. 
Thanks!
1 Like
It’s on Kindle, so you could get the Kindle free sample.
1 Like
I loved this thread, so I compiled a table for every book mentioned, sorted by the number of mentions.
Page is open to editing
11 Likes
Nice work Tav, great resource. Thank you 
1 Like