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Comment by r0naa | Hacker News Reader

I am curious to hear what HNers have to say about this book. To be honest I always thought that these kind of books (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS but that is problem a hasty generalization I made.

For those out there who read it, did it improve your project throughput or productivity? bonus if you have ADHD

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     > To be honest I always thought that these kind of books
     > (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS

I feel I've had a huge amount in my life out of self-help books, on a real variety of subjects. There's a lot of obvious bullshit out there (like The Secret), but also plenty of gold. Scanning through my notes, and in no particular order, I have extensive notes from (and thus enjoyed):

* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

* Beyond Chocolate

* Driven From Within (Michael Jordan biography)

* Get Altitude

* How To Make Friends and Influence People

* Iron John (Robert Bly)

* Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)

* Never Eat Lunch Alone

* Psychocybernetics

* Pulling Your Own Strings

* Ready For Anything (same author as GTD)

* The Dip

* Ten Days to Self Discipline

* The Power of Now

* Personal Power (Tony Robbins)

* Warrior King Magician Lover

Some were easier reads than others, and I suspect I am unusual in that I have a pretty rigorous system for making sure I regularly review my notes, and implement exercises and ideas in the books, but I feel I'd be a very different person for the worse without the value these books have added to my life.

Meditations is hardly self-help...

I'm not going to deny the fact that it changed the way I look at the world though.

    > Meditations is hardly self-help

That it wasn't intended as such doesn't really change the fact it's essentially a series of koans, much like many self-help books.

How did you like Ten Days to Self Discipline?

_LOVED_ it.

Just to make sure I'm looking at the same book, is it "Self-Discipline in 10 days: How To Go From Thinking to Doing"?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1880115107/

Thanks!

That's the one

"Winning through intimidation" Highly recommended. http://www.amazon.de/Winning-Through-Intimidation-Robert-Rin...

As I mentioned I've only been doing it for like a week so take this with that in mind. It hasn't helped me do work directly or my focus(well kind of has) but it has helped my organising work and not missing tasks or things I need to do that I put off to tomorrow or next week.

I think for ADHD the time based contexts help more than the books recommended location based ones(office, home, at a computer, with a phone) since I'm pretty much always near a computer and a phone. I have

Full focus(tasks up to 30 minutes that require my full concentration)

Short dash(same but up to 15 minutes)

Brain dead(tasks that don't require much thought or concentration)

Bored(Non-work related things that I find interesting but are still kind of productive, blog posts I want to read and stuff like that)

Someday/Maybe and waiting for stuff in the future or pending other peoples actions.

I took them from a blog post I can't find right now but I find them very helpful since a lot of my wasted time or distraction is in spent deciding what to do next or in situations where I have to do something in 20 minutes so I end up spending 10 minutes finding an appropriate task then realize I'm out of time and 10 minutes reading reddit or HN.

I'm still working on the breaking tasks down to fit the 30 minute window though so I have a few longer tasks in there still but its helping.

I have found adopting time/energy contexts to be helpful. I believe the original blog post is http://simplicitybliss.com/blog/a-fresh-take-on-contexts.

When I was in my early 20s my immediate reaction to hearing about any new personal-development / self-help book was that it's probably BS.

Then occasionally a couple caught me. Seven habits, GTD, How to win friends... are the 3 books that left a lasting impression with me.

Now in my early 30s I look at new productivity / self-help tools like the way I look at any given religion. You probably don't really need it but it might just be the one that works for you. And if it makes you a better person without messing with anybody/anything else then go right ahead.

There's no one size fits all.

None of these systems fit anyone's personality or situation perfectly(or, if they do, you're the lucky one). All of them are ultimately about getting small stuff right, and so they complement you where they give you ideas for changing your process.

But if the problem is "I'm doing something fundamentally wrong, I'm unmotivated, and I don't want to live life this way," they don't do a lot.

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