noud

I think there is only one 100% accurate method to ensure you never start reading a non-awesome book, and that's by never read any book at all.

Instead, admit quickly that you made a mistake and stop reading a book if it turns out to be not-awesome after a couple of pages.

Yes, most books are useless.

> What tools/metrics are there to help find meaningful books?

Okay, first I never read a book that is less than 10 years old. Why? Because 10 years is roughly the time needed for a book to withstand the wheel of time. 100 years, as noted in other comments as well, is even better. If old books are still read, they are probably good books. But I cannot tell you the best books of last year. The only thing I can do, is tell you what the most popular books of last year were. But popular books are not the same as best books.

Secondly, I only read books I'm willing to read multiple times. Reading a book more than once is a great experience. Usually, I get more out of the second or third read than from the first read. If, after reading a couple of pages of a book, I realize I will not want to re-read the book, I quit reading it.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. - Blaise Pascal

"Your browser does not support playback of available video formats. Please install Adobe Flash player or upgrade to a more modern browser."

...Okay?

I found the videos on youtube as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCiZc0n6COY&list=PLruBu5BI5n...

When someone tries explaining something to me, I try to summarize what this person said when they are finished. E.g., "So you're saying that <summary here>" or "It seems like <summary here>". This forces me to actively listen and remember what the other person has said. Afterwards, I'm looking for a response in the lines of "That's correct!" or "That's right!", or a correction and explanation that I haven't heard it correctly. Even if I don't agree with the other persons believes, this seems to build good relationships.

I think you're way off base. It's called rosy retrospection, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection. As you already mentioned in your comments, you're judging the past disproportionately more positive that the present.

If you really want to know if everything is declining, try measure it everyday for the next five years. For example, every day, rate your personal well being, track how (un)happy you are with the current software, how much you pay to your landlords and subscriptions, how many mistakes the police makes, the weather, everything, ... After 5 years you'll have a good idea if things actually got worse than they are now. Sure, some things will get worse, but definitely not everything, and some things will even be better than they are now.

I lost the big picture of my company a long time ago. Maybe I've never seen the big picture at all... and never been more happy with my job. Ignorance is bliss.

On a more important note, do you know the big picture of your own life? What do you want to do with it? How do you see yourself in 10 years? Are you a better person today than you were yesterday? Knowing what you want to achieve in your life is thousand times more important than knowing what others want to achieve. Focus on what is within your control, not outside of it.

I would recommend reading the chapter "The Dignified Professor" from the book Surely you're joking mr. Feynman. [1]

Richard Feynman was one of the best physicists from the 20th century. He helped creating the atomic bomb, and he worked on quantum electrodynamics. He received the Nobel prize in Physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics.

When he worked at Cornell he suffered from a (small) burn out. He did his teaching duties, but, for his standards, produced very little more than that. He was worried that others would be disappointing in him, as it was impossible for him to live up to the expectations of others. This is were he developed an interesting idea: "You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. You have no responsibility to be like they expect you to be. It's their mistake, not your failing." [2]

If this task doesn't have measurable outcomes, or if you have nothing to report, than so be it. You tell that you have nothing to report. The company hired you to do this task, and they took a risk by putting you on this task. If you have nothing to report, than it's their responsibility to do something with that. Not yours. If they want to know why you have nothing to report, they will probably ask you to explain why you have nothing to report.

Footnotes:

[1] - Actually, I recommend reading the whole book. It's very funny and interesting at the same time.

[2] - Page 199, changed "I" into "You".

I'm not responsible for solving other people's problems and behavior.

I use two filters:

1. I only buy (and read) a book that is at least 10 years old. For me, 10 years is enough for other people to figure out if a book is worth to read. 95% of all books that are today's bestsellers turn out not to age well. Because none of the books are new, I can usually buy them used.

2. I'm only buying it if I'm pretty sure I'm going to read it. I always read the digital preview and sometimes (if available) I download the digital version which I read for a while. I want to know if I'm going to read the book before buying it.

Second this book. The book contains 99% of all the things I need git to do on a daily basis.

To put in my two penny worth, although it's not really answering your question: Don't bother reading the articles and newsletters. There is too much information available, and you'll never be satisfied. Fortunately, this is not a problem. In my experience you won't miss much by not reading the articles and newsletters. If it's really important you'll learn it from other people anyways. Instead, use the free time you created to read more in depth topics from (well-written) books. In my view, being a master in a few (news) topics is worth more than being a jack of all trades.

On a more serious note. I think that a lot of product production processes can be optimized way better than they are now. Especially in large companies, where people have become conservative. They think the current way of working is the most efficient, and aren't looking for more optimal ways to produce their products. I think there are some general methods that work in almost all companies that could be made into more general software solutions: e.g., tail analysis, logistic optimization, item clustering, similarity analysis, etc...

Politics, people talk too much, but nothing gets done and no one will take responsibility for it in the end.

Not sure if it's interesting to tackle. ;)

Unpopular tip: you can store your data for the project in a simple csv file 9 out of the 10 times and load all of it in memory (with pandas for example). Don't waste your time on building a scalable data storage when you don't need it.

...and are you willing to share that knowledge?

Essays from Michel de Montaigne.

I enjoy reading the opinions of de Montaigne. He writes in a pleasant, easy, and funny way. Moreover, it gives you an interesting view on how people in the 16th century thought.

I was once added to a team to help improving their code base. At the end of the project they made an overview how many lines each of the team members added to the code base. Mine was negative. :)

I'm amazed how large satellites have become. They are larger than small countries, like Luxembourg, Cyprus, Trinidad, ... How do they get these huge satellites up in space? Unbelievable...

I work in a big company as one of the more experienced guys in the department. There's definitely more work to do than I can do. Some coworkers work hard to get rid of as much work as possible by putting it on other peoples desks. In the mean time I've become efficient in being assertive and saying no to anything I don't like doing (and which is not my responsibility to do).

So you say you don't have much to do at work? Are others complaining about that? If not, good for you. It's better to do less, but do it well, than the other way around.

One of my teachers taught me this: "If you apply a trick once, it's a trick, if you apply it twice, it becomes a method."

100% agree with this statement.

My personal 2ct: first understand how to solve "real" problems, then move on to the abstract theory. I cannot understand the theoretical mathematics behind a concept if I don't have at least one non-trivial example in my head which I understand completely.

Not tired, but not impressed either. Looks cool, but I think it gets pretty boring after a couple of usages. Highly overrated and hyped if you ask me.

[author]-[year]-[title].pdf

Pdfs are then grouped into folders per topic.

This paper hits the nail on its head. My personal 2ct on being busy and how I fixed mine.

I believe that being busy is often a case of not having priorities set right. Usually I have a list of 4 or 5 work related items per week that are high priority. Everything else can wait. Next, my private life (kids, partner, working out, eating well) has higher priority than work. If my private life is not in order, I first fix that before doing anything for work. Most who say "I'm (too) busy" have too many things to do in too few time, and would be better off (re-)prioritizing what is actually important and what could wait.

Are there?

Not saying they don't exist. But I've yet to meet someone who only sleeps 5 hours a day, doesn't have bags under the eyes, and doesn't fall asleep in every meeting.

The more I work with advanced JS frameworks, the more I think I could also have done it with just vanilla javascript (with some jquery). Webapps I made 10 years ago where no less responsive than the webapps I make now. Nor do they take more time to create. The only difference is the size of the applications. They significantly increase with all overhead of frameworks. I wouldn't be surprised when webapp development will return partly to what it was a decade ago, where small (stand-alone) libraries are preferred to these huge, batteries-included, frameworks.

edit: With some exceptions. Some webapps are huge. They are near impossible to program without a solid framework. But this is no more than 5% of all the webapps I create.

+1

I do exactly the same. Just journal all your thoughts, ideas, worries, and things to do into one joint place. The idea is that you don't have to ruminate anymore, because it's on paper and you can start on it the next day.

Keep the attitude! In the end, few things really matter. Better be jolly and funny too often, than taking too much (too) serious.

Bourbaki