Friday Links Issue 07: Routines

The key isn’t the routines but having a routine at all. My theme this week seems to be looking at more routines. Mostly triggered by reading this post on time management at Khan Academy. From David Hu’s response1:

I start by journalling 1 page on: why, what, and how. I come up with 1 “wildly important goal” that I schedule my day around.

I’m pretty sure I met David in 2012. We happened to be eating next to each other at Work at a Startup. I remember realizing after the fact that I had read a few posts he wrote. The one that was probably fresh in memory was about his experiment in daily idea generation.

That reminds me of James Altucher’s concept of becoming an idea machine.

Take a waiter’s pad. Go to a local cafe. Maybe read an inspirational book for ten to twenty minutes. Then start writing down ideas. What ideas? Hold on a second. The key here is, write ten ideas.

I’ve tried this on and off. I always enjoy the results and will think about making it more of a point to do this regularly. The ten ideas can be about anything. And if I’m out of list ideas then I can write out a list of ten ideas for future lists. There’s always something.

David also encourages blogging, particularly for interns. He shares his mentor’s thoughts on the benefits of blogging:

raises the market value of interns

great practice for shipping work into the real world – blogs are mini products, and getting familiar with moving past the “it’s not ready to ship” inertia is invaluable”

possible that a community will spring up around the post – might be invited to speak at a conference as a result

Blogging has been good for me. It’s still early to see where this current blogging project will go, but in the past it’s definitely been helpful professionally. Lately I’ve been writing about books I read, so this last link is Paul Edwards’s guide on reading: How to Read a Book (PDF).

Edwards explains his approach to reading non-fiction while making sure to understand and retain the information.

Instead, when you’re reading for information, you should ALWAYS jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to discover, then to understand, and finally to remember what the writer has to say. This is how you’ll get the most out of a book in the smallest amount of time.

I had a sneaking suspicion that reading one page at a time on my phone randomly throughout the day isn’t optimal. I’m going to try reading a book with these tips in mind. I’ll probably write some book notes and something tells me they’ll end up on this blog in some form.

  1. I met David in 2012. We happened to be eating next to each other and we shook hands at Work at a Startup. I remember realizing after the fact that I had read a few posts he wrote.