Category: Book Club
The Efficiency Trap – Why Productivity Rewards Suck and an Antidote
by
This was the book club book for August 2025. Join the free newsletter to get all the posts that talk about it. In September we’re reading Never Play it Safe by Chase Jarvis Where most productivity books try to give you a system to get more done, Oliver Burkeman takes a different stance. You need
The Efficiency Trap and the Power of Rest
by
Once you stop struggling to get on top of everything, to stay in absolute control, or to make everything perfect, you’re rewarded with time, energy and psychological freedom to accomplish the most of which anyone could be capable. –Meditations for Mortals Pg 149 When I look at much of what concerns me in a day
What if it were easy?
by
One of the key questions I’ve asked myself for years when a task comes along is “What if this were easy”, so seeing Oliver Burkeman bring up the same question in week three got me smiling. One problem with typical productivity advice is that it assumes you need a deep reservoir of motivation to do
Sipping the Comfortable Cocktail of Procrastination and Excuses
by
I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they want to write a book — but never start. They want to be authors, but they’ve invented roadblocks limiting them from writing. They enjoy their comfortable cocktail of procrastination and excuses that gives them license to avoid writing. If you’ve got young kids and
Endless Scroll, Empty Soul – The Tyranny of Reading Later
by
Pull and refresh on YouTube to bring you some new videos that their algorithm thinks you’ll like. Pull and refresh on Mastodon to see new articles recommended by people you follow, I’m sure some of them are interesting. Reddit lets you scroll to the “bottom” of a list of things that may interest you that
Does Farsighted by Steven Johnson Actually Help You Make Better Decisions?
by
This month we looked at Farsighted by Steven Johnson in book club. Join the club to get all the content on it. Next month we’re reading Meditations for Mortals. The purpose of Farsighted is to help us make better decisions with Johnson saying that outside of a pro/con list, we teach almost nothing to most
How to See Your Blindspots Before They Burn You
by
While this newsletter is free, membership helps support my work so that it can keep showing up in your inbox. Last week we looked at how diversity improves decisions, today let’s look at how we can improve our decisions when we’re faced with personal decisions. One of the first questions I ask when evaluating a
Diversity matters if you want good decisions
by
Let’s start with the point that Steven Johnson makes over and over in Farsighted, if you want to make good decisions the diversity in background, gender, all other factors…matters. Homogenous groups – whether they are united by ethnic background, gender, or some other worldview like politics – tend to come to decisions too quickly. They
The Burnout Society – Dense, Distant, and Occasionally Brilliant
by
Next month’s book is Farsighted by Steven Johnson, join the Book Club to get all of the content. I’m on vacation next week out of internet range so there will be no post which gives you two weeks to get started on the book. This month we’ve read The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han which
The Invisible Violence Behind Overwork
by
I’m late in Burnout Society now and I think that the author is missing a key turn in his arguments. He recognizes that many activities in the modern world are being reduce from expert positions to mere labour but then goes on to say that burnout is the result of voluntary self-exploitation. Exploitation framed as