Mark Forster:

The most distinctive feature of FV is the way that its algorithm is primarily based on psychological readiness—this then opens the way to keeping urgency and importance in the best achievable balance.

I’ve used this a few times now and it’s pretty ace.

James Stanier:

regardless of how much autonomy and self-directed time you accumulate, optimal allocation of your capacity is not a box packing problem where you must allocate every single minute of your day. This is an anti-pattern.

Jason Cohen:

90% utilization is causing more failure than you realize, not just in burn-out, but in productivity and output.

Roger Martin:

Why on earth spend resources to serve these customers with those stripped-down offerings? It is because the company isn’t sufficiently confident that if it repurposed those resources to increasing penetration of its best segment, it would increase revenues and profitability — even though current penetration was pretty darn low.

James Clear:

Not being busy is a competitive advantage. Most people are so strapped for time they can’t take advantage of lucky opportunities or quickly resolve unexpected problems. Maintain a bias toward action, but leave room for the unexpected.

Sean Byrnes:

In fact, as a leader, there are often only a handful of key decisions that make the difference between success and failure. The challenge is not whether you can be at your best all the time, the challenge is whether you are at your best when you make those key decisions. Since we never know when those decisions will happen, we have to find a way to be ready for them at all times.

A bunch of interactive examples and tips on using multiple cursors for editing text by Alex Harri.

Tony Stubblebine:

Many things at Twitter were broken to the point that they could bring the entire site to a halt. Greg’s strategy, now distorted through multiple retellings and my own foggy memory, was to focus on short-term triage rather than long-term fixes.

To recharge themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they’re facing.

Ben Brooks:

I don’t need areas or projects to do my work effectively. I don’t need complex chaining rules and sequences. I don’t need start dates or tags. In late November I realized that while Things still worked fine for me, I was using it not for task management any longer — but instead I was using it as a reminder engine.

My system for processing email is similar to Xavier’s.

Though, I use the Things Helper app to add links to emails directly to my Things inbox.

Cal Newport:

In the war to reclaim your attention, some battles have clearer fronts than others. It has become clear to me that these differences matter.

Michael Feathers:

When people have divided attention, work suffers. The area of code that you work for months is something that you understand deeply. The framework, off to the side, that you update just to facilitate your work may not seem as important. This is a function of distance: cognitive, temporal, and locational distance. In a way, these are all the same.

Tiago Forte:

I often say that with knowledge workers, the biggest bottleneck is always getting up in the morning. Knowledge work requires not only our time and effort, but also our engagement and creativity. For that reason, personal motivation is the prime problem that supersedes all other problems.

Camille Fournier:

So what are the management skills that are needed to achieve [Engineering productivity]? At the first level of management, they look like:

I especially like the idea of recording yourself working to help guide improvement.

DHH:

Creativity, progress, and impact does not yield easily or commonly to brute force.

David Copeland:

Our goal should be to reduce these issues—we’ll never be truly rid of them. The first step is self-awareness. Ask yourself:

Plug in and get some work done.

Good tips for structuring your Slack channels.

Another crack at the debt metaphor.

Music makes repetitive tasks more enjoyable.

Strategies for dealing with Slack.

Shawn Blanc:

Your own index is something you put in the back of the book (or the front if you prefer). It’s a list of the book’s themes and topics that most resonate with you, and the pages which have the best quotes and ideas around those topics.

Chris Beams:

A properly formed git commit subject line should always be able to complete the following sentence:

If applied, this commit will your subject line here

Paul Ford:

I erased most of my TODO list since I really only need to stay alive and listen to people and everything else is a lie.

James Clear:

In my opinion, this is the greatest success “hack” there is. If you live in an environment that nudges you toward the right decision and if you surround yourself with people who make your new behavior seem normal, then you’ll find success is almost an afterthought.