Three Books that Changed the Way I Work
Who this is blog post for: Knowledge workers, people who work in offices, students, writers, introverts of all stripes.
Technology seems to attract the self-quantifying, self-improvement type and I have to admit, as a data scientist at a tech company, I fall squarely into that demographic. There is so much advice given about how to work smarter, work better, be more efficient, or more productive. Most of that advice ultimately falls short because it fails to account for the simple fact that people are different. What works for me is unlikely to work for you.
What follows are three books that have made my work life happier, less stressed, and more productive. Some of the specifics I mention may be helpful to you, but they probably won’t be, unless you are also a morning-person-with-no-children-who-works-for-a-company-with-flexible-hours-and-needs-to-be-outdoors-for-at-least-an-hour-a-day-to-feel-like-a-human. (That’s a pretty narrow slice of humanity.) However, there is something for almost everyone in these books, even if your “a-ha” moment differs from mine.
Getting Things Done
“There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.” - David Allen
There’s a reason this book is so frequently recommended. The system described in Getting Things Done has been hugely beneficial to me. I don’t follow every suggestion in it, but there were two life-changing practices I incorporated into my life from this book. The first was getting everything out of my head and into a written system and the second was pushing myself to write down the next actionable step for every item on my to-do lists. (I use Evernote for this, but pick what works for you.)
In a folder on my computer called “Getting Things Done,” I have the following lists: Work To-Do, Personal To-Do, Things to Buy, Someday/Maybe, Errands, Personal Projects, and Brain Dump. Everything, and I mean everything, goes into one of those lists, which I review every day. In the To-Do lists, I force myself to go beyond vague items like “Analysis for Linxi” or “Presentation for Kelly.” Those aren’t specific enough. Instead, I’ll put items like “Analysis for Linxi: Pull performance data” or “Presentation for Kelly: Decide which plots to include” because those are the next actionable steps.
Once I started using this system, I was more productive because my attention wasn’t constantly being pulled by the “open loops” of my life. I switched more quickly between tasks because I didn’t have to expend the mental energy to think, “Do I have time? What was I doing there again?” I already know because I’ve already thought about it and decided what to do next. Implementing these practices gave me true peace of mind.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts a World that Can’t Stop Talking
“So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don’t let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don’t force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns.” - Susan Cain
Though I am not shy and I enjoy talking to most people, I am deeply introverted. Until I read this book, I mostly thought of that word as meaning “people exhaust me,” which is true, but there is something more fundamental happening. Introversion can be thought of as the outward manifestation of a brain that is easily overstimulated. It’s not about the people, it’s about a level of activity and information that is beyond my brain’s ability to cope.
For you extroverts out there, imagine being trapped in an elevator with the circus. Complete and total sensory overload, right? That happens to me with most interactions involving more than three people, including, but not limited to, conferences, networking events, large meetings, parties, restaurants, and, most importantly, my open-office floor plan. (I work for tech company. Of course we have an open-office floor plan.)
It’s a tough situation for me. I can’t filter out conversations happening around me or people walking by my desk. I’m sensitive to absolute noise levels and light and smells. My ability to concentrate, working cheek by jowl with my six fellow teammates in a room that seats 50 people, suffers tremendously. This book made me realize that I had to carve out quiet spaces and times for myself and defend them rigorously.
In practice, this means that I spend my mornings working from home and then go into my office in the afternoon for meetings. Most days, I’m up before 6:00am and in my home office by 6:45. I work for three-is hours, go outside for an hour, then go into my office at noon. Those morning hours are golden for me. They are the most productive hours of my day because I can work in a quiet, undistracted environment. I know that this only works because my company is super flexible about when I’m in the office. What I hope generalizes, though, is that it pays to figure out what you need to do your best work and fight hard to build that into your day.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” - Cal Newport
I consider this book a companion piece to Quiet, though The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr is also a relevant pairing. The author argues that deep work (coding, writing, etc) is the key to having a meaningful career and that modern life is doing everything it can to destroy our ability to do deep work. Internet distractions like social media, a meeting-heavy workplace culture, email, and, yes, the open-office floor plan all contribute.
In addition to blocking off my mornings to work in a distraction-free environment (which I was already doing as a result of reading Quiet), this book also encouraged me to vastly cut down on the amount of time I spend on Twitter, news websites, and email. All of those things train to your brain to enjoy shallow tasks, at the expense of being able to think and learn deeply. I am also much more deliberate about how I spend my hour of walking/running time every day. I spend it in “productive meditation.” That is, I pick a problem to think about, and then think only about that problem during that walk/run. I’ve had some great ideas as a result.
The other habit I’ve cultivated as result of reading this book is to write out my daily schedule, every morning into a paper notebook. Yes, I have and love Google calendar, but writing it down and seeing where my big blocks of time are and how they align with the deep work I need to do that day, and then scheduling that time for specific projects, means that I have many fewer days where I look up and think “I was so busy today, but I’m not sure what I actually did.”
CONCLUSION
These books have made my work life more meaningful and productive, but only because I figured out how to apply them in a way that works for me. I hope you figure out your best practices, too.