“We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.”
– John of Salisbury (Sidenote: for a a fascinating book on the origins of this phrase, see On The Shoulders of Giants by Robert K. Merton)

The Best Experts and The Best Information – Available Everywhere

I recently listened to a Software Engineering Radio podcast with Ted Neward – a man who I also had the pleasure of seeing deliver a keynote at The Server Side Java Symposium.

Ted Neward is a rockstar among software development rockstars, though he somewhat modestly refers to himself as a “big geek.” He has written numerous books, and is about as sharp as anyone you’ll ever meet. When he discusses intricate software and programming language development issues, my brain is working overtime as he connects all the dots together and lays out a coherent, nuanced explanation.  Until probably a hundred years ago, there would have been no way that thousands of people would be able to hear his voice as they do now – certainly not download it in a podcast and listen at their convenience.

Today, anyone can buy an MP3 player, download some podcasts and transform their headphones into a mobile classroom. I have at my fingertips Ted Neward, Joshua Bloch (another rockstar), The Java Posse, various Rails gurus, Java Rant…all podcasts produced by very smart people, and available to me to listen to at my leisure.

I know not everyone reading this is a software developer, but everyone here has a particular field they excel at or want to excel in.  Or perhaps there is a particular task or problem you need solved.  With the articles online, podcasts and books, you can readily access the best information there is about almost any subject.

We can access discussions, explanations – and my favorite, solutions.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel – and this is as true of software development as it is in more fuzzy fields, like social relations.  Rather than going through the process of trial and error ourselves, we can benefit from other people who have already made the mistakes and distilled those lessons into concise explanations.

Paying Someone Else to Learn from Their Mistakes

Consider Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Dale Carnegie used to present seminars on handling people, and distilled his knowledge into a book that has hardly been updated since the 1930s because the advice and strategies have stayed relevant.  When I read it, I literally gave up trying to write in the margins and “star” the parts I liked – virtually every page had an insight or anecdote I wanted to save for later.  The book is filled with pitfalls that Dale Carnegie encountered himself, or observed in other people – and he tells you not just the issues, but also the resolutions.

Just as I’ve found it’s a better trade off to pay someone $60 a week to cook for me so I have 10 additional hours of free time, it’s worth it to me to spend some small sum of money and time reading a book that I can learn from, the lessons of which will pay huge dividends in avoiding the pitfalls others have faced.

Put another way –

Why spend years learning how people work, when I can just read Dale Carnegie’s book and apply the knowledge?

Try Out a Proven System or Continue Using Your Own Ad Hoc Unproven “Solution”?

On a similar note, for years I worked on organizing my life with my own system.  Sure, there was some degree of order, but it was very much ad hoc.  One day I decided I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I bought David Allen’s Getting Things Done.  I was skeptical at first – but I took a step back and thought about it as if I was totally unbiased, and was just choosing between two options before me, to try temporarily:

• On the one hand we had Getting Things Done.  This system had been used for years by many people, was detailed in a best selling book, and was being presented to me by a person whose whole business was built around the reputation he had for improving people’s productivity.
• On the other hand, we had the ad hoc Sid Savara method (if we are generous with the term “method”) – which was undocumented, unknown, had many unhandled “exception” cases, and the one person using it was admittedly looking for a replacement.

You can understand why I decided to suspend my skepticism and give David Allen a chance.

Not only did the strategies and method help me organize my tasks, but it changed the way I thought:  the way I looked at emails, phone calls, my calendar – everything.  This isn’t a post about the nuts and bolts of Getting Things Done, so I won’t go into the details, but Getting Things Done basically outlines a strategy for dealing with every contingency for issues and tasks as they come into your life. There are many resources online where you can get the gist of it, but if you plan on applying it, I recommend not trying to read Wikis etc to learn it. I tried initially until I finally purchased the book, and it’s like night and day – the book has so much more information it’s not even a fair comparison.

The Road Ahead – Knowledge Skills, and Leveraging Other People’s Knowledge

I’ve only scratched the surface here, but the point of this post is to prime you for what lays ahead.  There are many books I’ve read that I believe were well worth my time for the level of expertise they provide, and for how they increased my productivity or skills in a particular area.  I’ll write about them and guide you towards the best resources I have found to solve specific issues I have encountered.  There’s no need for me to rewrite books and articles that have already been written – but I can show you which ones I’ve liked.

Every day I apply what I have learned from Dale Carnegie, David Allen, Tim Ferris, Joshua Bloch and many others – and in so doing I can leverage their expertise, and stand on the shoulders of giants.

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
– Herbert A. Simon

Most mornings, before I write anything or settle into the day, I have to decide how much of the internet I am going to let into my head.

That sounds a little dramatic, but it is the practical question. Every day brings a pile of things that might be worth my attention: some useful, some interesting, some merely loud, and some that only felt important because I saw them at the wrong moment.

The hard part is not finding information. The hard part is deciding what deserves attention, what can be skimmed, what should be saved, and what should be ignored without guilt.

I do not think the goal is to consume more. I think the goal is to consume less randomly.

The First Filter Is Time

Start with time.

If I do not decide how much time online reading deserves, the internet will happily take the rest.

So the first question is blunt: how much of my day do I actually want to give to intake?

Not writing. Not thinking. Not building. Not talking to people. Just intake.

There are seasons where I want a lot of input. I am learning a new area, researching a decision, following a fast-moving topic, or trying to understand what people are noticing. In those moments, more reading is not avoidance. It is part of the job.

Without a boundary, though, reading turns into a very respectable way to avoid choosing what I am going to do with what I already know.

Separate Triage From Reading

The move is to separate jobs that should never have been collapsed:

• deciding whether something is worth reading,
• reading the things that survived that first pass,
• saving useful references,
• joining the conversation when I actually had something to add.

Those are not the same activity.

Scan. Choose. Read. Save. Respond.

Triage should be fast. Title, source, summary, maybe the first paragraph. Is this relevant? Is it timely? Is it likely to change something I think, decide, or do? If not, it can go.

Reading is slower. That is where I am actually letting someone else’s argument into my head and giving it enough attention to see whether it holds together.

Saving is different again. Sometimes I do not need to read the whole thing right now. I just need to know it exists, tag it well enough that future-me can find it, and move on.

Responding is its own thing. Commenting, replying, forwarding, posting, debating, adding my view to the pile. That can be valuable, but it is not the same as reading. It uses a different kind of attention.

When I mix all of those together, I get slow and reactive. I open something, half-read it, click a link, skim another post, save the first one badly, start typing a reply, remember I was supposed to be doing something else, and somehow call the whole thing “research.”

A cleaner process makes each pass cleaner.

Most Things Do Not Need A Full Read

Most things I encounter online do not deserve a full read from me.

That is not an insult to the writer. It is just math, and pretending otherwise is how I lose an afternoon.

Some things are interesting but not useful. Some are useful but not useful right now. Some repeat an idea I already understand. Some are worth saving as a reference but not worth reading end to end. Some are mostly news, which means they feel urgent for an hour and then vanish from my life completely.

I try to be ruthless with this. If I get a few paragraphs in and realize the piece is not going anywhere I need to follow, I stop. If the headline looks vaguely interesting but not important, I save it for a second pass. If it still does not feel worth reading later, I let it go.

That second pass matters. A surprising amount of “I should read this” fades if I give it a little time.

The first impulse is often curiosity. The second pass is judgment.

Batch The Similar Work

Batching helped because switching modes has a cost.

If I am processing new items, I want to stay in that mode: scan, decide, skip, save, move on. If I am reading, I want to read. If I am replying, I want to reply. If I am organizing references, I want to do that deliberately.

Almost every modern reading tool mixes signal and noise together. My attention works better when I decide what kind of work I am doing inside that stream.

The tool wants to present everything as one stream. I do not have to accept that as my process.

I do not always succeed at this. There are plenty of days where I click around too much, skim without retaining anything, or open a pile of tabs that mostly become browser furniture. But when I am at my best, I am usually not asking, “What is the next interesting thing?”

I am asking, “What mode am I in right now?”

Use Tools To Support The Decision

Tools matter when they reduce friction around the right decision.

The specifics change. Sometimes the useful thing is a fast keyboard shortcut. Sometimes it is a read-later queue, a bookmark folder, a search system, or a plain note where I can put something without letting it hijack the present.

The specific tool matters less than the job it is doing.

For me, the useful questions are:

• Can I move quickly through low-value items?
• Can I save something without pretending I need to read it now?
• Can I find saved material later?
• Can I keep reading from turning into constant context switching?

If a tool helps with those, it is useful. If it mostly gives me a more elaborate place to avoid deciding, it is just a nicer-looking pile.

The Real Goal

Attention needs a system around it.

Without one, every incoming item gets to make its own case in the moment. The interesting headline wins. The loud thread wins. The tab I already opened wins. The thing that is easiest to keep skimming wins.

A simple process changes that. Not perfectly, but enough.

It lets me say: this is noise, this is worth a skim, this deserves a real read, this should be saved, this is worth responding to, and this can be ignored.

That last category is underrated.

There is too much internet to read. There always was. The useful skill is not keeping up with all of it. The useful skill is building enough of a filter that the things I read have a chance to matter.

“A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow.”

You may be familiar with this old Abraham Lincoln quote: “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

For many people, that is a life-changing idea. A little preparation can save hours of wasted motion.

But preparation has a shadow side. If you keep sharpening the axe because chopping the tree feels uncomfortable, preparation has quietly become procrastination.

Real Work versus Metawork

Metawork is work about the work. It is planning, reading, researching, outlining, organizing, tool-shopping, and setting up systems.

Done well, metawork is valuable. It helps you see the path before you start walking. It can make the next hundred hours more effective.

But metawork is not the result. It is only useful if it leads to action.

At some point, the plan has to become a draft. The research has to become a decision. The system has to become a habit. The preparation has to turn into the thing you were preparing to do.

The Fitness Example

Consider someone who wants to get healthier by exercising.

Choosing a gym, comparing workout plans, reading about cardio versus strength training, and deciding which exercises to do on which days can all be useful.

But none of it makes you stronger by itself. At some point, you have to exercise.

When Preparation Becomes Procrastination

The tricky thing is that metawork feels responsible. It gives you the emotional reward of being productive without the risk of producing something imperfect.

That is why it can be so seductive. Planning rarely exposes you. Doing does.

If there is a goal you have been preparing for forever, ask yourself a simple question: what would count as direct progress today?

Not more research. Not a better tool. Not a cleaner system. Actual movement.

Prepare enough to begin. Then begin.

25% of New Year’s resolutions are broken in the first week alone. 

Within 6 months, over half of New Year Resolvers will have given up.

Why?

Why is it that so many resolutions are doomed from the start?

Here’s one major reason I’ve found with clients:

You need to learn how to balance these new resolutions with your prior commitments.

You’re Already Busy

Resolutions usually involve new commitments.

The problem is:  you’re already busy.

Imagine this:  if on December 31st, you were already living a life where every moment of the day was filled with something –  how can you do everything you’ve always done, and squeeze in time for new things on January 1?   

So the change isn’t just starting new resolutions …

You also need to take this opportunity to sharpen your  focus, and give up on a few things.

The answer is: 

Commit to doing less of some things: so you can do the important things better.

The simplest way I’ve found of letting go is to actively decide what I will work on right now – and what I’m going to let fall to “maybe” in my life.

How? You make two lists:

• Your “Todo” List – The things you are working on today, this week, this month…anything you are actually working on
• Your “Someday” List – Low priority projects that you know you can’t commit time to – and you accept that they won’t get worked on until “Someday” in the future (which could be never)

The Someday List

Very briefly, the Someday list is my list of items that I intend to get to “Someday.”

So working out may be something that is on my Todo list right now, because I know I am going to do that today and throughout this week.

On the other hand, some books I am planning to write are sitting on the “Someday” lis.

They are projects I would like to work on, but they are not important enough to me to make it on my Todo list right now….

And maybe they never will.

Every week or two, I review the items on that list.

If I decide I am ready to begin a project that week… I move it from Someday into my normal Todo List.

I can hear the question  now…

If it’s on your Someday list and it never gets done, what’s the point?

The Point Is…Prioritizing

If you don’t explicitly decide what is on your Someday list, you implicitly put everything you aren’t actively working on on it.

• Do you have a dream of running a marathon?
• Starting your own business?
• Writing a book?

If you don’t actively take action on it then you are already letting it be pushed off into the future – by the day-to-day things that come up and happen.  

What To Do Today – Vs “Someday”

And truthfully – some of those “emergencies” don’t need to be dealt with today – or sometimes ever.

Save those low-value, time-consuming tasks for “Someday” – and make today a day that matters to you.

Don’t be a statistic – don’t be one of the 25% who gives up this first week! There’s still time to turn it around.

And don’t worry if you don’t feel this moment, or this year, or this week, or this situation isn’t “exactly right.”

You don’t need “exactly right” on the outside to make a change – you just need to take action, right now.

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev