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* Getting Things Done by David Allen This book taught me so much about how to manage my life, and taught me how to review my own systems. * SICP, On Lisp, and

* Getting Things Done by David Allen This book taught me so much about how to manage my life, and taught me how to review my own systems. * SICP, On Lisp, and Let over Lambda It's hard to pick one exactly, because really it's about opening your mind to radically different programming paradigms than what's popular. Learning lisp well enough gives you confidence to attempt to create new programming languages, through code generation, or even mentally thinking about an API as a language rather than just a series of functions.

lanstin 5y ago
I loved Let over Lambda, but I always hesitate to recommend it, any more than I'd recommend TAOCP Semi-Numerical Algorithms, although that totally blew my mind. Even just the first chapter or two; I don't care that much about class implementations, but the power and the elegance and bootstrapping so high from such simple beginnings of lexical closures, all a true pleasure of life to learn such things.
CPLX 5y ago
> Getting Things Done by David Allen Agree. Despite being ubiquitous and universally recommended, I think this book is still somehow underrated.
muzani 5y ago
My main criticism of GTD is that it's a bottom up approach. It proposes that if you get enough things done, your purpose will emerge. But frequently you make progress in the wrong direction. E.g. for me it was a year trying to set up a coffee stand or starting a blog. There was progress and it felt really important at the time but wasn't. When it's usually the opposite. Once you have a purpose, you will know the right things to do. And sometimes you have to let go. There's a book, The Perfect Mess (Freedman, Abrahamson), which proposes that mess is more efficient than order. Another approach is several lists based on your life priorities. I'd recommend the book The 1 Thing (G. Keller), which can combo very well with GTD or even without it.
- guiambros 5y ago
  Another good pairing to GTD is "How will you measure your Life?" [1], by Prof. Clayton Christensen (also author of "Innovator's Dilemma", another excellent book). It gives you a framework to think about life and your value system, which is a great complement to GTD. [1] https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life

lanstin 5y ago

I loved Let over Lambda, but I always hesitate to recommend it, any more than I'd recommend TAOCP Semi-Numerical Algorithms, although that totally blew my mind. Even just the first chapter or two; I don't care that much about class implementations, but the power and the elegance and bootstrapping so high from such simple beginnings of lexical closures, all a true pleasure of life to learn such things.

CPLX 5y ago

> Getting Things Done by David Allen Agree. Despite being ubiquitous and universally recommended, I think this book is still somehow underrated.

muzani 5y ago

My main criticism of GTD is that it's a bottom up approach. It proposes that if you get enough things done, your purpose will emerge. But frequently you make progress in the wrong direction. E.g. for me it was a year trying to set up a coffee stand or starting a blog. There was progress and it felt really important at the time but wasn't. When it's usually the opposite. Once you have a purpose, you will know the right things to do. And sometimes you have to let go. There's a book, The Perfect Mess (Freedman, Abrahamson), which proposes that mess is more efficient than order. Another approach is several lists based on your life priorities. I'd recommend the book The 1 Thing (G. Keller), which can combo very well with GTD or even without it.

guiambros 5y ago
Another good pairing to GTD is "How will you measure your Life?" [1], by Prof. Clayton Christensen (also author of "Innovator's Dilemma", another excellent book). It gives you a framework to think about life and your value system, which is a great complement to GTD. [1] https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life