Review: Ready For Anything, 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done by David Allen

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Review: Ready For Anything, 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done by David Allen.

ISBN-10: 0143034545
ISBN-13: 978-0143034544

PROS:

  • Advice is presented in intense, “bite-sized” sets of tips that make for easy reading.
  • Little wasted space
  • Stories help illustrate the points.
  • Comes with insightful exercises to get the most out of the advice – and shock you into awareness.

CONS:

  • You really have to read “Getting Things Done” to get the most value out of the book.

SUMMARY: An indispensable, insight-filled companion to “Getting Things Done” – just read that book first.

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The Somewhat Clogged Culture Pipeline

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Serdar had responded to my post that we have replaced culture with economics with one of his usual, thoughtful replies. He notes that our technocratic marketing has driven innovation from the marketplace and we are left with what sells, not what necessarily has value, and that to an extent we have a case of this mediocrity infecting us or becoming a kind of cultural pollution. However out of many of his ideas, one thing comes up I want to talk about: the role of The Pipeline.

The Pipeline is how Stuff Gets To Us. There are Pipelines for food, for clothes, and of course for Culture.

When I say The Pipeline, for the sake of this post, I’m talking the media system we have.

The Pipeline that we have are often built of foundations decades, or even centuries old. Publishing houses, radio stations, movie studios, etc. Huge companies and small companies, various suppliers and interests, and so forth came together to create the giant Culture Engine we have now. Some of it is very old, and it often plays it very safe.

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You Hack Or You Die

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OK, the title is a bit heavy, but it’s inspired by an intriguing quote from Big Think. Also anything Game of Thrones related gets attention, so my next post will be “Tyrion Lannister Brings Love Diet Secrets.”

From “To Those Who Can’t Hack It In Today’s Economy.”

“In a world created by hackers those who can’t hack are the underclass. No matter what you do today, success amounts to a form of hacking, whether you’re running a hedge fund or if you’re just clipping coupons to get by at the bottom of the economic spectrum. “

The author, Jaron Lanier (who I should note I do not always agree with) then goes and discusses general computer literacy, while missing what I think is a deadly important point.

We need to hack to survive. It’s not just about computers.

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