Category: Books

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Books Personal Random

A Month of Intention

Last year during July, I read a classic: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. To be honest, during the first read-through, I didn’t really get it. But then I watched a video from Ryan Holiday (of Daily Stoic fame), who mentioned that the Gregory Hays’ translation is the modern translation for those wanting to get into Marcus Aurelius. I know that I subscribe to stoicism as a philosophy, and wanting to really understand this Stoic stalwart, I decided that this July I would re-read Meditations…but this time using the Hays translation. I’m glad I did. It’s worth the hype, and at less than $8 on Amazon, it’s a worthwhile buy.

But my July plan didn’t stop there. I resolved on July 1 to make July a “month of intention”. Every day, I would read a passage from three books: fiction, non-fiction, and the Scriptures. I’ve been reading Asimov’s Foundation series, and I also decided to start the month with a read through of Ecclesiastes and reading Psalms 134-140 everyday.

By the end of the month, I had read Foundation, Foundation & Empire, Meditations, Ecclesiastes, Nehemiah, Obadiah, and Habakkuk. I’ve also started reading Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power (I’m now on Law 11), and I also added a fourth category of reading: something work related (code or startup).

I also resolved to write everyday: code and prose. To date, I’ve committed some piece of substantial code to Github every day this month as well as working on a creative writing project that I’ve had in my head for years.Tracking was simple: I added todos in Things for Reading and Writing with subtasks for each thing I wanted to read. Those are set up on a daily recurring basis, with a noon reminder. Some days were tough, with some reading sessions occuring at 11:30p before the next day, but overall I got it done.

Overall, this month of intention has been a wild success. I’ve enjoyed the discipline, and while I’m not sure I’ll be as strict about the discipline moving forward, I’ll definitely do it again next year…including another read of Mediations.

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Books

How I Track My Reading List

Derek Brown Reading List in Notion

If you just want to get to it and see my reading list, click here.

If you want to sign-up for Notion, feel free to use my referral link here.

More than a few people have asked me how I manage my reading list. First of all, here are a few of the requirements that I want in a solution:

  • Mobile and desktop accessible. I read everywhere. At the coffeeshop, on a plane, in my office, at work, in the bath. I need my reading list where I read, which means everywhere. If I don’t have access to my reading list, then as I’ll certainly forget to update it regularly, which means a nightmare of organization later whenever I get to it.
  • I want a queue system. I not only want to track what I have finished reading, but what I am currently reading, and what I will be reading.
  • Quick entry of new books to add to the queue. In the same way that I want to be able to update my reading progress, I need to be able to add books to the list in real-time as well. You never know when you’ll receive a recommendation from a friend or colleague, when you see a cover in an airport, or when a book you’re reading makes another recommendation. I want to jot those down immediately so I don’t forget them…plus it means I’ll never run out of books to read.
  • Sortability and filtering. I try to be diverse in my reading, which means tracking how much of which genre/author/etc. I’m reading. I also want to see which books I own and which books I should pick up the next time I wander into my local bookstore.
  • Quantifiable tracking. In addition to just having a straight-up list of books that I’ve read, am reading, or want to read, I also want to be able to quantify a few things: how long does it take me to read? How many books have I read? How long does it take me to get to a book once I’ve heard about it? Things like this matter to me so I can hold myself accountable for my reading: I want to feel guilty when I have been pouring time & attention into TV, social media, or video games rather than reading.

I don’t like Goodreads, and not just because of the Amazon affiliation: it’s just a pretty bad interface to keep track of a lot of reading, in my opinion. I’ve also tried a number of off-the-shelf (ha!) solutions that just haven’t worked for me, so I decided to roll my own. Over a year ago, I switched from Evernote to Notion for keeping my life together (travel plans, side hustle ideas, etc.), and it was a logical place for my reading list to live.

Utilizing Notion immediately solves for the mobile/desktop requirement, and my implementation of the reading list also solves for the rest. There are a couple of things I’d really love that would make it perfect, but this is definitely the best solution for me out of everything I’ve tried thus far.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how I’ve setup my reading list using Notion. You’ll find a couple screenshots along with descriptions for how I’ve implemented the table.

Screenshots

Derek Brown Reading List in Notion
Click to see full-size.
Second half of my reading list in Notion.
Click to see full-size.
Various lists in my reading category.
Various lists I have in Notion. The primary is Reading List.

Columns

  • Status: This is a select column in notion, with pre-configured color-coded values. Most books on the list don’t have a status, but those that do fall in one of four categories:
    • Reading: What I’m currently reading. Usually, only one book falls into this status, but occasionally a second will slip-in.
    • On-Deck: These are the books that I want to read after I’m done with what I’m currently reading. It lessens the mental load of picking what’s next as soon as I’m done with a book. I don’t have to comb through my shelves or backlog to figure it out: I’ve already done it.
    • Next?: These are the books that I’d think about reading next (and moving into the On Deck status). It’s the real queue out of all the books on the list.
    • Finished: Once I’m done with a book, it moves to this coveted status. At the end of the year, I move all books with a Finished status to their own table (ie, “2019 Reading”).
  • Own: This is a checkbox column, and simply indicates whether I actually own a book or not. I prefer to own every book I read, and I buy books from local bookstores (McNally Jackson, Greenlight, Strand are some favorites here in NYC).
  • Title: Self-explanatory, hopefully. This is a text column.
  • Author: This is a multi-select column, with each author as it’s own value, set to the default color (although Notion’s current implementation of default coloring is a poor design/product decision…or just a bug). This allows me to easily sort the table or filter by a specific author.
  • Genre: Another select column, with color-coded values. My genres are as follows:
    • Biography
    • SFF (Science Fiction/Fantasy)
    • Tech
    • Science
    • Finance
    • Humanities
    • History
    • Business
    • Literary Fiction
    • Travel
    • Spirituality
  • Priority: This is a column I’m testing out. It’s a select column with Urgent, High, and Normal values, and I use it to further decide what to read or purchase next.
  • Tags: In all sorts of products I’ve worked on, including this reading list, I’ve found a generic tag holder to be useful. I have a couple of tags that I utilize in my reading list:
    • To Buy: This is a super useful tag when I’m standing in a bookstore, and have no idea off the top of my head of which books to pick-up. I filter down to the “To Buy” tag, and see if they’re in stock. Easy!
    • Classic: I want to track which books are considered “Classic” by some standard, and I utilize a tag to do that (for example, Hemingway’s Old Man & The Sea or Asimov’s Foundation).
  • Notes: Random text holder (usually something quirky about the book or a release date).
  • Start: A date in Notion, which indicates the date on which I started reading the book.
  • Finish: The counterpart to Start, which indicates the date which I finished reading the book. In the summary on this column, I count the number of non-null cells, which gives me a total count of books read year to date.
  • Days to Read: A formula in Notion, which calculates the difference between Finish and Start, giving me the number of days that it took me to read the book. In the summary on this column, I calculate the average days to read, which helps me keep pace for my desired book count in a year.
  • Series: For some books (Scalzi, Dark Tower, etc.), I want to tie books to one another in a group. I have a select column here to do just that. Here are the series I’m currently tracking (mainly SFF):
    • VanderMeer’s Southern Reach
    • Scalzi’s Lock In
    • Jemisin’s The Broken Earth
    • Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past
    • Scalzi’s The Interdependency Sequence
    • Scalzi’s Old Man’s War
    • King’s The Dark Tower
    • Le Guin’s The Hainish Cycle
  • Added: This is a fairly new column, which I…ahem…added this year. It’s a date column that helps me track when I added a book to the list. Eventually, I’ll probably track the time it takes for me to get to a book, once I’ve added it to the list.

Some Stats

  • Total Books on the List: 220 right now.
  • Read So Far in 2019: 10 books.
  • Average Days to Read: 4.8 days per book.
  • Fastest Book to Read: Gene Edwards’ A Tale of Three Kings (read in single day)

Conclusion

Hope this helps those of you looking to track your own reading in a serious way! I’ve found Notion to be a great tool for this (among other things), though I definitely have a couple of gripes with them about some of the minor details. Feel free to check out the list yourself at the link above, and feel free to sign-up for a free plan at Notion using my link above as well. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment!

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Books

Reading Rainbow: March 5, 2019

New pickups for the reading list.
New pickups for the reading list.

New pickups for the reading list.

I know some of you have been asking how I manage my reading, and I promise I’m going to get to it (soon!), but in the meantime, here’s a look at what I’ll be reading over the next couple of weeks. Picked these up from my local bookstore (Mcnally Jackson in Williamsburg), and the guy behind the counter mentioned how wide-ranging the selection was. I just kinda shrugged. Guess I’m a well-versed reader? Who knows. In any case, here’s the haul:

  • The Drawing of the Three by Steven King: I recently picked up and devoured The Dark Tower from King, a book that’s been on my list since high school. Well worth the wait, and I’m stoked to sink my teeth into the second book.
  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin: Ursula is legendary in SF/F circles, but I’ve yet to read one of her novels. I have this one and The Dispossessed in the queue right now, so I’ll at least start the Hainish stories. If they’re as good as people say, then I bet I pick up her entire body of work.
  • Shameless by Nadia Bolz-Weber: Nadia isn’t from my “brand of Christianity”, but I love what she had to say about grace, the Church, and Jesus in her previous book, Pastrix. I haven’t gotten to read Accidental Saints yet, but this tome on sexuality in the Kingdom of God is at the very least going to be an interesting read.
  • Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman: This one doesn’t need an introduction. I’ve read parts of it prior, and obviously watched the videos, read the Medium notes from the class, and lived in the Hoffman-created world at LinkedIn. I’m sure this one will be a book that I mark-up.
  • Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freeman: For those that know me, you know I’m a huge foodie, and in love with the hospitality industry. In another life, I would’ve gone to culinary school and opened a restaurant. Who knows what the future holds? In any case, this history lesson should be a good read, though it’s a bit thicker than I expected!

What do you think? Any of these sound interesting to you? What are you reading this week?

Categories
Books Leadership

On Mission Operations

I recently wrapped up my first big read of 2021, Gene Kranz’s Failure is Not An Option. Gene, played by Ed Harris in Apollo 13, was a NASA Flight Director through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo era of spaceflight, and played a tremendous role in establishing the culture for NASA’s Mission Operations.

As a part of this role, Gene codified guiding principles for Mission Operations in his “Foundations of Mission Operations”, reading as follows:

The Foundations of Mission Operations

  1. To instill within ourselves these qualities essential to professional excellence:

    • Discipline: Being able to follow as well as to lead, knowing that we must master ourselves before we can master our task.
    • Competence: There being no substitute for total preparation and complete dedication, for space will not tolerate the careless or indifferent.
    • Responsibility: Realizing that it cannot be shifted to others, for it belongs to each of us; we must answer for what we do, or fail to do.
    • Toughness: Taking a stand when we must; to try again, and again, even if it means following a more difficult path.
    • Teamwork: Respecting and utilizing the abilities of others, realizing that we work toward a common goal, for success depends upon the efforts of all.
    • Vigilance: Always attentive to the dangers of spaceflight; never accepting success as a substitute for rigor in everything we do.
  2. To always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences.
  3. To recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in the trying we do not give it our best effort.

I find these principles from Gene and Mission Control (note: “Vigilance” was added after the Columbia disaster) helpful in thinking through the kinds of things I want to instill in teams I lead. While building a consumer app (or any other startup, for that matter) isn’t identical to putting people into space and bringing them back safely, there are analogues.

In some companies, you’ll hear of values like “Act Like an Owner” or “Bring Your Whole Self” or the like. At Bunches, we talk about identities and qualities more than corporate values, which often equate to behaviors. I’m a huge believer that if we are the right kinds of people, then behaviors will follow. At Bunches, we have four core “values” or identities that we seek to encourage in one another: Builder, Knower, Leader, Learner.

In each of these identities, I see echoes of Kranz’s qualities, and reading the stories from his days at NASA are a great reminder of what an honor it is to lead people to become better versions of themselves in pursuit of a singular outcome, whether it’s building a moonshot company or literally putting astronauts on the lunar surface.