Posted by Jeff Short on December 17, 2020 · Leave a Comment
Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Tools & Wealth by Douglas Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Pretty good book overall. I have long been a devotee of plodding, and still, Wilson, gave me many things to think about. You can think of this book as a more biblical treatment of “How To Do What You Want To Do” by Hauck, though that is a good book in its own right. I may have been inclined to cough up more stars if it weren’t for the explicit postmillennialism. Everything Wilson writes, and I do mean everything, is laced with postmillennialism as a hidden transcript. Sometimes it stitches his patchwork together with external seams. Had Spurgeon known Wilson’s writing the way he knew Bunyan’s, he might have remarked of Wilson, “Prick him and he bleeds postmill.” All that said, he does a good job with work, tools, technology, and wealth. It’s worth reading.
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Posted by Jeff Short on February 6, 2020 · Leave a Comment
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was insightful and practical. Shallow work has the more immediate appeal in today’s economy and even the appearance of productivity. Deep work is undervalued and underpracticed. Of course, we have constant distraction today, which is the enemy of deep work. Anyone who wants to best their time to do meaningful work needs to wrestle with ever-present distraction.
Newport gives many practical steps to think through and adapt to your own needs. He seemed to strive for a balanced approach between connectivity and deep work, which requires less connectivity and more isolation. The implications for deep work are ubiquitous across all industries and disciplines, so everyone could benefit from it. I appreciated the brief section he had thinking about the relationship we have with our tools. It something that needs more thought.
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Posted by Jeff Short on October 3, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by K. Anders Ericsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is a deep dive into expertise. Malcolm Gladwell didn’t invent the 10,000 hour rule, but when he wrote about it in
Outliers, a lot of people noticed. Much noise has been made about the accuracy of his conclusions. I don’t think he was inaccurate as much as he was incomplete. He was definitely onto something. Those who achieve expert levels in various fields have put in a lot of practice to get there. But what kind of practice? That’s where Ericsson and Pool come in. Achieving expert level is more about a lot of the right kind of practice, what they call deliberate practice. Years of research and studies have gone into this book. It is a little heavy at times with neuroscience and the limits of neuroscience, but I found that fascinating. Like Gladwell’s, this book will challenge some basic assumptions of conventional wisdom. It was a great read.
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Writing to Learn: How to Write–And Think–Clearly about Any Subject at All by William Zinsser
How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs
