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Ask HN: Are there any good self development/hacking books out there

29 points by lewi ↗ HN
I'm looking for any good hacking or self dev books.

Something like "Emergency" by Neil Strauss but more technical and less story. Sorta like a collection of how-to's and general knowledge stuff.

Suggestions appreciated!

22 comments

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zdw
For programming, I like "The Productive Programmer"

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596519544

And for Sysadmin, it would be hard to beat "The Practice of System and Network Administration"

http://everythingsysadmin.com/

aaronblohowiak
make big changes gradually, make small changes frequently. respect that self-control is a limited resource. measure your progress.
Tyrannosaurs
This is a great sentence which sums up the sort of things that many self help books will drag out to 400+ pages.

I'd seriously encourage anyone who wants to improve their life to spend the time sat down with a pad scribbling out what they're happy with about their lives, what they're not happy with, what they want to change and coming up with their own plan for doing so.

For the most part anyone on this board is smart and more able to solve their own problems than a generic self help book which will generally take a couple of bits of common sense and then string them out into a whole book.

Don't get me wrong, I love books and I love reading but in the case of self help books I think more often than not they're targeted procrastination and the time would be better spent addressing the things you're not happy with.

to_the_top
four steps to the epiphany
c1sc0
While that book is a great classic on product development, it's not strictly about hacking.
hotmind
Try http://www.zerotosuperhero.com
lachyg
Just bought this on your recommendation, what do you think of it?
hotmind
Thank you. I wrote and published the book Zero to Superhero after four years of research and self-experimentation (I thought my profile bio was disclosure enough. I guess not).

If you're not completely happy with the purchase of the book, let me know and I'll refund your money immediately.

semanticist
I suppose that you know your own conversion rates well enough, but I personally am not going to click a PayPal 'buy now' button just to find out how much the book costs. In fact, not listing the price screams of scam to me.
hotmind
I'm confused. The e-book costs $10, and it's prominently stated. Are you referring to something else on the site? Let me know and I'll fix it.
photon_off
I just visited the site and scanned it 3 times, couldn't find the price. I'm sure it's there somewhere if you say it is, but I couldn't easily find it. Just a heads up
hotmind
Thanks guys. The site is old and needs a complete overhaul.
allwein
I couldn't find it either. I even did a "find" for "10", "ten", "dollars", and "$". Nothing showed up (other than the amazon ad).

The only way I was able to find a price was clicking the "Pay Now" button, which is what the original commenter complained about.

hotmind
Full disclosure: I wrote Zero to Superhero.