HN Explorer

Ask HN: Best books, blogs, podcasts on shipping more/being more prolific?

29 points by lionhearted ↗ HN
It's a topic near and dear to my heart. Not just doing a lot more stuff, but shipping it out the door.

Kindly recommend your favorite books, blogs, podcasts, and other resources and materials. How-to's and nonfiction are good. Biographies of prolific people are good. Links to blog posts, sites, tools are good.

What say ye, HN, on shipping more?

12 comments

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philiphodgen
I hate to say it (no I don't--I am loving this) but why don't you check out this website of a guy named Sebastian Marshall who talks about taking teeny tiny iterative steps and making remarkable improvements that way?

In other words you already know what to do. Don't read books. Do.

NonOrthodox
Sebastian Marshall's blog is realy great. He inspired me to start tracking my time on a daily basis, and I am certainly benefiting from it.

Here is an introduction page that he posted for newcomers: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?page_id=288 You can see that there is many topics under "Want to get more done?"

Though I know that most books are a waste of time, these were actually filled with great information, in my opinion:

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/ON/B0/B580/TOC.html

http://amzn.to/Getting-things-done

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_b8r0
Don't read up on how to do more, just do more.
joshklein
Are you already highly productive, but want to be even more productive? You should read about systems and methodologies, and implement one rigorously.

Recommended: 4 Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank - breaks down the customer development lifecycle into actionable deliverables.

Do you feel like you're not being productive or shipping? You should read about procrastination and then diligently work to fix it, not spend more time studying GTD-type systems.

Recommended: Procrastination by Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen - the essential book on understanding and correcting your procrastination.

timruffles
I second Steve Blank for the very useful checklists. You can always open it to the back to find a whole task list in bite sized chunks.
timruffles
Less with the extremely unhelpful 'just ship more' messages....

I'm sure you've read getting real, but anyway: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

I've always liked Emerson's 'Self Reliance': http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

Otherwise just pick any random productivity technique. I don't think it matters which one, they're all just codifying the things you already know, and stick with that for a while. If it doesn't work, maybe something else is preventing you from shipping things? I find I'm too quick to swap what I'm doing in my personal projects, and thus have lots of prototypes.

nswanberg
No one is as focused on "shipping it out the door" as a news editor, according to Paul Ford in this essay (http://www.ftrain.com/editors-ship-dammit.html) posted to HN yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891392

Merlin Mann at http://www.43folders.com/ started out writing about David Allen's GTD system, but then turned away from "productivity porn" and started writing more focused essays about creativity.

This isn't necessarily related to shipping products, but I love this Jeff Atwood quote: "If you can’t come up with at least one interesting thing to talk about every day, you’re not trying hard enough! The world is just full of fascinating stuff." from this interview: http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/aspnet/archive/2010/10...

scottyallen
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. It's short but sweet. It's a writers description of "the resistance", an invisible, ever present force that actively works against you when you're trying to ship. More generally, it works against you when you "[try to do] any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of log-term growth, health, or integrity."

The first part is titled "Resistance: Defining the Enemy" and is a great description of what the resistance is and the ways in which it works to defeat you.

The second part is about how to conquer the resistance by "going pro". There's a lot of pieces to this, but basically, it means figuring out how to show up every day and doing the work, day in and day out, with the explicit goal of conquering the resistance.

The third part is a higher level discussion of the resistance, and at least to me, was not as relevant.

Highly recommended book if you struggle with the resistance when trying to ship.