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Quora

Yesterday I started participating in the website Quora. Quora is an online community for people to pose questions and answer the questions posed by others. It has been around in 2009 and had 17 million visitors as of February 2016.

At first I was unsure how to get involved. So far I have found three main ways of participating: reading questions that have been answered, answering questions that have been asked, and asking questions. To start I read some answered questions. They were fairly interesting but all over the place and there was definitely a shaky signal-to-noise ratio. I wanted to take a shot at answering some questions, even if I wasn’t the most qualified to do so, as a way to get more into it and get my brain juices flowing. It can be hard to find questions that aren’t already answered but I was able to find some. The topics I have focused on so far have been football, music (particularly songwriting), politics (particularly libertarianism), and management.

I’m hoping to continue answering questions as a brain exercise and to read some interesting threads with answered questions. I posed my first question today (about strategies for libertarian change) and am curious to see if I get any responses.

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Book Review: Getting Things Done

Today I read Getting Things Done by David Allen. Published in 2001, Gettings Things Done (GTD) is a classic among modern business / self-help books. Although I only gave it the speed read I typically give this style of books, I enjoyed GTD and found it worth its widespread acclaim.

GTD is all about organizing your life so that it is less stressful and more productive. GTD details how to organize all your stuff, turning your various inputs (emails, mail, thoughts, conversations) into usable parts that you can organize and structure in order to better attack and carry out your life’s projects. In addition to all the stuff, Allen addresses how to organize one’s projects so that your actions best help you carry out the big-picture goals of the project.

As with most books of this style the first third is good content, the second third helps detail that content, and the final third reinforces the importance of using that content. However basic Allen’s advice may be, it is useful for all persons to revisit. When I had less responsibilities in my prior role with my current employer, I think I was able to get by with bad habits and those bad habits have been reinforced. I’m struggling to succeed by using those bad habits with a larger role. Time to put these new tips into practice!