Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 99
• Total blog posts published: 658

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 1/25/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread How to Get Rich, a framework for creating wealth through entrepreneurship written by publishing magnate and founder of Maxim magazine Felix Dennis  

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Art of Execution

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred four was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• Same as last week: I had trouble getting started on synthesizing another book.

What I learned:

• Going back to synthesize a book I’ve read after I’ve begun reading another one is hard. Might make sense to synthesize as I read.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

The forecast is calling for bad weather to hit most of the country this weekend. An ice storm is expected in Atlanta. I hate feeling trapped, but I’m going to try to use this time to catch up. Specifically, I want to write a post about what I learned from synthesizing The Art of Execution.

Wish me luck!

Last week I was working on a data project. I needed to get information from a website and manually enter it into a spreadsheet. In the past, I’ve used Upwork to find data entry resources to help with this sort of thing, and I did that again this time. But as they worked (I have them do tests before I give them the full project), I soon realized that at the rate they were working, it would take someone weeks to build the spreadsheet and cost several times more than I wanted to pay.

I wanted to be frugal and get this task done faster, so I reached out to a developer friend for suggestions. He showed me how to extract the data using the website’s API instead of the user interface (i.e., webpage). All I had to do was figure out how to parse and store the data. Normally, I’d have a developer do this for me, too, but I turned to AI instead. I cracked open Google Gemini and explained the project. Within minutes, it had written a Google Apps script that I could run. It would take the data returned by the API, parse it, and store the data in Google Sheets. The script required one manual step, too, but I was happy to do that. It was very efficient and way less prone to error as compared to someone manually doing it over a few weeks. So, I spent the weekend using the script, Gemini, and the website’s API to build a large data set.

In the end, a project that was projected to take weeks, cost a significant amount, and require me to manage another resource was instead completed by me (with help from Gemini) in several hours over the weekend.

Once people realize they don’t need developers to write code and can build things on their own with AI tools, we’ll see an explosion of people building tools to solve their own problems (and do their jobs more efficiently).

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 98
• Total blog posts published: 651

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 1/18/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read The PARA Method, a framework for implementing the PARA Method from Building a Second Brain

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Art of Execution

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred three was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• Same as last week: I had trouble getting started on synthesizing another book. I need to make more changes to my approach.

What I learned:

• No material learnings related to this project this week.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

This weekend, I was catching up with a friend who mentioned they’ve been swamped at work. It’s starting to have a negative impact on their life more broadly, which they don’t like. They work in a high-visibility, very demanding role at a well-known company. I shared that I’m refreshing my own productivity system and had just reread Getting Things Done and Building a Second Brain.

I told them about the books and offered to share what I’d relearned if they wanted the help. They accepted. I was thinking about this today, and I believe it will be a mutually beneficial arrangement. It reminded me of starting this blog because of an accountability challenge with my buddy Ethan. There’s something about doing something new with other people that requires new habits. Knowing that you have to regularly report to someone else who’s going through the same thing forces you to step up your game.

I don’t think I’ve been involved in an accountability challenge, or anything similar, since I started this blog in March 2020. The more I think about it, the more I’m looking forward to it, and think it’ll be fun and competitive (in a nerdy kind of way).

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 97
• Total blog posts published: 644

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 1/11/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Reread Building a Second Brain, a framework for organizing your projects and digital life

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Little Book of Market Wizards
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Art of Execution

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred two was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• I had trouble getting started on synthesizing another book this week. I need to adjust my approach somehow.

What I learned:

• Distilling a book or book chapter down to the essence of its main idea should be the goal when I’m writing posts about books. If I can get it down to a maxim, even better. Maxims are easier to remember (including for me).
• Just as my reading must be done first thing in the morning, I’m realizing that the daily habit of working on a synthesis of a book must be done early, too. Once the day gets going, who knows what’ll get thrown at me? The likelihood that I’ll get to the difficult task of synthesizing drops drastically.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

After reading Getting Things Done by David Allen again, I realized I don’t have a great “inbox” to capture all incoming information and thoughts. The inbox is a core piece of the GTD method. It’s the holding area where you place things until you have time to process and sort them properly. Sure, I have the inbox for my email, but I didn’t have a go-to inbox in a tool I used to manage my productivity.

I’ve been working on cleaning up my GTD system by creating a clean, short-term (to be completed within a year) project list and defining next actions for each project. That’s going pretty well and should be done shortly. But because I don’t have a solid inbox, my GTD system hasn’t been as effective as it could be.

So, this week, I created an inbox in Apple Notes, moved all unprocessed notes into it, and added all new notes to it. I must say, having a single place to drop all new thoughts and incoming information has been helpful. It’s taken some discipline to make sure I put everything there, but now that I have the hang of it, I feel more confident that everything important is being captured so I don’t have to try to remember everything.

Another thing I like about GTD is that processing and sorting are separate from capturing my thoughts and incoming information. I can quickly capture thoughts about an article, book, project, or podcast in a messy note and save the note in my inbox. When I process my inbox, I add more context to the note and save it in the appropriate folder or project so it’s where I need it when I need it.

I’m still early in the process of cleaning up my GTD system and creating new GTD habits, but I think this, along with Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain process, will boost my productivity in 2026.