Book summary
Atomic Habits
The habits mega-bestseller. Its core loops map cleanly onto solid research, with a couple of claims worth taking loosely.
Book summary
Deep Work
The case for long, distraction-free focus blocks. Strong on scheduling practice, looser on some of its scientific framing.
Book summary
Eat That Frog!
Twenty-one short chapters built around one good idea: do the most important, most-avoided task first thing. The rest is padding of varying quality.
Book summary
Four Thousand Weeks
The anti-productivity productivity book. Argues you will never clear the list, so choose what to neglect deliberately. A corrective, not a system.
Book summary
Getting Things Done
The definitive trusted-system book. Genuinely relieves mental load when it runs, and is famously easy to procrastinate on maintaining.
Book summary
Indistractable
A practical four-part system for distraction from the author of Hooked. Useful timeboxing advice, with a framing that can shade into blaming the user.
Book summary
Solving the Procrastination Puzzle
A short book by an actual procrastination researcher. Less flashy than the bestsellers, and more accurate than any of them.
Book summary
The Now Habit
The 1988 classic that framed procrastination as anxiety, not laziness. Decades old, and its core reframe still matches the research.
Book summary
The War of Art
A creative's pep talk that personifies avoidance as 'Resistance'. Zero science, considerable motivational power, best read as literature.