I found the format strange for a book because it felt like a collection of short blog posts. The writing was very repetitive and with all the other books I have read by authors like Seth Godin, the message didn’t feel new or motivating. I kept reading hoping for some insight or inspiring wording but I finished the book feeling disappointed. Almost every day the daily blog post by Seth Godin resonates with me and/or inspires me, but this book did not.

Rating: Not recommended

“The Time Paradox” was another highly rated book by Deric Sivers. The central message of this book also falls into that category of “obvious now except it wasn’t before”. The premise is very ambitious because it attempts to universally categorize people and their behaviors across six dimensions. The usual categories of race, religion, age, gender, education, etc. are flawed, but this book identifies time as the universal experience of all humans. Every human has a unique perspective on the past, present and future we all inhabit. The book breaks the time perspectives into past positive, past negative, present-hedonistic, present-fatalistic, future and transcendental future.

Past Positive: Views past events in a positive way. Finds the good in the way things happened.

Past Negative: Views past events in a negative way. Finds the bad in the way things happened

Present Hedonistic: In the moment and focused on the pleasures of the now.

Present Fatalistic: In the moment but discounting or ignoring the risks of present actions

Future: Planning for things that will happen to you later than now. Delaying gratification and waiting for the larger reward that will come later.

Transcendental Future: Planning for things that will happen after the life of that person has ended. This can be spiritual concepts like the afterlife or non-spiritual concepts like the 10 000 year “Long Now” foundation or the native American tribes considering the seventh generation.

Once these dimensions are defined, the book presents a fictional dialog between six people, each of which represents one time dimension. The conversation is a little too scripted, but I recognized people I know and their behaviors in each of the characters. Of course no real person lives in only one time dimension. We all shift through the different dimensions in different degrees at different times in our lives. For example, children are very present oriented and our society rewards and encourages a future orientation.

The authors then provide the full test that they created to determine time orientation in their studies. I ended up skipping this section because I was convinced I already knew that I was too future oriented. I intend to go back and take the full test and see if there are any surprises.

The last part of the book explores the dimensions and suggests ways to deal with and minimize the less desirable orientations like past-negative and present-fatalistic. It also suggests ways to balance the positive dimensions like past-positive, present and future with specific suggestions to help future oriented people live in the moment and help everyone find ways to reframe negative past events in positive ways.

The tricky one is the transcendental future orientation. Taking a perspective that extends past ones own life can be very noble, but can also lead to a state where choosing to be a suicide bomber is a rational option.

As stated before, I recognize that I am too future oriented and have been exploring ways to focus on the present moment more. I am experimenting with meditation and am trying to find more time for activities that encourage present awareness: massage, dancing, music, exercise, cooking and just being silly. I also recognize that my photography hobby is a great way to encourage a past positive orientation. The goal is to find a balance because we need all three dimensions to be happy and feel fulfilled.

Rating: Highly recommended

I read regularly thanks to our local Public Library. Recently the Tim Ferris podcast has expanded my reading list with lots of interesting books. Luckily the local library has most of these books and hold waiting lists tend to space the reading out well.

One of the the first Tim Ferris podcasts I listened to was with Derek Sivers and he mentioned that he maintains a list of book reviews with ratings on his website. I immediately went to the website and looked through the highest rated books and setup holds at the library.

The first book I read was “So good they cannot ignore you” by Cal Newport. This was a short read and the simplicity of its message resonated with me. The basic message is that our society rewards people with rare and valuable skills, not people with passion. Many sources of career advice talk about “following passion”, but passion without skills is not sufficient. If passion drives the building of valuable skills then it is helpful. The media often portrays having passion as the most important requirement to getting a great job but that is harmful because it often leads to confusion and inflated expectations. Cal calls these valuable skills “career capital” and I really like that perspective. Career capital is skills and experience that can be exchanged for career opportunities.

The best books motivate you to make changes in your life. This book helped me reflect on the career capital that would help me advance my career. For a software developer that would be submitting patches to open source projects and writing technical blog posts. I have decided to commit 10% of my work time to doing this. I haven’t been able to implement it fully, but I am making more of an effort. I have reported bugs and submitted some small patches. Ideally this will grow to more and larger patches.

Rating: Highly recommended.