With spring here (although it doesn’t feel like it yet in MN!), I’m looking forward to grilling again.
For those out there who like to grill, here is my all-time favorite book on grilling: Weber’s Big Book of Grilling. It is filled with great grilling recipes to try out, along with all sorts of tips and sage advice on how to grill with excellence.
Eric Ries has a great article on how to build companies that matter, based on a model that he calls the lean startup.
The way for the lean startup approach has been paved by recent technological innovations such as web 2.0 and has been made even more relevant by the current economic crisis.
Here’s the intro:
We’re living in a time of renewed possibility for startups. Major trends – from the pain of the economic crisis to the disruption of web 2.0 – are breaking the old models and paving the way for a new breed of company. I call it the Lean Startup.
The Lean Startup is a disciplined approach to building companies that matter. It’s designed to dramatically reduce the risk associated with bringing a new product to market by building the company from the ground up for rapid iteration and learning. It requires dramatically less capital than older models, and can find profitability sooner. Most importantly, it breaks down the artificial dichotomy between pursuing the company’s vision and creating profitable value. Instead, it harnesses the power of the market in support of the company’s long-term mission.
Tim O’Reilly has recently been advocating that as an industry we focus on building stuff that matters. In response, I want to try and present a way of building startups that can realize that dream. In particular, he as articulated three principles:
(1) Work on something that matters to you more than money, (2) Create more value than you capture, and (3) Take the long view.
Ries then goes on to present an approach for startups that builds on those principles.
Here is a quick list of some of the main tools I use:
At some point I will provide more detail on each of these and how I use them, but a straight list is hopefully a good place to start in the meantime.
Note that this list is just the electronic side of things (with the exception of my moleskine notebook for a capture tool), and I’m probably leaving several things out. I also have recommendations for the physical side — what type of stapler to get, what type of physical in box, and so forth.
Note that most of the above software is for the Mac. When I was on Windows, I used Outlook for email, calendar, contacts, and task management — and was relatively happy with it because I customized things very heavily (for details, see the David Allen Company whitepaper on Customizing Microsoft Outlook for GTD).
(Thanks to one of my readers for suggesting this post!)
The Washington Post has a Q&A with David Allen where he answers readers questions.
How do you keep track of your books to read?
If you do GTD and have a “books to read” list, do you consider that to be a type of project list, a type of next action list, or some other type of list?