16 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Howie Liu's San Francisco no-code database and app-building platform — combining the flexibility of a database with the usability of a spreadsheet — one of the most widely used no-code tools.
James Clear's 2018 system for building good habits and breaking bad ones — based on four laws (make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying) — the best-selling habits book and one of the best-selling self-help books of all time (15M+ copies).
Shishir Mehrotra's productivity platform combining documents, spreadsheets, and databases — providing a flexible building block environment for creating operational documents.
Mason Currey's 2013 compendium — cataloguing the daily routines of 161 artists, writers, composers, scientists, and philosophers — revealing patterns in how creative people structure their working lives.
American productivity consultant who developed Getting Things Done (GTD) — a systematic method for capturing, organizing, and executing tasks that became the dominant personal productivity framework for knowledge workers globally.
Greg McKeown's 2021 sequel to Essentialism arguing that even after identifying the essential, people make important work harder than it needs to be — proposing that the second prioritization challenge is to make the essential effortless.
Greg McKeown's 2014 book arguing that the disciplined pursuit of less — doing fewer things but doing them better — is both more productive and more fulfilling than the typical modern attempt to do everything.
Oliver Burkeman's 2021 philosophical argument — that the average human life is 4,000 weeks, that the belief you can get everything done is an avoidance of this reality, and that embracing finitude rather than optimizing against it is the path to meaningful life.
David Allen's 2001 productivity system book proposing a five-step method (capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage) for managing all commitments and tasks through a trusted external system — freeing cognitive resources from tracking to doing.
Alex Shevchenko's Kyiv-founded, San Francisco-headquartered AI writing assistant — providing grammar checking, style suggestions, and now generative writing assistance — one of the first mass-market AI writing tools.
American author — author of Atomic Habits — whose 3-2-1 newsletter and blog on habits built an audience of millions before the book — whose 2018 book became one of the best-selling self-help books of all time.
American writer — author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work — who catalogued the daily routines of hundreds of artists, writers, and scientists in a compulsively readable collection.
Ivan Zhao and Simon Last's all-in-one workspace combining notes, docs, databases, wikis, and project management — one of the fastest-growing SaaS products, particularly in the startup community.
British journalist — former Guardian columnist — author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — who argues that productivity optimization is a death-anxiety coping mechanism and that accepting finite time is the path to meaningful life.
Timothy Ferriss's 2007 manifesto — arguing that the goal of work should be lifestyle design (maximum free time, minimum obligatory work), achievable through virtual assistants, outsourcing, and location independence — which spent 7 years on the NYT bestseller list.
Stephen Covey's 1989 self-help book presenting seven principles of personal and interpersonal effectiveness — including Be Proactive, Begin With the End in Mind, and Seek First to Understand — which sold over 40 million copies and became the most influential business self-help book.