Beeminder book club?

By the way, if you ever want to discuss your workflow from these books, I am totally down. I’m getting there but not finished, that’s for sure.

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There hasn’t been any new activity in the threads for The Willpower Instinct for several weeks. I’m personally feeling like I got what I wanted out of that book and am ready to move on.

If others are interested in picking the book club back up, I propose we abandon The Willpower Instinct and pick it up with a new book. I think Deep Work was another popular choice, but I’ve also seen some endorsements of Atomic Habits around here. Any takers?

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I would love to. I have read Deep Work, and Atomic Habits is on my list, so both work great for me!

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+1 for everything. :slight_smile:

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Already reading Atomic Habits, so that would work great :slight_smile:

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I’m interested in doing a Deep Work reread with you all at some point as well, but I’m interpreting the responses here as leaning towards Atomic Habits. So here goes!

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I tried to cut down on social media as part of reading the Willpower Instinct and this is the result :smiley:

Screenshot%20from%202018-11-20%2023-45-51

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Looks like we’re done with Atomic Habits - what’s next for the book club?

Participation died off well before the end of the book in both rounds of the book club so far. Before starting another book, I think we ought to have a retrospective on what has and has not worked so far.

I personally like the format 30-50 pages per week and a forum post per logical subdivision in the book. But I wonder if that’s too slow for people who read prefer to borrow books from the library (and thus need to return them). Would it be better to just set a target date for having finished the book and have a single thread? Or any other ideas about how to organize?

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Maybe anyone joining a book club should be required to have Beeminder goals for reading the book and posting in the discussion thread. =)

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Well I’m not sure that’s really a problem that needs to be fixed, but we could try:

  • just having one big thread, no target date
  • having multiple threads by topic instead of book section, and create them all at once
  • or if you want threads by book section, create them all at once so people can read at their own pace

All of these would allow “Reading Fast and Slow” :grinning: rather than forcing everyone to be on a specific schedule.

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I would suggest a single thread so that discussions are not split and everyone having a beeminder goal on reading & commenting :slight_smile:

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I thought the multiple threads would work, but I have now changed camps–one thread per book!

I wonder if the “goal collection” thing like we’re doing for the New Year’s Challenge is abstractable to this…

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Survivor? Abstractable how? Sorry I don’t understand

Yes apparently there is a “groups” feature that @dreev is working on , right? :slight_smile:

“Working on” is an exaggeration but we have notes on how we think group goals should work! http://doc.beeminder.com/groupgoals

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Hahaha well the book club would only need an overview page like the Survivor one. No other features.

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Yeah, exactly! If we just had an overview, that didn’t even have success or failure, just showed folks’ goals… it may help!

I am not sure how much work that is internally to set one of those up, however.

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Ohhh you meant for everyone’s book group beeminder goal for reading and commenting! I was so confused for a minute.

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I have also joined the thread-per-book camp, but I do think it’s important to have at least a handful of people who commit to contributing to that thread by some target date. If others come in and revive the discussion later, that’s great. But I don’t think we’ll generate a long tail of participation unless there is a lively initial discussion!

I agree, @apolyton! The solution to every dilemma is always more beeminding. :slightly_smiling_face:

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