Beeminder book club?

[howtodowtle]

@adamwolf

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

+1 for everything.

[apolyton]

Already reading Atomic Habits, so that would work great

[dehowell]

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!

Book Club: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Hi folks! This is the organizational thread for a Beeminder Book Club discussion of James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. The book has six main parts, each in the neighborhood of 30-60 pages. Those seem like decent increments for discussion to me, so I propose the following strawman reading schedule: Part Pages Read By The Fundamentals 58 Dec. 15 Make It Obvious 42 Dec. 22 Make It Attractive 40 Dec. 29 Make It Easy 42 Jan. 5 Make It Satisfying 34 Jan. 12 Advanced Tactics 40 Jan. …

[apolyton]

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

[zedmango]

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

[dehowell]

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?

[byorgey]

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

[zedmango]

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” rather than forcing everyone to be on a specific schedule.

[apolyton]

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

[adamwolf]

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…

[zedmango]

@adamwolf

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

Survivor? Abstractable how? Sorry I don’t understand

[apolyton]

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

[dreev]

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

[apolyton]

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

[adamwolf]

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.

[zedmango]

@adamwolf

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

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

[dehowell]

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!

@apolyton

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

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

[zedmango]

@adamwolf

Deep Work and The Willpower Instinct tied–so here’s my executive decision. Because the Deep Work paperback doesn’t come out until September, and because I haven’t read Deep Work yet, let’s do The Willpower Instinct first and Deep Work second, and then we’ll do another poll then.

So can we do Deep Work next, with one thread?

I’d also suggest we allow commenting on individual chapters within that one thread so that we don’t have to wait for people to finish the entire book before commenting.

[adamwolf]

I am not vetoing Deep Work. I have already read it, and have notes and can join in the discussion, but I need to finish Atomic Habits. I made it 16% in and had to put it down for something and haven’t come back to it yet.

[apolyton]

Cal Newport has a new book on Digital Minimalism and it’s waiting me on my Kindle so I would suggest that as i’ve read Deep Work.

“Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” by Cal Newport.
Start reading it for free: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life... - Kindle