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Personal Operating System The capstone: how to turn the rest of this collection into a way of running a life. Horizons from values to today, the weekly review as the keystone ritual, the daily shutdown, the calendar as the truth, one inbox, personal policies and checklists, journals and dashboards, slack and non-negotiables, the restart protocol, and running experiments on yourself without the system becoming the point.
41 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book Getting Things Done · David Allen The source for capture, the one trusted system, the weekly review, and mind like water. Read the first part for the ideas and skip the folder-level detail; the 2015 edition is the one to buy. 02 Book Four Thousand Weeks · Oliver Burkeman The corrective to every productivity system: you will never get on top of it all, so choose what to neglect on purpose. The best book here on keeping the system from becoming the point. 03 Book The Effective Executive · Peter Drucker Short and old and still the best on recording where your time really goes, consolidating it into large blocks, and deciding what to stop. The chapter on knowing your time is the one for this deck. 04 Book Essentialism · Greg McKeown The case for doing fewer things deliberately: the clear-yes test, protecting time to think, and saying no as a scheduling act with scripts for doing it gracefully. 05 Book The Checklist Manifesto · Atul Gawande Why surgeons, pilots, and builders use checklists, what a good one looks like, and why experts resist them. The pattern transfers directly to travel, launches, and hard conversations. 06 Book Tiny Experiments · Anne-Laure Le Cunff, 2025 Replaces fixed goals with time-boxed pacts and a review at the end. The best current treatment of running experiments on your own life one change at a time. 07 Book Make Time · Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky A light, practical daily system built around one highlight per day, with a menu of tactics to try and drop. Good for people who find full systems heavy. 08 Book Principles · Ray Dalio One person's written rules, learned from mistakes, and the method for writing your own. Take the form and the pain-plus-reflection loop; the firm's culture and the heavier machinery are optional. 