Book: Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Great book, 4.5 stars. Mike does a great job describing how is the life of an astronaut. Listen (yes, I used an Audible audiobook) to his story was like living it with him. I could feel how was to be waiting for the NASA phone call after so many years trying to be an astronaut.

Book: Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. It is a good book. I almost gave 3 stars, but it is still a Mastery effect. It deserves four. Each chapter in the book is devoted to a specific area: Motivation, Teams, Focus, Goal setting, Managing others, Decision making, Innovation, and Absorbing data. My notes on each topic: Motivation Motivation is feeling in control.

Book: The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. This is one of those books for Tolkien fans. I do not recommend it if you did not read other books by Tolkien. It is nice to read if you already read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This book shows a lot of details that Tolkien used as a guideline to write the book.

Back to work this month. :) After one month vacation, I got back to my routine and got some good results this month. Books Added three more books to the list: I have to note here that Mastery is one of the best books I ever read. Both Mindfulness in plain English and The Urban Monk are about meditation and how to live a minimalist life. Articles I’m still trying to find a way to track the articles I read.

February was an atypical month because I was on vacation. :) Much of my stats will reflect my travel around Europe. But no coding was done during this trip. Books Continuing my goal to read 30 books this year, I read two books this month: I had plans to visit Amsterdam and Oxford during my travel. Because of that I decided to read the story of Kullervo, which mention a lot about J.

This is the first post of a series that will show all the data I’ve been collecting during the month. One of my goals this year is to track everything possible. These posts will help me to analyze all the data and may extract something for me. This is not a new idea, I’m inspired by posts like this from Matthew of truevalhalla.com. Books My goal is to read 30 books this year, so I must have an average of 2.

Book: Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. I was expecting some more but after reading the description again it seems to deliver exactly what it says. The whole book is about meditation and I would say 50% of it is about focusing on your breathe. The chapter about loving kindness is also interesting. There are some quotes of Buddha that are really great. Here are my raw notes about the book:

Book: The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdom and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace by Pedram Shojai. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️. The author was a Monk for 4 years, is a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and studied Kung Fu and Tai Chi for decades, this is what you will get from the book. There are some chapters with a lot of meditation techniques and some tips about sustainability. The idea is to help you to live like a monk in the urban landscape.

Book: Mastery by Robert Greene. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. One of the best books I ever read. This book goes through the life of various masters of our history. Some of them I did not know and decided to look after their life, which was a great experience as well. If you want to be a master of something, be prepared to use a huge amount of time dealing with it and practicing.

TL;DR: When traveling to Europe, I decided to take 2 or 3 days to visit Oxford. I will describe how was the experience of a J.R.R. Tolkien fan there. I’m a big fan of J.R.R Tolkien. Have read most of his books, the ones released when he was still alive and other edited by Christopher Tolkien. After attending FOSDEM I decided to travel around some countries in Europe and UK. The most expensive part, the airplane tickets (Brazil -> Europe), were already paid, so… why not?