Present Library
The Maker’s
Reading List
Every book we have read and scored for modern makers. The Present Score measures one thing: how much a book actually helps you start, focus on, and ship your Thing. Full summaries, each ending in one concrete action, live inside presentOS.
Meditations for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman
Read this when you feel permanently behind on everything and keep postponing your Thing to an imaginary calmer week.
The War of Art
Steven Pressfield
Read this when you keep circling your Thing without starting it, and every day delivers a fresh, reasonable-sounding excuse.
It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be
Paul Arden
Read this when your thinking has gone stale and you need something short and rude enough to shake it loose.
Now Is the Way
Cory Allen
Read this when you are physically here but mentally five seconds ahead, all day, every day.
Der Mensch und seine Zeichen
Adrian Frutiger
Read this when you want to understand why letterforms and marks work, rather than just which ones are currently fashionable.
The Artist's Way
Julia Cameron
Read this when you have quietly stopped calling yourself creative, or you are so blocked that even starting feels embarrassing.
The Obstacle Is the Way
Ryan Holiday
Read this when something has gone wrong and you are stuck arguing with reality instead of working with the situation you actually have.
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
Read this when you keep trying to get on top of everything first, and your actual life keeps getting postponed to the far side of the to-do list.
The Brain at Rest
Joseph Jebelli
Read this when you cannot remember the last time you did nothing, and your best ideas have stopped showing up.
I'll Never Write My Memoirs
Grace Jones
Read this when you are sanding down the parts of yourself that make you distinctive, so you are easier for other people to place.
The Creative Act
Rick Rubin
Read this when you are hunting for a technique when what you actually need is a different way of paying attention.
Design as Art
Bruno Munari
Read this when you have started to think design is about taste and objects rather than about solving something for someone.
Waking Up
Sam Harris
Read this when you are curious about meditation but allergic to the spiritual packaging that usually comes with it.
Everything Is Figureoutable
Marie Forleo
Read this when you have a dream you keep explaining your way out of, with reasons that sound a lot like logic.
Do Nothing
Celeste Headlee
Read this when busyness has quietly become your identity, and you catch yourself listing weekend tasks as though they were achievements.
Essays we recommend
Read in full on the writer’s own site — we link out, always.
Break your rut with a small promise
Rob Hope · robhope.com
The Consistency Club runs on exactly this mechanic: say it out loud, then let the promise drag you across the line. Hope proves it in one minute flat.
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
Henrik Karlsson · henrikkarlsson.xyz
No master plan produced PRESENT. It unfolded the way Karlsson describes: follow what feels alive, remove what grates, repeat for years. Comforting to see the method named.
How People Think
Morgan Housel · collabfund.com
Twenty years in and I still catch myself comparing my inside to someone else's outside. Housel explains why that math never works.
How to be More Agentic
Cate Hall · usefulfictions.substack.com
Hall treats agency as a skill you build, not a trait you are born with. Twenty years of making has taught me the same.
How to turn "fuck you" energy into art.
Jonathan Nott · jonathannott.substack.com
Anger is fuel if you point it at the work. I have made some of my best things in exactly that mood, and Nott names the mechanism.
I Live for One Moment Every Day
Daniel Jeffries · artplusmarketing.com
Jeffries calls the enemies of the work well-meaning, which is exactly why they win so often. Read this on a day when everything pleasant is quietly eating your hours.
Laziness Does Not Exist
Devon Price · humanparts.medium.com
Read this before you diagnose yourself, or anyone else, as lazy. Price spent years watching stuck people up close and found unmet needs every single time, never a character flaw.
Living two hours in the future
Oliver Burkeman · ckarchive.com
Being permanently two hours ahead of your own life means never being in it. Of everything Burkeman has written on attention, this diagnosis is the one that stung most.
Make Something Heavy
Anu Atluru · workingtheorys.com
I print a magazine in the age of the feed, so Atluru's argument lands close to home. Everything I care about making is something I want to feel the weight of.
Ness Letters: Beyond Time Management
Ness Labs · nesslabs.com
Splitting my weeks between client work and PRESENT only works because certain hours are non-negotiable. This piece gave that habit a name.
Reality is right here
Oliver Burkeman · ckarchive.com
Presence is my whole subject and this issue still caught me somewhere new: the news feels like engagement with the world while it quietly replaces the world in front of you.
Reality just keeps unfolding
Oliver Burkeman · ckarchive.com
Nothing settles, and that is the condition, not a flaw in your process. The hunt for a system that finally sorts everything is a better-looking way of not starting.
Roden 073: Adult Summer Camp Sleepover Adventure
Craig Mod · craigmod.com
New trusting friendships as an adult are rare, and Mod shows they can be walked into existence. Read it when your work is going fine but your world has gotten small.
The cult of the artful lifestyle is robbing you of a life in the arts
Viktoriia Vasileva · viksbusycorner.com
A necessary slap. The moodboard, the studio shelfie, the curated feed: none of it is the work, and deep down we all know it.
The Only Question Worth Asking This Year
Cory Allen · coryallen.substack.com
Cory Allen wrote one of my favorite books on presence. Here he compresses a year of intentions into a single question worth keeping.
True Leisure and the Tyranny of Total Work
Michael Ashcroft · every.to
Burkeman sits at the top of my book summaries for a reason. Ashcroft takes his finitude argument one step further, into the hours I thought were already free.
what it feels like when your dreams come true
Erifili Gounari · erifili.substack.com
The arrival is always quieter than you imagine. I have shipped enough things to know that is true, and presence is the only way to catch the moment.
What to Do
Paul Graham · paulgraham.com
PRESENT exists because I believe making new things helps people. Graham reaches the same conclusion in seven unsentimental minutes.