Shelf: turn every book into your next move

You read the books.
What did you do differently?

Books have the power to change the course of entire lifetimes. Most of them get read and shelved.

Everything you highlighted.

Everything that changed.

Shelf is built to fill that second box.

You already spent the hours. This is where they start paying you back.

Five minutes, after you close the book.

That is when reading turns into doing, or doesn't.

Shelf is built for that moment.

Pick one book.

Tell Shelf what you're working on and where you're stuck. It comes back with one book, and the reason it picked that one. Not a list. Not the charts.

Chosen for you

Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

You said you keep polishing instead of pitching. Knight sold shoes out of his car before he had a company, a brand, or a bank that believed him.

One pick, with the reason. Not a reading list.

Close it. Debrief.

Five minutes of sharp questions about your situation, by voice or by typing. It ends on one if-then plan, in your words.

What did the chapter actually say that you didn't know?

Knight sold shoes out of his car for a year before anything about it looked like a company.

So where are you waiting to look like a company first?

Monday at the 10am review, I send the pitch as it is, unfinished.

Your plan, in your words. Filed.

It stacks up. You can ask it.

Every plan and every answer is filed under the goal it serves. A year in, ask your library a question and it answers out of what you actually wrote.

Fanatical Prospecting · Mar

Block 9 to 10 on Tuesdays for calls.

The Hard Thing · Feb

When a hire stalls past two weeks, I decide.

Shoe Dog · Jan done

Monday at the 10am review, I send the pitch unfinished.

What have I decided about hiring?

The Hard Thing · FebWhen a hire stalls past two weeks, I decide.

Thursday, it asks.

Did that happen? One tap. Yes, not yet, or no, and the answer is kept next to the plan.

You wrote, on Sunday

Monday at the 10am review, I send the pitch as it is, unfinished.

Did that happen?

YesNot yetNo

We didn't invent any of this.

Every move in Shelf comes from published research on how people remember and how they change. Three findings decide what it does.

Testing beats highlighting.

So instead of filing your highlights, Shelf makes you say the idea back in your own words, against the thing you are actually stuck on.

Rereading wins today and loses next week.

So the debrief makes you pull the idea back out, while the chapter is still fresh.

Being asked makes you more likely to do it.

So Shelf comes back and holds you to what you wrote.

Eight papers, named and linked

These studies tested the methods, not Shelf. We'll publish our own numbers in October, good or bad.

Hey, I'm Gonçalo. A few books changed the direction of my life, and I wanted to make sure they do that for other people too, faster and with less of it falling out of my head on the way.

That's the whole reason Shelf exists. I'm the one who'll email you when your invite is ready. One email, from me, not a company.

Gonçalo

10%

of every subscription buys books for people who can't afford them.Through Book Aid International, who send new books to libraries, schools and refugee camps in more than twenty countries.

Close the book.
Keep the plan.

Invites go out in small waves from mid-October. Nobody waits more than a month.

One email when your invite is ready. Unsubscribe in one click.