Keeping It Straight: You, Me & Everything Else

by Patrick Rhone

Life, living, can be complex. There's work, family, and that big bucket of everything else. Hectic doesn't come close to defining the pace of modern life. And yet within this whirlwind it's often the simple things that bring us the greatest joy — if we could only find them in the clutter of our lives. It may not be necessary to give it all up and live in a cave, but it can sometimes seem like a good idea.

What can you do? Take a moment and think about you, me, and everything else.

Keeping It Straight is Patrick Rhone's very personal meditation on his own life and experiences. His clear insights identify the jumble and distractions of life today and offer simple and useful advice on how to discover and focus on what really matters. This collection of short essays is filled with clear, direct, and useful observations on productivity, life, and living.

Genres: Nonfiction, Productivity, Self Help

75 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 29, 2011

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Patrick Rhone is a good writer, making his essays fun and thought-provoking. This was a collection of short, sometimes very short, essays on life, technology, minimalism, productivity, and writing. It was extremely easy to read and had lots of good nuggets to implement. Definitely well worth the time. Fantastic job.

[Augusto Pinaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yesterday I had the pleasure to read his new book, Keeping it Straight. The book was release on May 3rd, and it's a series of 48 essays divided in three sets, You, Me and Everything Else.

From the Book:
"- You - Ideas and observations that I hope will resonate with and inspire you (as they do me)
- Me - Stories and revelations that are specific to me (but also may apply to you)
- Everything Else - How to handle some of the other necessities and detritus of life (that is meant for both you an me"

The book is an honest treat to read, the only thing I regret wasn't have a hot cocoa to read it even slower and enjoy it even more, but don't worry, I have plans to re-read many of the chapters this weekend.

In case you don't take my word for it, and need something in advance, let me take from the book this golden nugget: "The Three most important productivity tools: trash Can, delete key, and the word "no"."
Thanks Patrick for such nice book.

[Rachel Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of essays, on subjects including no-nonsense advice on email efficiency and backing up your computer data; philosophy; reminiscences and personal stories. I particularly liked the first third of the book, which is predominantly philosophical. I have made many highlights on my Kindle and will doubtless return to them again and again. (My favourite is the motto: Don't worry. Do. If nothing can be done, don't worry.)

Patrick's writing style is so easy to read. It feels like you are having a chat with an old friend who genuinely wants to make your life easier. This book needs to be read sitting with your feet up and a cup of tea close by.

[Christin White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Patrick Rhone and his writings; he's a skilled writer with a lot of really insightful ideas on life, productivity and writing. However, I don't feel like Keeping it Straight is his most satisfying body of work. On their own, each essay (post) are good articles worth reading but I didn't feel like there was any clear continuity tying the book together beyond a bit of organization. At one point, there were a couple of paragraphs that were entirely or essentially identical in two posts with only another one or two posts between.

Still absolutly worth reading, especially as an introduction to his work but I guess I was hoping for a little more book and a little less a collection.

[Rosa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, and bought it without bothering to sample it first, but it was disappointing, and I think Rhone's editors let him down. Moving from blogging to book-writing is quite a stretch: Perhaps friendships got in the way of push-toward-better critique pre-publishing?

Rhone writes with a great deal of warmth and sincerity, and I did feel this was a from-the-heart effort. I knew that Keeping it Straight was largely a collection of previously published blog posts, but I had not read them, and was hoping for something much more seasoned, along the lines of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. That would turn out to be much too large an expectation.

[Garmon Estes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living in this day and age is complicated and Patrick Rhone shows how to make sense of it all. This book has started me down the path to living a simpler life and that's the highest praise I think a person can give. Patrick also has a podcast called Enough that is fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone.

[Mike Vardy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The man behind Minimal Mac and its accompanying podcast, Patrick Rhone offers a great read with Keeping it Straight: You Me & Everything Else. For those who really want to get in touch with not just the idea of what really matters in life – but how to be mindful about it in their own life’s process, this is the book to have.

[Misty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my genre, really. The advice was very loose and not really cohesive. But the author really only claimed to be gathering his thoughful essays into one pot, this book. So it is what it professes to be. I didn't find it particularly insightful.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice series of short, thoughtful essays on work/life balance, productivity (GTD disciples will recognize a lot of this). Light, easy reading, with an engaging style; easy to pick up for a few minutes now and then.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, he's my husband. Yes, he's often too minimalist for my comfort. But he's a damn good writer.

[Cyrus Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick 2 hour read. Conversational with nothing new but a good reminder about how to keep things straight and balanced.

[Lindsi Gish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm honored to know Patrick personally and to hear from him directly his insightful views on what it means to live a meaningful and productive life. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.