Salman Ehsan

I’m a product designer and systems thinker. For more than 20 years, I’ve been designing products around a question that still interests me: what will people actually use? What kind of system actually survives when it’s employed in day-to-day life, a life that keeps changing and demands both structure and flexibility?

That thinking eventually led me to build BookSite.org.

I started BookSite because I felt there was something missing from the way we experience non-fiction books, particularly self-help, business and self-management books. A book can give you a powerful idea, but once you close it, you’re mostly on your own. I wanted to see what would happen if a book could continue the conversation: ask you questions, help you reflect, give you something to do, and help you turn what you’ve read into action.

I’m also writing my own book here, DOS: The Daily Operating System.

DOS grew out of another problem I’ve been thinking about for years: why is it so difficult to consistently do the things we already know are good for us?

I don’t think the answer is more motivation or more willpower. I think we often build systems for an ideal version of ourselves rather than for the person who has to live through an ordinary day, with work, interruptions, low energy, family, distractions and the occasional bad week.

So DOS is my attempt to design a daily system that can survive all of that.

In many ways, BookSite and DOS come from the same place. I’m interested in the distance between knowing something and actually doing something about it, and in designing better ways to cross that distance.