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HOW NOT TO HATE YOUR HUSBAND AFTER KIDS: SURVIVING THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF PARENTING TOGETHER

Jancee Dunn

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • A book that should be read by both parents. It's surprising that husbands are surprised that a non-equitable workload will be a cause of frustration for wives. At the same time, the book does a good job of making a case for a husband's point of view on the matter. As they say: "happy wife, happy life." So read it.

Memorable Parts

  • "The longer marital fighting goes on, the worse it is for kids. At ages three to six, say the Gottmans, children assume they are the cause of the fight."

  • "Try this experiment during a major holiday: drive past your local car wash, and not the line of dads who suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to get the Premium Deluxe wash."

  • "The therapist is aghast. 'It's not a craving to be away from your child - it's a craving to be alone with him! What do you cherish each other as a couple?'"

  • "I know that what I'm about to do is going to cause you harm, but right now, my anger is more important to me than you are."

  • "What she hears from us is 'Girls rule' but what she sees at home is 'Girls clean'."

  • "Divide your weekends into seven distinct units of time (AM, afternoon, and PM) and stop trying to do everything at every available moment."

  • "One girl mentioned that every morning when she left for school, her father would say, 'You go, tiger - you go get them.' This seemingly insignificant ritual was singled out as the experience this child would remember most vividly from childhood."

  • "What you do every day matters more than the things you do once in a while."

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THE BEST PLACE TO WORK: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CREATING AN EXTRAORDINARY WORKPLACE

Ron Friendman

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Pleasantly surprised by how good this book is. The book covers a wide range of topics - from office layouts to motivating and retaining employees. A must-read for HR folks, entrepreneurs, and those in leadership positions.

Memorable Parts

  • "My father would ask us What did you fail at today? What he did was redefine failure for my brother and me. Instead of failure being the outcome, failure became not trying."

  • "The better the nurses' relationship with their manager and coworkers, the more errors they appeared to make. Nurses in tightly knit groups don't actually perform more errors - they simply report more of them."

  • "The question at the heart of the controversy: Do you have a best friend at work? This was one of the strongest predictors of productivity."

  • "According to Suchman, every workplace conversation operates on two levels: task channel and relationship channel. It's when the two get fused that disagreements intensify."

  • "People only change when they are accepted for who they are. And listening is the universal language of acceptance."

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THE SOURCE: THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE, THE SCIENCE OF THE BRAIN

Tara Swart

Skip

Summary​

  • I listened to Tara Swart on the "Into the Magic Shop" podcast. She has a very compelling personal story and, as a personal bonus, is a professor at MIT Sloan. I so much wanted to love this book but I have to give it a "skip" recommendation. Too repetitive: The Source (concept), the brain science, etc. Too ambiguous: What is The Source? I did find a couple of exercises very beneficial but not worth reading the entire book.

Memorable Parts

  • "The way we think determines our life. This is a simple idea, but a powerful one. Our brains actively grow and change during childhood. In contrast, as adults, we have to consciously direct ourselves to grow and develop."

  • "Developing metacognition, or "thinking about thinking," and becoming "aware of one's awareness," rather than functioning on autopilot is one of the main objectives of The Source.

  • "Attract what you expect, reflect what you desire, become what you respect, mirror what you admire."

  • "To varying degrees, we all have the negative habit of picking on what isn't going well due to the risk aversion gearing of our brain being stronger than the reward gearing."

  • "A staggering 90 percent of the serotonin that works primarily in your brain is produced by the gut. Not only does it "elevate" your mood but acts as a paracrine-signaling module that helps regulate insulin production."

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SPACEFARERS: HOW HUMANS WILL SETTLE THE MOON, MARS, AND BEYOND 

Christopher Wanjek

Recommended

Summary​

  • Do you want to know if we will ever go back to the Moon? If we will go to Mars? What are the challenges? Where do we stand? This is the perfect book to get up-to-speed on humanity's progress toward space exploration and settlement.

Memorable Parts

  • "If the ISS has taught us anything about living in space (and, frankly, it really hasn't, except for this one thing), it's that zero gravity is horrible for our health. Our bones leach calcium; our muscles atrophy; our eyes eventually stop working as blood vessels weaken and the shape becomes distorted."

  • "Cosmonauts Valentin Vitalyevich and Anatoly Berezovoy reportedly spent most of the 211 days of their Soyuz flight in silence because they couldn't stand each other."

  • "To visualize how bad that bone loss is, consider the fact that the major obstacle to fully recycling urine in the ISS is that filters get clogged daily with calcium deposits."

  • "The space shuttle was so convoluted that Soviet scientists assumed the shuttles were being designed to militarize space, because no sane government would invest so much money on a flawed and impractical design simply in the name of science."

  • "If 0.16G is not enough force to allow for proper gestation of a fetus and subsequent infant development, then no one can raise a family on the Mono. Period. End of settlement."

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LOSING OURSELVES: LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT A SELF

Jay L. Garfield

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • The author's thesis: we are not selves, but persons. The book is extremely well written and I have rated it so high because it is a topic that will be alien but very interesting to most people. Even though the concept of "no self" is well-known in Buddhism, the author incorporated Western philosophers as well (like David Hume).

Memorable Parts

  • "...characterizes the relation between the self and the embodied person as akin to that between you and your wardrobe. Each day you might put on a new set of clothes, but you are still you, the bearer of those clothes; you are the bearer of those clothes."

  • "The very fact that I can formulate a desire or takes this leap of imagination (have Stephen Hawking's mind for a day) shows me that, deep down - whether correctly or incorrectly - I do not consider myself to be identical to be mind, but rather as something that has a mind."

  • "It is instead a socially constructed designation, posited on the bases of those processes, but not reducible to them."

  • "'This church is fifty years old'. In the most important sense, the church remains the same. So, while it is not some entity different from its parishioners, minister, building, etc., nor is it identical to them, it exists conventionally."

  • "When I think of myself as a self, I can imagine that even if the entire world outside of me disappeared, I could remain as a center of subjectivity."

  • "We participate in the construction of what we regard as external to us, and what is external to us participates in the construction of what we experience as inner."

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PEACEFUL PARENTS, HAPPY KIDS: HOW TO STOP YELLING AND START CONNECTING

Dr. Laura Markham

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Probably my most highlighted parenting book so far. I appreciated that the author stopped adding the "typical" unrealistic exercises found in most parenting books. Rather, the author focuses more on the parent and provides mental frameworks and rationale on how/why we should change our interactions.

Memorable Parts

  • "Ultimately we can't control our children or the hand life deals them - but we can always control our own actions. Parenting isn't about what our child does, but about how we respond."

  • "We can't control what happens to her. But we can make it likely that she'll surround herself with people who treat her well and help her find deep meaning in her life."

  • "That's why your first responsibility in parenting is being mindful of your own inner state. Mindfulness is the opposite of losing your temper. It's paying attention to what you're feeling, but don't act on it."

  • "Don't worry that you need to teach her a lesson about what she did wrong. She's getting one of the most important lessons she'll ever learn: how to regulate big emotions when she sees you not losing your temper."

  • "You want  your child to follow your guidance because he loves you and does not want to disappoint you, not because you scare him."

  • "Your child will remember for the rest of her life that she was  important enough to her parents that they turned off their cell phones when they were with her."

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FLYING WITHOUT A NET: TURN FEAR OF CHANGE INTO FUEL FOR SUCCESS

Thomas J. DeLong

Average

Summary​

  • Astonished that this book has only 25 reviews on Amazon. This book was an excellent read, and a cautionary tale, for high-performing individuals. It is one of those books that forces you to pause and reflect on your professional and personal life. The "practical" recommendations are not that original but the questions and reflections from the author make this book a worthwhile read.

Memorable Parts

  • "It took a long time and a lot of work with the coach before he finally recognized what the real problem was: Don didn't want to do anything that might make him look bad. Don was a high-need-for-achievement professional who also high a high need to protect himself."

  • "This was also true when he was home and his young children didn't achieve what he felt they should achieve - it got in the way of his crossing things off his list as a parent."

  • "Role overload  means recognizing that you have more roles and responsibilities than are achievable, and you start choosing one role over another."

  • "Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters by an overwhelming twelve strokes. After the tournament, his coach told him he needed to rebuild his swing from the ground up. Put yourself in Wood's position."

  • "You know, when you would come home from work you were so quiet at the dinner table. On many occasions, you were curt with us. All of us thought we had done something wrong."

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WHEN GENIUS FAILED: THE RISE AND FALL OF LONG-TERM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT

Roger Lowenstein

Average

Summary​

  • The story is incredible. I rated it "average" because the author failed to capitalize on the depth of the story. It read more like a newspaper article than a gripping book. Can't believe the financial world fell again in 2008 after just 10+ years of LTCM.

Memorable Parts

  • "The fund had entered into thousands of derivative contracts. These contracts, essentially side bets on market prices, covered an astronomical sum- more than $1 trillion of exposure."

  • "If you aren't in debt, you can't go broke and can't be made to sell. They learned the hard way that when you are in debt you don't sell what you should, you sell what you can."

  • "In other words, LTCM pulled off the entire $2 billion trade without using a dime of its own cash."

  • "Life is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait."

  • "We had no idea they were in trouble. These people had taught and designed risk management. God knows, we were dealing with not one but two Nobel prize winners!"

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BLITZED: DRUGS IN THE THIRD REICH

Norman Ohler

Recommended

Summary​

  • There are probably thousands of books written about WW2. You perhaps need to read ten to start finding themes, sources, and facts that keep repeating. This book adds an entirely new lens on WW2 and an explanation of the initial effectiveness of the Wehrmacht. 

Memorable Parts

  • "The Germans were world leaders in another class of substances: the companies Merck, Boehringer and Knoll controlled 80% of the global cocaine market."

  • "If the Weimar Republic can be seen in psycho-historical terms as a repressed society, its supposed antagonists, the National Socialists, were at the head of that trend. They hated drugs because they wanted to be like a drug themselves."

  • "For Hitler, it made sense: 'Morrell wants to give me a big iodine injection as well as a heart, liver, chalk and vitamin injection. He learned in the topics that medicine must be injected into the veins.'"

  • "Hauschild perfect a method to synthesize methamphetamine. A short time later, the Temmler factory patented the first Germa type. Its trademark: Pervitin."

  • "The head of the SS dismissed Giseing's objection that Hitler was the only head of state in the world who took between 120 and 150 tablets and received between 8 and 10 injections per week."

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HOW TO GET A MEETING WITH ANYONE: THE UNTAPPED SELLING POWER OF CONTACT MARKETING

Stu Heinecke

Skip

Summary​

  • Why do I keep falling for these types of sales books?! This book, like others, is "a wolf in sheep's clothing". This book is a marketing tool for the author and his consulting services. 

Memorable Parts

  • "For the NHL, I produced an invitation to the All-Star game that caught President Reagan's attention in particular. He liked the cartoon so much that he requested additional copies to be framed in this personal study."

  • "He knew, for example, that his home builder prospects were used to receiving architectural plans in cardboard tubes. He then devised an ingenious adaptation to express the bank's value proposition."

  • "But let's put it another way. Your job isn't about selling your product or service. It's about giving the CEO an overwhelming advantage through what you know or do."

  • "He says you must express your value proposition in seven or fewer words, and in a way that leaves the CEO asking, 'How would you do that?'"

  • "Aim to be pushed down. Aim above the person you want to speak with, so you'll end up with a referral from above."

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DARKEST HOUR: HOW CHURCHILL BROUGHT ENGLAND BACK FROM THE BRINK

Anthony McCarten

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • The story of how a sixty-five-year-old man, against all odds and enormous pressure, stood up against evil.

Memorable Parts

  • "At sixty-five a man whose primary distinction was a consistent failure, reliably misreading the writing on the wall, getting things badly wrong often, and too often when he needed to get them very, very right."

  • "The 65-year-old word-spinner with a drinking problem and a decades-long history of misjudgment leading the country? Forget the country, you could forgive yourself for having reservations about lending such a man a bicycle."

  • "In a separate message to Lord Gort, the BEF's Commander-in-Chief, the Prime Minister admitted, '[W]e are asking them to sacrifice themselves for us'."

  • "The nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."

  • "We shall go on and we shall fight it out, here or elsewhere, and if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."

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THE DAILY STOIC: 366 MEDITATIONS ON WISDOM, PERSEVERANCE, AND THE ART OF LIVING

Ryan Holiday

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Daily quotes and reflections on stoicism. I read this in 2022 and it was a great way to start the day! 

Memorable Parts

  • "The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives - and the less free we are."​

  • "There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. When fortune removes its adversary it turns its teeth on itself."

  • "It's a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to."

  • "There is a reason there's often vomit at crime scenes. Instead of the catharsis the person thought they'd feel when they go their revenge, they ended up making themselves sick."

  • "Modesty is a virtue. That is not the kind of plant you are, displaying fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you."

  • "When you see someone often flashing their rank or position, don't be envious; such things are bought at the expense of life."

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THE CONSCIOUS PARENT: TRANSFORMING OURSELVES, EMPOWERING OUR CHILDREN

Shefali Tsabary, PhD

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • The best parenting book I have read (as of Dec 2022). It does a great job of incorporating mindfulness into our parenting journey without being unrealistic in its recommendations. This book has helped me be more present when I am with my children.

Memorable Parts

  • "On the parent's side of the equation, the problem with the traditional approach to parenting is that it rigidifies the ego with its delusion of power and control."

  • "I see the ego as more like a picture of ourselves we carry around in our head - a picture we hold of ourselves that may be far from who we are in our essential being."

  • "Unless we consciously integrate the unintegrated aspects of our childhood, they never leave us but repeatedly reincarnate themselves in our present, then show up all over again in our children."

  • "A conscious parent doesn't look outside the parenting relationship for answers, but is confident the answers can be found for both the parent and child within the parent-child dynamic."

  • "Because as parents we desperately want our children's behavior to be "fixed" right now, without having to go through the difficult process of having to change ourselves first."

  • "When a person with this egoic imprint becomes exasperated when they experience a downturn in life. Unaccustomed to sitting with the painful feeling of helplessness, their ego converts their insecurity into rage. Anger is a powerful stimulant, seducing us to believe we are in control. Paradoxically, we are anything but in control. We are prisoners of ego."

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THE ART OF THE GOOD LIFE: CLEAR THINKING FOR BUSINESS AND A BETTER LIFE

Rolf Dobelli

Recommended

Summary​

  • 52 pieces of practical advice for life in general. The author drew inspiration from three primary sources: psychology research, Stoicism, and the Buffett-Munger duo. The book contains interesting stories that make it a fun and interesting read.

Memorable Parts

  • "I always mentally add 50% to prices in shops and restaurants. If a glass of wine costs $10, I'll have to earn $15 in order to afford it. For me, that's good mental accounting, because it helps me keep my expenditure in check."

  • "The most common misunderstanding I encounter is that the good life is a stable condition. Wrong. The good life is only achieved through constant readjustment.  As Eisenhower said, 'Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.'"

  • "So Christensen made a pledge, promising God not to work on the weekends and to eat dinner with his family. Sometimes, this meant he'd get to work at three in the morning."

  • "If you won't' attack a problem while it's solvable and wait until it's unfixable, you can argue that you're so damn foolish that you deserve the problem."

  • "I treat my feelings as if they don't belong to me. I see myself as a huge and air-covered market, in which birds file from spot to spot. Sooner, or later, they all move on."

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THINK AGAIN: THE POWER OF KNOWING WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW

Adam Grant

Recommended

Summary​

  • Why are we so stubborn? How can we change other people's minds on polarizing subjects? The author does a decent job of answering these questions. The book is two-to-three chapters too long but worth the read.

Memorable Parts

  • "When a trio of psychologists conducted a comprehensive review of thirty-three studies, they found that in every one, the majority of test answer revisions were from wrong to right. This phenomenon is known as the first-instinct fallacy."

  • "We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions we formed in 1995."

  • "Over the following year, the startups in to control group averaged under $30 in revenue. The startups in the scientific thinking group averaged over $12,000 in revenue." 

  • "If BlackBerry's rise was due in large part to his success in scientific thinking as an engineer, its demise was in many ways the result of his failure in rethinking as a CEO."

  • "Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. What are your core principles in life? Basing your identity on these kinds of principles enables you to ream open-minded about the best ways to advance them."

  • "Although small amounts of evidence are sufficient to make us draw conclusions, they are seldom sufficient to make us revise them."

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HOW DICTATORSHIPS WORK

Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright and Erica Frantz

Recommended

Summary​

  • Superb analytical and empirical analysis of how dictatorships work (before, during, and after). It was eye-opening for me how they were able to quantify and model aspects of dictatorships that would seem limited to a qualitative analysis. My only additional comments are the following: they relied on a couple of countries for most explanations and it reads very dry (academic).

Memorable Parts

  • "In reality, less than 30% of post-World War II autocratic regimes began replacing democracies. Among these democratic breakdowns, more than 28% were "self-coups".

  • "Ex-officers lead 8 percent of the insurgencies that initiate dictatorships; officers implement more than half of the elite rule changes that result in new regimes; and they are handed power during almost one-third of popular uprisings than end up failing to democratize."

  • "Insurgency is unlikely to succeed. Insurgent groups secure outright victories against incumbents only about a third of the time. By contrast, more than half of all coup attempts succeed."

  • "Top officers often came from one area and lower-ranking officers from others. As a result, we see quite a few coups carried out by junior officers from one ethnic cluster against ruling seniors from another."

  • "First dictators with higher personalism scores during their first three years in office retain their positions nearly twice as long on average as first dictators with low early personalism scores."

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PERFECT RIGOR: [A GENIUS] + [THE MATHEMATICAL BREAKTHROUGH OF THE CENTURY]

Masha Gessen

Average

Summary​

  • In the year 2000, the Clay Insitute named the seven greatest unsolved mathematical problems and a reward of one million dollars for anyone who solved it. The book is the story of mathematician Grigory Perelman - his life and his breakthrough. I ranked average instead of recommended because the book does not include an interview with the notoriously recluse mathematician.

Memorable Parts

  • "The non-profit was founded by Boston-area businessman Landon Clay for the purposes of popularizing mathematical ideas and encouraging their professional exploration."

  • "Grigory Perelman refused numerous job offers from the world's best universities. He refused to accept the Fields Medal, mathematics' highest honor, which would have been awarded to him in 2006."

  • "The truth of science is tested by experiment. The truth of mathematics is tested by argument, which makes it more like philosophy."

  • "It stands to reason that the Soviet human rights movement was founded by a mathematician. The movement's slogans were based on Soviet law, and its founders made a single demand: they  called on Soviet authorities to obey the written law."

  • "Mathematics had given him the liberty to live among abstract objects in his own imagination, which was exactly where this problem had to be solved."

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GOOD INSIDE: A GUIDE TO BECOMING THE PARENT YOU WANT TO BE

Dr. Becky Kennedy

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • One of the best parenting books I have read. Every chapter focuses on a different topic (i.e. sleep, nutrition, tantrums, etc...) The author provides practical advice for each one and, best of all, an overall philosophy on how to approach our child-parent relationship.

Memorable Parts

  • "Let me say that another way: how we talk to ourselves when we are struggling inside- is based on how our parents spoke to or treated us in times of struggle."

  • "What did you, as a child, learn comes after "bad" behavior? Did your body learn to wire for judgment, punishment, and alonesss...or boundaries, empathy, and connection?"

  • "Understanding ("two things are true") and convincing ("one thing is true") are two diametrically opposed ways of approaching  other people."

  • "We are at our best when we notice the multiple feelings, thoughts, urges, and sensations inside us without any of them "becoming" us, when we can locate our self amid a sea of experience."

  • "I am doing my job of keeping my child safe. My child is doing their job of expressing feelings. We are both doing what we need to do. I can handle this."

  • "When we react negatively, a child learns that certain feelings are threatening to attachment That child will seek to shut down those experiences, likely through a mechanism of shame or self-blame."

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REG & ROY KRAY: OUR STORY 

Fred Dinenage

Recommended

Summary​

  • In several public parks in my hometown, there are these "put a book - take a book" wooden boxes. I found this book and kept it in my car. I read it during the course of a couple of months when I was stuck in traffic, car wash, etc... What a find! A no-holds bar account of the Kray twins. 

Memorable Parts

  • "I was born to be violent. When I was young most of my violence happened in the boxing ring. I was good enough to have become a great champion, but something happened to me when I was about eight years old which, looking back, was an omen - a sign of the bad things to come. That was when I was involved, for the first time, in the death of another person."

  • "Maybe it is something to do with our surname, Kray. That K on the front makes it sound aggressive - much more than if we'd been called Gray."

  • "In the East End, when we were kids, you really had only one of two choices if you wanted to make anything of yourself in life: you either became a boxer or a villain."

  • "I hate people who pick on homosexuals. I hate words like 'queer' or 'poof'. Some time later another gangster called me 'fat poof' - and he died for it."

  • "We showed loyalty to our men all the way through. But when the heat was on they deserted us and ratted on us - virtually everyone."

  • "When someone tries to put the frightened on you, you've got three choices. You either run away, or your stay where you are and let them take what they want, or you get them before they get you."

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THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS

Bertrand Russell

Recommended

Summary​

  • What I enjoy the most about reading an old book (this one is from 1930) is recognizing how little things have changed. The same issues that plague our lives today are the same as 100 years ago. On the positive side, the recommendations to live a happy life have been consistent. On the negative side, we just can't seem to implement them. 

Memorable Parts

  • "To prevent the perpetuation of poverty is necessary  the benefits of machine production are to accrue in any degree to those most in need of them; but what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?"

  • "The typically unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it."

  • "The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle in life, and when by means of great wealth homo sapiens can gratify all his whims without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness."

  • "What people fear when they engage in the struggle is not that they will fail to get their breakfast next morning, but that they will fail to outshine their neighbors."

  • "I have no doubt that those who have suffered greatly through poverty in their childhood are haunted by terrors lest their children should suffer similarly, and feel that it is hardly possible to build enough millions as a bulwak against this disaster."

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IN THE INNER SANCTUM: BEHIND THE SCENES AT BIG FIGHTS

Thomas Hauser

Recommended

Summary​

  • Disclaimer: you have to like boxing to enjoy this book. If you do, this book will provide a greater appreciation for many memorable fights and the drama before and after each one. Thomas Hauser is definitively worthy of his induction into the Boxing Hall of Fame.

Memorable Parts

  • "There was a time when you could have asked ten fighters, 'Who's the best fighter in the world?' And without hesitation, every one of them would have answered, 'Roy Jones.'"

  • "Holyfield-Toney was a sad fight. As Larry Holmes has observed, 'Sometimes the mind makes a date that the body can't keep.'"

  • "From nothing to everything is a very long road in boxing. but from everything to nothing is just one punch away." - Wladimir Klitschko.

  • "Manny Pacquiao ran away from home as a child. He slept on the streets, often in a cardboard box. He began boxing for money at age fourteen."

  • "I want to be remembered first as a good person and a man of integrity. After that, if people remember me as a good fighter, that would be nice." - Sergio 'Maravilla' Martinez.

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THE FIRST 90 DAYS: PROVEN STRATEGIES FOR GETTING UP TO SPEED FASTER AND SMARTER

Michael D. Watkins

Average

Summary​

  • I finally go to it after seeing this book pop-up in most of my feed. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for the person going thru the move but it is a must-read for someone in HR. We tend to forget how difficult and stressful onboarding is. The book provides a solid framework, roadmap, tools, and pitfalls. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Joining a new company is akin to an organ transplant - and you are the new organ."

  • "Insufficient time is devoted to lateral relationship building with peers and key constituencies outside the new leader's immediate organization. Remember: you don't want to be meeting with your neighbors for the first time when your house is burning down."

  • "Planning to learn means figuring out in advance what the important questions are and how you can best answer them. Few new leaders take the time to think systematically about their learning priorities."

  • "Ask people about these 5 topics: what challenges, why, opportunities, upside and where should I focus."

  • "What do our customers want that they're getting from our competitors and not getting from us?"

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GOD'S EQUATION: EINSTEIN, RELATIVITY, AND THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE

Amir D. Aczel

Average

Summary​

  • An informed and structured read about relativity and Einstein. The only "issue" with the book is that it was written in 1999 so many discoveries have been made since then, making some parts of the book obsolete or plainly wrong.

Memorable Parts

  • "The most promising theory these scientists could come up with to explain the expansion of the universe at an ever-increasing rate was one Einstein had proposed 80 years ago."

  • "In the center of the nebula lies the star's collapsed core - a neutron star, pulsating with intense radiation beamed into space every fraction of  a second - a pulsar."

  • "But it would not explain the accelerating expansion - unless an old term, long ago discarded by Einstein himself, was added back to the equation. The cosmological constant was back."

  • "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not." - Einstein

  • "Schwarzchild could not read his own papers in front of the academy, because he was at the time languishing in the trenches of the Eastern Front of World War I. There in the battlefields, facing the  Russians, Schwarzchild had read Einstein's paper with the equations and solved them. He mailed the solution to Einstein in Berlin."

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NEURO DHARMA: NEW SCIENCE, ANCIENT WISDOM, AND SEVEN PRACTICES OF THE HIGHEST HAPPINESS

Rick Hanson

Skip

Summary​

  • This book and author came to my radar after listening to James Doty's podcast. I had high hopes for the book given the author's background as a neuroscientist. I felt many of the science sections were repetitive (from other books) or superficial. The best part where the short meditations.

Memorable Parts

  • "In each person's heart are two wolves, one of love and one of hate, and everything depends upon which one we feed each day."

  • "Challenges can land on an underlying sense of needs already sufficiently met: a feeling of fullness and balance in the core of your being. Then the body is most able to protect, repair and refuel itself."

  • "You can work backward from what you are feeling to identify the underlying needs at issue: safety, satisfaction or connection."

  • "The five hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, laziness, restlessness/worry and doubt."

  • "Our mind has four characteristics: impermanent, compounded, interdependent and empty."

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A HEART THAT WORKS

Rob Delaney

Recommended

Summary​

  • Where to begin? A book about the worse loss possible - parents losing their son/daughter.

Memorable Parts

  • "A heart that hurts is a heart that works." - Juliana Hatfield

  • "Mainly, I felt strongly that I was in a situation where if something went wrong, I could very, very quickly be with Henry."

  • "I'm glad I gave him the blueberries, the chorizo, and anything else his little heart desired, because not long after his birthday, he would switch for the rest of his life to a liquid diet."

  • "Henry was losing weight and every time he vomited, I would freak out, blaming myself  for not feeding him gently or slowly enough."

  • "That approach didn't work and if I hadn't corrected course, it would have led to divorce. You only coast downhill..."

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THE MODEL THINKER: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO MAKE DATA WORK FOR YOU

Scott E. Page

Recommended

Summary​

  • Are you an economist? Do you like behavioral finance? You will get an orgasm (sorry!) after reading this book. By far, the most comprehensive book about all the different types of modeling you can do with data: system dynamics, networks, random walks, etc...

Memorable Parts

  • "Models are formal structures represented in mathematics and diagrams that help us to understand the world."

  • "He felt Iceland's situation posed an international concern. In 2008 Iceland had a GDP of just $12 billion, so his boss told him to 'Get back to work!'"

  • "The friendship paradox: in any friendship network, on average, people's friends have more friends than they do."

  • "Shapley values and the Alternative Uses test gave us the insight that Arun, even though he did not have the most ideas, contributed the most in value."

  • "If any two nodes in a network differ in their degree, on average a node has lower degree than its neighbors. In other words, on average, people's friends are more popular than they are."

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GOOD MORNING, MONSTER: A THERAPIST SHARES FIVE HEROIC STORIES OF EMOTIONAL RECOVERY

Scott E. Page

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • I could not stop reading this book but, at the same time, had such a hard time going through it. The five stories are heartbreaking but inspiring at the same time. Makes you reflect on your childhood, your parents, and our responsibility to break the chain of generational trauma.

Memorable Parts

  • "Trauma can retard emotional development. As long as your child is trying only to cope, she has no energy to emotionally grow."

  • "Every morning when she tried to get some breakfast before school, her mother would greet her by saying, 'Good morning, monster.'"

  • "And workaholism is another compulsion - you work because you feel anxious when you're not working. Substitute another addiction in that sentence  - 'I do nothing but drink,' say - and it doesn't sound so virtuous."

  • "When you go from fearing your mother to feeling sorry for her, it usually means you've traveled a long  way toward recovery."

  • "What's better than seeing the wonders of the world through the eyes of someone you love?"

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MAKING WORK VISIBLE: EXPOSING TIME THEFT TO OPTIMIZE WORK & FLOW

Dominica DeGrandis

Skip

Summary​

  • It focuses primarily on IT issues but insights and recommendations can be applied to others parts of a business or personal life. Too high level for me and repetitive. There are perhaps 2-3 pages of actionable recommendations. 

Memorable Parts

  • "When there is a still moment for reflective thought - say, while waiting for a meeting to being - out come people's phones."

  • "Five thieves: Too much WIP, unknown dependencies, unplanned work, conflicting priorities, and neglected work."

  • "With a party of four, it's not 25% probability you won't be seated at the restaurant, it's 93% (15/16)."

  • "Edward Deming is the man who, in the 1950s, taught hundreds of Japanese engineers and businessmen statistical process control."

  • "Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell you how I will behave."

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THE GOOD LIFE: LESSONS FROM THE WORLD'S LONGEST SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HAPPINESS

Robert Waldinger & Marc Schulz

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • My Top #1 book (as of 2023) is 'Triumphs of Experience'. This book deals with the same study but it is written by the current director and associate director of said study. Fascinating insights!

Memorable Parts

  • "'What's your greatest fear, Hank?' 'That I won't die first is my fear. That I'll be left here without you.'"

  • "The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest (mentally and physically) at age 80."

  • "Leo thought of himself primarily in relation to others - his family, his school, etc. He is considered to be one of the Study's happiest men."

  • "That boat featured in all of his children's memories. Leo used money as a means to achieve some satisfying personal ends - ends that connected him to the people he cared about."

  • "Midlife is an inflection point, not only between young and old, but also between the self-focused and a more outward-looking way of living."

  • "What is the most enjoyable activity that you and your wife engage in together?  Just being together. No road is long with good company."

  • "Leo didn't run from challenges, he didn't perpetuate things that made his childhood hard, and he gave his family the gift of his steady presence. He was there."

  • "The good life is not found by providing ourselves leisure and ease. It arises from facing challenges. It appears, quietly, as we learn how to love and open ourselves to being loved, as we grow from our experiences, and as we stand in solidarity with others through the inevitable joys and adversities in life."

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YOUR NEXT FIVE MOVES: MASTER THE ART OF BUSINESS STRATEGY

Patrick Bet-David

Average

Summary​

  • I was almost going to give it a 'Skip' review given how much self-promotion the author does but the book does contain several nuggets of practicable wisdom. The book is geared more toward entrepreneurs than executives in traditional strategy roles.

Memorable Parts

  • "The most dangerous unhappy people I've met are those who are both extremely ambitious and lazy. What this combination produces is envy. These are people who want something big but are not willing to put in the hard work."

  • "Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it  will not replace you as the driver."

  • "Google figured out how valuable insurance referrals were, so it made 'insurance' the most expensive keyword to buy ($54.91)."

  • "There's a misconception that the best company cultures include everyone holding hands and signing. If you and your spouse don't argue, one of you has found someone else to argue with."

  • "If you constantly praise a particular skill or character trait, a person will manifest it more often."

  • "Have you ever seen a person at the gym every day but looks the same? It's like people who go to the office and work in their business but not on their business."

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MIDLIFE: A PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDE

Kieran Setiya

Skip

Summary​

  • I desperately wanted to like this book. A philosopher for MIT = high expectations. The book read like a rambling narrative with no order or cohesion. Is that the effect of the midlife crisis the author is going through?

Memorable Parts

  • "The authors found  that the level of reported happiness by age had the shape of a gently curving U, starting high in young adulthood and ending higher in old age, with the average nadir at forty-six."

  • "Younger people tend to overestimate how satisfied they will be, while mid-lifers underestimate old age. Middle age is consequently worse than anticipated and at the same time hopes for the future fade."

  • "The paradox of egoism = those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness."

  • "Ask yourself this: of the lapses and adversities that lie in the history of my child's conception, ones without which it would not have taken place, which do I accept as the price of her existence?"

  • "If your sources of meaning are overwhelmingly telic then whatever their value - final, existential, ameliorative - they are schemes for which success can only mean cessation."

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TO HELL AND BACK: THE CLASSIC MEMOIR  OF  WORLD WAR II BY AMERICA'S MOST DECORATED SOLDIER

Audie Murphy

Recommended

Summary​

  • Feels like you just watched 'Saving Private Ryan'. An intense book that follows the author from Italy to Germany. Combines stories of battle, camaraderie, and self-reflection. War is hell. 

Memorable Parts

  • "As a child, poverty dogged our every step. Getting food for our stomachs was an ever-present problem. As soon as we grew old enough to handle a plow, we were thrown into the struggle for existence."

  • "The last of our water disappeared last night. Now thirst begins to torture us. The Germans are waiting by the river. No matter. Tonight somebody has to go out. We must have water."

  • "Not like you'd think. When I was going back home I had the crazy notion that I leave the war behind. But I couldn't."

  • "Jeezus! What I wouldn't give for a picture of this guy. A guy tackling the Siegfried Line with a pea-shooter."

  • "Has the brand of war been put on me? I believe in men like Novak and Swope; all the men who stood up against the enemy, taking their beatings without whimper and their triumphs without boasting."

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WHAT THE DOG SAW: AND OTHER ADVENTURES

Malcolm Gladwell

Recommended

Summary​

  • Each chapter of the book is a different story, probably written in the New Yorker by the author. It covers a wide range of topics, ranging from criminal profiling to TV infomercials. Its a pity that all signs point to Gladwell not writing books anymore and focusing on podcasting and/or short publications. 

Memorable Parts

  • "...the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ, the countertop oven that can be bought for four payments of $39.95 and maybe, dollar for dollar, the finest kitchen appliance ever made."

  • "'If they push you far enough, sue'; to his son, 'It's not how much you spend, it's how much you make.'"

  • "'I don't remember ever having a birthday party in my life. I remember that my grandparents took us out and we moved to Florida. My grandfather used to tie me down in bed - my hand, my wrists, and my feet. Why? Because I had a habit of turning over on my stomach and bumping my head either up and down or side to side. Why? How? I don't know the answers. But I was spread-eagle, on my back, and if I was able to twist over and do it my grandfather would wake up at night and come in and beat the hell out of me.'"

  • "Alka-Seltzer was a client of ours, and they were discussing new approaches for the next commercial. She said, 'You show a hand dropping an Alka-Seltzer tablet into a glass of water. Why not show the hand dropping two? You’ll double sales.'"

  • "Thus was victory declared in the Scud hunt during the Gulf  War - until hostilities ended and the Air Force appointed a team to determine the effectiveness of the air campaigns in Desert Storm. The actual number of definite Scud kills, the team said, was zero."

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DO  B2B BETTER: DRIVE GROWTH THROUGH GAME-CHANGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Jim Tincher

Recommended

Summary​

  • A must-read if you are in a CX role. The book is structured as if we are following a fictional character (Cari) through her journey as the Head of CX in her company.  

Memorable Parts

  • "If your efforts aren't leading customers to stay with you longer, spend more, or become less costly to serve, you have to ask whether you're truly improving the customer experience in any meaningful way."

  • "Because we were growing so fast, nobody focused on churn. Business growth hides a multitude of sins, and the teams were feeling good about growth."

  • "You need to track ARR (annual recurring revenue) and NRR (net revenue retention)."

  • "The VA sent the survey to millions, asking participants to rate the following: Ease, Effectiveness, Emotion and Trust."

  • "LinkedIn focused so much on recreating the customer-onboarding process that  it saw an improved engagement and revenue increase by tens of millions of dollars."

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HOW TO LISTEN TO JAZZ

Ted Gioia

Highly Recommended*

Summary​

  • I placed an (*) next to my recommendation to express that this book will most likely be enjoyed by those who like jazz. Otherwise, every artist presented in the book will be entirely out of context. A couple of months ago I finished watching Ken Burns´ 19-hour Jazz documentary and this book was a perfect companion.

Memorable Parts

  • "Why does our body respond so powerfully to the beat? Why don't dogs, for example, match their body movements to external rhythms? Horses and chimpanzees can't even be trained to do this."

  • "But I'm convinced that only by listening long and hard to second-rate performers will you ever really appreciate what the world-class artists have achieved."

  • "The pleasing pulse of a jazz band has nothing to do with rhythmic precision or keeping a steady tempo. If that were true, a software-driven beat would be superior to a jazz drummer."

  • "When the rhythmic cohesion is floundering, each individual in the group is tempted to overplay. This is no different from a sports team: when they fail to operate as a unit, individuals forget the plays and everyone starts freelancing."

  • "I've come to the conclusion that an art form built on improvisation and spontaneous decisions will attract a disproportionate percentage of unpredictable characters into its ranks."

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A MIND FOR SALES: DAILY HABITS AND PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR SALES SUCCESS

Ted Gioia

Recommended

Summary​

  • This is a type of book I like to call a "sales-movitation booster". You won't get groundbreaking advice but you will feel pumped after reading it to go out and prospect harder. The author keeps his self-promotion at a decent minimum and focuses the majority of the book on practical advice and motivation.

Memorable Parts

  • "Your desire to use Monday to get organized is an excuse for your lack of desire to engage with prospects and customers."

  • "'Tomorrow begins today'. Never allow a day to end without knowing what you are going to do tomorrow, especially on a Sunday or Monday."

  • "Mondays are not the day to spend time figuring out the week. If you wait until Monday, it is too late. You cannot afford to waste 20 percent of your week getting ready to sell."

  • "You cannot lead anyone until you first lead yourself."

  • "When you view sales as taking from others, it's a job. View sales as helping others and you will see it as a lifestyle."

  • "Accept the fact that your calling will disrupt people. I doubt anyone you called woke up excited. Hey, I doubt your mother would even feel that way. No offense."

  • "View success in sales as opening a relationship with someone and not as closing a sale."

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POSSIBLE MINDS: 25 WAYS OF LOOKING AT AI

John Brockman

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • A 'Who's Who' of intellectuals, technologists, thinkers, etc... Each one contributes a chapter regarding their view on AI and Wiener's book A Human Us of Human Beings. The  AI space is moving so fast that the only drawback to this book is that, as time passes, we miss their viewpoints on key developments (i.e. ChatGPT).

Memorable Parts

  • "What humans had that other species lacked was a mental representation of their environment - a representation that they could manipulate at will to imagine alternative hypothetical environments for planning and learning."

  • "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

  • "But isn't there a control room? Maybe not. Say, for example, you build a system to map highway traffic in real time, simply by giving cars access to the map in exchange for reporting their own speed and location at the time. The result is a fully decentralized control system."

  • "When attractive opportunities abound, we are apt to be willing to pay a little and accept some small, even trivial, cost-of-doing-business for access to new powers. And pretty soon we become so dependent on our new tools that we lose the ability to thrive without them. Options become obligatory."

  • "We are the first species to understand that we're the product of evolution. Our future, therefore, will be determined by our own decisions and no longer by biological evolution. In that sense, evolution has fallen victim to its own Control Problem."

  • "Asking about the effect of machine superintelligence on human labor is like asking how US-Chinese trade patterns would be affected by the Moon crashing into the Earth. There would be indeed effects, but you'd be missing the point."

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FUNDAMENTALS OF BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MARKETING: SELL MORE, SPEND LESS!

John M. Coe

Recommended

Summary​

  • Extremely practical, 'chips-and-salsa' recommendations that work for B2B. The author has practical experience in old-school firms like Quaker Oats, IBM, DuPont, and others. The only drawback is that the book was written in 2003 and includes obsolete technologies (i.e. fax machines). 

Memorable Parts

  • "Here's a test: try to remember more than one or two messages you received yesterday. Better yet, did you respond to any of them? Our problem is clear - for both sales and marketing people: how are we going to break through the clutter?"

  • "Salespeople forget that there are more steps in the Buying process than the self-imposed Sales Cycle."

  • "Their consultant, McKinsey, recommended that they discontinue sales coverage of small accounts and turn them over to five large national distributors. Only after this was done did it become clear to TI that while sales cost reduction had been achieved, they had effectively lost contact with these smaller customers."

  •  "I speak from experience. When I was a sales rep for Quaker Oats Chemical, some of my large accounts were Ford, GM, and 3M. There was no other contact or communications coming from Quaker - I was it!"

  • "Dick was stumped as to what she could possibly do, until he landed on the idea of having her call the old customers who were not currently buying. Her results were amazing!"

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GOOD STRATEGY / BAD STRATEGY: THE DIFFERENCE AND WHY IT MATTERS

Richard P. Rumelt

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • As of April 2023, this is the best business book I have ever read. I feel tremendous jealousy against his business school students. The author's resume and practical experience in the strategy field are enviable. Reading this book felt like grabbing a coffee with a master business mentor. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Strategy is about how an organization will move forward. Doing strategy is figuring out how to advance the organization's interests. Setting goals for a business is not Strategy. If that is how the organization runs, let's skip the spin and be honest - call it goal setting."

  • "The most basic idea of strategy is the application of strength against weakness. Or, if you prefer, strength applied to the most promising opportunity. A good strategy doesn't just draw on existing strength; it creates strength through the coherence of its design."

  • "CEOs were great at talking about their competitors but when I asked them about their own companies' strategies, there was a very different response. I heard a lot of look-busy doorknob polishing."

  • "Because the case does not focus on competition, neither do the students. Half of what alert participants learn in a strategy exercise is to consider the competition even when no one tells you to do it in advance."

  • "Entropy is a universal law. One can sense a business has not been carefully managed when its product line grows less focused, prices are set too low to please Sales, and shipping schedules are too long, pleasing only Manufacturing."

  • "Planning and planting a garden is always more interesting and stimulating than weeding it, but without constant weeding and maintenance the pattern that defines a garden - the imposition of  special order on nature -fades away and disappears."

  • "Carnegie's benefit was not from the list itself. It came from actually constructing the list. The idea that people have goals and automatically chase after them like some kind of homing missile is plain wrong."

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LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS: MASTERING CHANGE AT ANY AGE

Bruce Feiler

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • This a helpful book for those of us who resist change and prefer the 'security' of routines. The author reminds us that we spend most of our lives going through changes. Change is inevitable but we can work on our response to it.

Memorable Parts

  • "All family narratives take one of three shapes. The most helpful is the oscillating narrative. Children who know that lives take all different shapes are much better equipped to face life's inevitable disruptions."

  • "The total came to fifty-two. That's fifty -two different sources of conflict, upheaval, or stress a person can face. The number of disruptors a person can expect to experience in adult life is around three dozen. That's an average  of one every twelve to eighteen months."

  • "And now I realize; Change is life. It's what keeps life interesting."

  • "Her answer was very similar to what others told me: the fear of staying was greater than the fear of leaving."

  • "His core idea: We should not ask what the meaning of life is because it is we who are being asked. Each of us is responsible for finding our own reason to live."

  • "Nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent will not  - nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

  • "The word was acceptance. I'd heard the word so many times in meetings before, but this time I really thought about it. that I was an alcoholic, and, lo and behold, that an alcoholic can't drink successfully. Alcohol was not my solution; it was my problem."

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COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY MADE SIMPLE: 10 STRATEGIES FOR MANAGING ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, ANGER, PANIC AND WORRY

Seth J. Gillihan

Average

Summary​

  • I rated this book as 'skip' because ~200 pages rely on the following framework: Thoughts -> Emotions -> Behaviors. The framework is very powerful and helps us step back from our actions. However, it is practically impossible to write hundreds of insightful pages on that one core idea.

Memorable Parts

  • "In order to feel well, we need a balance of enjoyable and important things to do. If we pursue only fun things and neglect responsibilities, we'll starve ourselves of a sense of accomplishment."

  • "If you practice mindfulness you will notice two things: the mind focuses on things other than what is happening right now and it continually evaluates reality as good or bad."

  • "Procrastination is mainly driven by the following: fear that it will be unpleasant, fear of not doing a good job, permission-giving thoughts and/or negative reinforcement."

  • "Thoughts (What if something bad happens?) lead to Feelings (Anxiety) which leads to Behaviors (Reading medical websites)."

  • "Our model of anger begins with a triggering situation - some violation of our expectation of how we should be treated. Our resulting thoughts, driven by our core beliefs, will lead to emotional and physical reactions."

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THE GARDENER AND THE CARPENTER: WHAT THE NEW SCIENCE OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT TELLS US ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTS AND CHILDREN

Alison Gopnik

Highly Recommended

Summary​

  • Gopnik is the author of the famous 'Philosophical Baby' and a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. Great book for parents who are worrying about raising their babies, digital devices, and all in between. In summary - let your children play and don't worry too much.

Memorable Parts

  • "To care for a child is a profound human relationship, to engage in a particular kind of love. Work is central to human life; we couldn't do without it. But as Freud and Elvis both remarked, apocryphally at least, work and love are the two things that make life worthwhile."

  • "I would not evaluate the success of marriage by measuring whether my husband's character had improved. I would not evaluate a friendship as whether my friend was happier or more successful. Nevertheless, this is the implicit picture of parenting - that your qualities as a parent can be, and even should be, judged by the child you create."

  • "Love doesn't have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. The purpose is not to change those we love, but to give them what they need to thrive. Love's purpose is not to shape our beloved's destiny, but to help them shape their own."

  • "Caring for children is like tending a garden, and being a parent is like being a gardener. In the 'parenting' model, being a parent is like being a carpenter. Gardening is risky and often heartbreaking. The only garden without those risks, that wasn't attended in some pain, would be made of Astroturf sudden with plastic daisies."

  • "'Mother' and 'father' are as old as English itself, and 'parent' has been around since at least the 14th century. But the word 'parenting', first emerged in America in 1958, and became common only in the 1970s."

  • "The United States, where all those parenting books are sold, also has the highest rates of infant mortality and child poverty in the developed world. A society that is obsessed with dieting has the highest  obesity rate." 

  • "Parenting should be seen as dancing. Like dancing, it's a form of love, not work."

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COMPANY OF ONE: WHY STAYING SMALL IS THE NEXT BIG THING FOR BUSINESS

Paul Jarvis

Recommended

Summary​

  • Thinking about launching your business? Doing freelance work? This book is for you. The author did exactly this and is running a successful business with the explicit constraint of no undesired growth. The author makes a compelling case for why the search for growth at any cost hurts businesses more than it benefits them.

Memorable Parts

  • "Startup Genome Project analyzed more than 3,200 high-growth tech startups, found that 74 percent of those businesses failed, not because of competition or bad business plans, but because they scaled up too quickly."

  • "Buddhists call the Beast the "hungry ghost" - a pitiable creature with an insatiable appetite. There is never enough for the hungry ghost, so it's always looking for more."

  • "Socrates said that envy is the ruler of the soul, meaning that we can easily become negatively affected by the success of others."

  • "We often compare our sometimes messy selves to only the best and shiniest part of others and come up short. Remember, every business has not only its successes but also its failures."

  • "People want to be the noun without doing the verb.' They want the business title without doing the work first."

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HBR'S 10 MUST READS 2023

Various authors

Skip

Summary​

  • I keep falling for these. In my defense, I was at an airport and had less than 2 minutes to choose a book before running to my gate. The titles of the articles always grab you (i.e. 'Net Promoter 3.0', 'How Chinese Retailers are Reinventing the Customer Journey') but the reward ends up being just some superficial knowledge on the topic. Many 'blah' recommendations of how to implement key ideas.

Memorable Parts

  • "Consumers had started to 'showroom', visiting stores to decide what they liked and then buying products elsewhere online."

  • "With alarming frequency, all these well-intentioned initiatives don't add up to corporate success. Take firm profitability as one example: A quarter of the firms in the S&P500 earn long-term returns below their cost of capital."

  • "Companies should measure earned growth rate - the revenue growth generated by returning customers and their referrals."

  • "When people underperform and leave, it hurts coworkers' productivity. On average, most employees are relied upon by five to 12 colleagues. Even a 5% drop in productivity by them could add up to $845,000in inefficiencies."

  • "Narcissists actually have high but unstable self-esteem. They crave status and approval and become hostile when their fragile egos are threatened - when they are insulted, rejected, or shamed."

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PROFIT FROM THE SOURCE: TRANSFORMING YOUR BUSINESS BY PUTTING SUPPLIERS AT THE CORE

Various authors

Skip

Summary​

  • I desperately wanted this book to be good but it failed to deliver. The main points could have easily been presented in a nice HBR article. It was nice that the book addressed many of the supply chain challenges stemming from covid-19 but failed to deliver truly unique insightful and actionable recommendations.

Memorable Parts

  • "Few CEOs running today's major companies have served as CPOs. Apple may be among the world's most admired companies, yet one of the biggest things that sets it apart has been broadly disregarded."

  • "With vertical integration, it meant that there was no need for procurement professionals. It took another war - and the influence of his great rival Alfred Sloan - for Henry Ford to think about a different approach."

  • "Companies with procurement chiefs on leadership teams outperform the market by roughly 130 percent."

  • "In a highly symbolic move, he ceremoniously switched his watch from his left wrist to his right wrist and said he would not move it back until GM had record profits in North America."

  • "It is an extraordinary fact that Apple extracts two-thirds of the profits from the global smartphone industry even though it has only a 12% market share and does not actually make the iPhone."

  • "Russia developed TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem-solving) with the VA-III Shkval torpedo. It channeled the rocket exhaust to the nose of the torpedo where the water would be vaporized. The speed increased from 50 to 250 mph."

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ALONE: BRITAIN, CHURCHILL, AND DUNKIRK: DEFEAT INTO VICTORY

Michael Korda

Average

Summary​

  • What sets this book apart from others I have read on the subject is that the author was living in London during 'Dunkirk'. Albeit, he was seven years old. Furthermore, his family was upper class and had access to many government officials so the book provides a great description of what was happening in London, what was communicated to the public, and what officials were talking to each other about.

Memorable Parts

  • "Chamberlain's flaw was not his pusillanimity; it was a lethal combination of vanity and pig-headedness."

  • "Foreign Secretary Halifax did worse, however - during his first meeting with Hitler he almost headed the Fuhrer his overcoat and hat under the impression that he was a footman."

  • "As Churchill would one day in old age put it himself, 'I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.'"

  • "German tanks had been tried out in combat during the Spanish Civil War only three years before and important lessons had been learned there. Second, Hitler was susceptible to new and radical ideas and had a special interest in motor vehicles."

  • "However, twenty-four hours had been wasted, and as Napoleon pointed out, 'Space we can recover, but time never.'"

  • "Upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend unbroken by even a star of hope, unless we conquer - as conquer we must - as conquer we shall."

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DO THE WORK

Steven Pressfield

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Summary​

  • (Apparently) This book is supposed to motivate writers and push them away from fear, complacency, procrastination, etc., but I didn't get that message. The book has thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and I am guessing the author has that many friends (jk). Avoid. A youtube video will motivate you more than this book.

Memorable Parts

  • "Resistance never sleeps. Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five."

  • "Have you ever meditated? Then you know what it feels like to shift your consciousness to a witnessing mode. These are not thoughts. They are chatter."

  • "As soon as I figure out the theme of my play, I write it down and Scotch-tape it to the front of the typewriter. After that, nothing goes into that play that isn't on-theme."

  • "Principle Number Three: The Enemy is inside you. Its aim is not to obstruct or to hamper or to impede. Its aim is to kill."

  • "Keep working. Stephen King has confessed that he works every day. Fourth of July, his birthday, Christmas."

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HACKING GROWTH: HOW TODAY'S FASTEST-GROWING COMPANIES DRIVE BREAKOUT SUCCESS

Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown

Recommended

Summary​

  • Things are moving way too fast (ChatGPT, new apps, new tools) that it is hard to keep up. This book provides a comprehensive view of 'hacking' techniques to improve your website/app's audience, readership, conversion, etc... A must-read.

Memorable Parts

  • "Instead the growth team engineers, led by Javier Olivan, built a translation engine that allowed Facebook's own users to translate the site into any language via a crowdsourcing model."

  • "The second measure to use in assessing whether or not you've achieved must-have status is your product's retention rate, which is simply the number of people who continue to use your product over a given time."

  • "Sitting in an office with your smartest lieutenants and a whiteboard to hash out ideas for improvements may feel like exactly the right way to solve the problem, but trust us, that instinct is a head fake."

  • "(1) Can you tell us why you signed you signed up in the first place?; (2) What didn't work for you?; (3) What caused you to come back and try it again?; and (4) What worked this time?"

  • "RJMetrics found that users who edited a chart in the software during their free trial period were twice as likely to convert to paying customers. So what did they do? They made editing a chart a key step in the new user orientation."

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LEADERS EAT LAST: WHY SOME TEAMS PULL TOGETHER AND OTHERS DON'T

Simon Sinek

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Summary​

  • A mixture of topics that are, by now, overused. 'We evolved to thrive in tribes...', 'Costco treats employees like family...', 'Disengaged employees cost you $X...'  All points are valid and I am not questioning them - I am just tired of reading about them again and again.

Memorable Parts

  • "When the people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization itself becomes less able to face the dangers from outside."

  • "When bosses ignore us, 40% actively disengage. If they criticize us, 22% actively disengage. Meaning, even if criticized, we are more engaged simply because we feel at least someone acknowledges us!"

  • "Endorphins and dopamine, work to get us where we need to go as individuals - to preserve, to find food, drive forward. Serotonin and oxytocin, are there to incentivize to work together and develop feelings of trust and loyalty."

  • "If people only comply, we can't expect people to take responsibility for their actions. The chain of command is for orders, not information. Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that is obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right."

  • "Thanks to the dopamine release from alcohol, the feelings fo struggle, intimidation, fear, anxiety, and paranoia go away...Some teenagers discover that the magical forces of alcohol can be a much quicker way to find strength and confidence. Left unchecked, alcohol can become a substitute for relying on other people for support during periods of self-doubt."

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THE ALL NEW ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO EVERYTHING SODL IN HARDWARE STO

Simon Sinek

Average

Summary​

  • This a solid guide if you feel lost every time you go to a hardware store. The book is not a detailed guide to absolutely every product. For example, the section on Nuts and Bolts provide a decent overview but lacks details like threading, norms, etc. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Stains are an alternative to paint when you want the grain of the wood to show."

  • "Ridgid copper pipe for water comes in diameters from 1/8 to 12 inch and of various wall thicknesses known as types K (thick), L (medium) and M (thin)."

  • "Pipe size is almost always described and ordered in terms of its inside diameter. This is the 'nominal' size; it is not meant to be exact. The outside diameter varies in thickness."

  • "Application conditions count with exterior paint. The ideal conditions are when the temperature is between 50 and 90 Fahrenheit."

  • "Technically, hinges are 'handed' - specified for use on left- or right-hand doors."

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