January
1. Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg
- Expected more
- Explain how habits develop and the power of them
- philosophical questions like should gamblers be responsible for their habits
- Grit is presistening through a difficult task
- Best indicator of future success
- Highly Suggest
- Another physical book I bought based off the suggestion of a comedian on a podcast I heard.
- Very short read but powerful and impactful
- Talks about how every creative fights the resistant and how to overcome it.
- Not great science and other fundamentals to learn, but great inspiration to get out there and start working. The audiobook is about 3 hours long or so, I found a copy online somewhere that I’ll listen to and from work when I’m in need of inspiration. I’ve listened or read it probably 5 times already.
- Unsure when I bought it, but I heard him on a bunch of podcasts early in the year and bought the hardcover of his book because he was so interesting
- Didn’t disappoint, book is incredible. Goes over the principles that he lives his life and runs his company by.
- Was inspired to be completely honest because of him and paid off well. Also been developing my principles because of reading his book.
February
- Self Help book, a good general overview of things to help you face the world, nothing too in-depth
- Incredible book, Ericsson has been studying various experts for decades.
- Ericsson is the origin of 10k hour rule which isn’t a rule
- The hours are from students, not seasoned pros, he was studying at the time. Violin players at top music school. He found that the ones who were the most successful had over 10,000 hours of practice time logged in, compared to the middle successful group which was closer to 6-7k and the worst performers were around 4-5k. He explains in this book that he ran into some people who were close to or over 20,000 hours and weren't the highest level performers, also some who were under 10,000 hours who were making a good living in their field. The study was more to show that the people who practiced more often ended up doing better than those who put in less time. It wasn't to give an outline of how many hours one has to put in before being considered good. You can be good with much fewer hours or you might need 2-3x more, there's no magic bullet here.
- I need some entertainment, very fun book. Highly suggest to read if you haven’t yet. I’d like to finish the series in the near future
March
- Flow is a state you get into when you’re locked into a task. Time moves slowly, you’re focus is hard to break and intense. Ideas covered in almost every book on experts which it's covered well in Grit.
- Book just goes over it a bunch of times and gives case studies. Not worth the read.
- Most of what we know about motivation is wrong
- Algorithmic tasks
- Do the same thing many times the same way
- Carrot and stick works
- Heuristic tasks
- Creative tasks, new rules every time
- Carrot and stick doesn’t work, need direction and personal fullfillment
- Great book
- Brief summary of all of human history
- Interesting book, interesting conclusions, interesting and worth wild read.
- Friends will have immediate reaction to the name
- Christian friend said it was all lies based on the title
- Teacher said it was based on flawed Darwinism, book doesn’t really talk much about Darwinism.
- Careful what company you discuss it in.
- A legendary book, good but very dense.
- Two brain processes, the first being the one to make quick summaries based on previous situations which can often be wrong. One slow that let’s us examine all the details of the situation and reach a better conclusion.
- Fast brain good for repetitive tasks that we know well, saves effort
- We tend to default to fast brain rather than recruiting slow brain
- As I’m dyslexic so the rambling of numbers made much of the book difficult to follow. But referenced often in many books I’ve read this year and worth the effort.
April
- Two Mindsets
- Fixed mindset
- You’re a “math person” or defined by your IQ or natural talent. Someone who fails at something likely to avoid difficult tasks and give up thinking they aren’t a natural therefore unable to do it.
- Growth Mindset
- You can be a math person, even if it’s difficult but it will take time and effort to develop the ability. Growth mindset people tend to see a difficult task as a new challenge rather than an impossible feat.
- Great for anyone in a fixed mindset who can learn from this stuff but I’ve heard the topics discussed many times in other books, explored well in Grit as well. Also, I’m a growth mindset type so just preaching to the choir.
- The science of timing.
- Interesting read, mostly some tidbits to help understand your biological clock but nothing shocking or any large take aways.
- Did learn entering the workforce during an economic crash can cause life long issues, which I entered the work force after the 08 crash so that’s wonderful to know statistically it will take me 20 or more years to catch up to people who entered during a good economy, like now.
- Probably a big deal when released in the 90s, now it’s just a really long book covering things we already know.
- Be nice and people respond well.
- Emotional intelligence, EQ as it’s commonly called in business circles modern day, is more important than IQ. Anyone who follow Gary Vanderchuk knows this well and he’ll often talk about EQ, this is where that idea comes from.
- Not really worth the read unless you really just want testimonials on how being a good person gets results. Felt like listening to someone brag they are right for 14 hours.
- Excellent book
- We do things that seem irrational but there’s reason for it and we do it often, as well expect it
- Great for marketing, how to direct people to what you want them to be buying
- How Supply and demand can be easily manipulated
- The addiction we have to a cost of zero
- Many other things, highly suggest, one of the books I’ve already read twice, which I did a couple weeks after reading it a first time. Plan on reading it a few more times as well
- Another great one that I’ve read twice already, before June got the second reading in.
- Covers the 7 principles of influence and how to get people to do what you want.
- Great for making sure you don’t fall trap to them, also great for coaching to get people to follow your lead.
May
- Last year I read a bunch of books about socialism and Jordan Peterson referenced this one often in his book so finally broke down and started it.
- Only about 15 hours into the 25 hours of the first volume. Pretty shocking to hear what people went through during the height of Stalin’s time in charge of the USSR. Only so much I can hear about terrible conditions before I had to take a break and listen to something else. I plan on getting all 3 volumes done but that’s about 100 hours of audio books so gonna take my time.
June
- An incredible book just got done with it last week and already looking forward to the reread.
- Confirmed my suspicion about how important culture is to any group or business. Had a terrifying story about how the culture of the soldiers in charge of watching over the nuclear warheads was terrible leading to some unsafe behaviors. Explains why and shows good cultures.
- Eye-opening for any coach as the focus is on the group rather than the figurehead. That drawing the attention away from you, as the leader, can help the group be more successful.
- Cannot suggest enough.
- Youth chess prodigy who gave it up in his late teens to become a push hands (a martial art) world champion in his early 20s.
- Explains the principles behind how he learned how to compete in both, completely unrelated fields at the highest level.
- Many great insights and tools on how to get to an expert level in competitive event, many of which can be transferred to other areas.
- Excellent book. Turns out I actually read this one back in the day. Covers the idea that talent is overrated and much of success is from people working to get good at something, not being born with natural ability to do it. Covers many of the issues raised in other books mentioned but enough unique ideas to be worth the read.
