Author: alearningaday

1. Read ASAP! · Bio/Autobiographies · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career · Creativity · History · Psychology · Self Improvement · Skills

BR 168: Mastery by Robert Greene

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Category: 1 – Read ASAP! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: A Robert Greene masterclass. Lovely mix of biographical stories wrapped within a compelling framework. A lot of the stuff isn’t new. But, the combination is potent.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Mastery is a culmination of years of intense deep work. There is no easy way.

2. Apprenticeship is both awesome and dangerous. On the one hand, your learning curve speeds up with great mentors. However, very few mentors turn out to be large minded enough to “let go” – it is the typical bad parent problem all over again

3. Developing emotional intelligence is a useful tool to make sure your mastery gets the credit it deserves. This section spoke to me. I assumed I had high EI but had learnt from a relationship that that wasn’t the case. This chapter taught me one simple but critical lesson – stop listening to what people say. Instead, listen to what they do.

Book notes here

3. SHELF it · Bio/Autobiographies · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Entrepreneurship · History · Technology

BR 167: The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: If you have any interest in technology whatsoever, this book is a must read. Awesome awesome 140 odd year journey starting from when Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace conceptualized the modern computer.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. History favors writing about the individual but great innovations were always made by teams that worked incredibly well with each other.. and almost always built upon the good work done by many others.

2. A collection technology change makers have been at the intersection of the arts and sciences (e.g. Steve Jobs). The big learning here is that diversity of skills, interests, etc., are really productive. The greatest tech innovations have come about when diverse minds came together.

3. Artificial intelligence has always been two decades away.. (;-))

Book notes here

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Entrepreneurship · Philosophy · Psychology · Self Improvement

BR 166: Essentialism by Greg McKeown

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Category: 2 – BUY it! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Good book overall. Greg’s concepts and thoughts definitely resonated and felt consistent. However, I felt that the book repeatedly prescribed ways to do things and hardly ever spoke about the psychology or the “why” behind things. In that sense, I felt it lacked the depth I’d have liked and often skated over the difficult stuff. And, I felt it was often a collection of lists without structure. (as a good illustration, I had to go back to the book notes to write my 3 top learnings..)

Top 3 Learnings:

1. A lovely story about Stephen Covey prioritizing his daughter above a friend who he ran into. The learning here was that we need to learn to say no to stuff we don’t prioritize so we can say yes to the stuff we do prioritize

2. Mission statements need to be concrete and inspirational (think of them as a 2×2)

3. Less is more. :)

Book notes here

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Career · Skills

BR 165: Case in Point by Marc Cosentino

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments and Learning: 

Top book if you are preparing for case interviews – I had case interviews in a couple of roles I interviewed for in my technology internship quest in the 1st year of my MBA – this book was very useful.

No learning blogged aside from – solve as many cases as possible and develop an approach that’ll help you tackle case interviews. :)

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Career · Skills

BR 164: Case Interview Secrets by Victor Cheng

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Comments and Learning: 

Top book if you are preparing for case interviews – I had case interviews in a couple of roles I interviewed for in my internship quest in the 1st year of my MBA – this book was very useful.

My favorite learning from the book was the importance of taking the first 2 minutes in a case and developing an approach/structure for the problem. If you structure a problem wrong or just don’t, there are few ways back in a case.

No learning blogged aside from – solve as many cases as possible and develop an approach that’ll help you tackle case interviews. :)

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career · Skills · Technology

BR 162: Cracking the PM interview by Gayle Laakmann, Jackie Bavaro

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Comments and Learning: 

1. Top book if you are preparing for Product Management interviews in technology – this book was very helpful in my internship recruiting quest in the first year of my MBA

2. Book learnings here

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Creativity · Psychology · Technology

BR 161: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

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Category: 3 – SHELF it (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments and Learning:
1. This is a very important book – designers all over have probably read this book. I think of it as a must read if you are interested in anything to do with design. I read this as I was thinking of product design.

2. If a user keeps making an error when using your product, the problem is with your product.

3. Learnings here

2. BUY it! · Entrepreneurship · Self Improvement

BR 160: What To Do When It’s Your Turn by Seth Godin

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Category: 2 – BUY it! (All Categories are 1 – Read ASAP!, 2 – BUY it!, 3 – SHELF it, 4 – SOMEDAY it)

Comments and Learning: I pick up Seth’s books when I’m in need of inspiration and this one delivered. This one is special also because it features a post from yours truly. so, do buy it. :)

I think of this book as similar in style to “The War of Art” – it is a book you can pick up whenever you need inspiration and you will not be disappointed. It is also a much better paper book because it has a lot of images that makes reading it really easy.

1. Read ASAP! · Business · Management

BR 159: The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

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Priority: 1 – Read ASAP! (All Categories are 1) Read ASAP! 2) BUY it! 3) SHELF it 4) SOMEDAY it)

Comments: Outstanding book. I rated this a category 2 book as it is, at its heart, a book on operations management. It is, however, one of those books whose insights I’ve kept coming back to – both at work and in my life.

The other note – it is an excellent audio book as it is produced like an audio movie. Makes for a very interesting read.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. First, understand the goal and ONLY optimize with respect to the goal. Once you understand the goal, understand the bottlenecks. Imagine a plant’s bottleneck / constrained resource can produce 400 units. Having non bottleneck machines produce more than 400 only excess inventory. In fact, if market demand is 300, we are in our interest to produce around 300. The rest is waste.

2.  “Local efficiencies” are useless. Having one part of the plant product top class equipment while everyone is below average and late is useless. The big picture is what matters. Once again, understand the goal and only optimize for it. Beware metrics that result in optimizing parts of the picture at the expense of the whole (e.g. cost cutting on R&D that messes with future pipeline)

3. When trying to understand a problem, think of the Toyota 5 Why system. Ask why 5 times so you get to the route of the problem.

Book notes here.

Add on Mar 16, 2016: This book has had a huge impact on me in retrospect. Some very powerful life analogies here. 2 lessons I’ve repeated many a time –

1. Productivity is actions that us move toward the goal.

2. You can’t optimize sub-systems (point 2).