Category: Book Review Actions

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

BR 248: Valley of Genius by Adam Fisher

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

Comments: This book would be category 2 if you are a technology buff. It is a wonderfully put together collection of commentary of the story of Silicon Valley in a unique format – as excerpts from various interviews. I loved the first half of the book as there was a lot about the early history of the valley that was new to me.

Top Lessons:

  1. I was frequently reminded of the notion of clusters of talent. It happened at Fairchild Semiconductor (leading to Intel), happened at General Magic (leading eventually to the iPhone), and then at PayPal and so on.
  2. History doesn’t repeat itself.. but it does rhyme. A lot of the issues around content moderation were faced in “The Well” and a lot of what Napster struggled with was a precursor to Spotify.
3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Career · Psychology · Relationships

BR 247: The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway

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

Comments: The Algebra of Happiness is a nice collection of his weekly newsletters with many nice nuggets. This book didn’t rank as high on my list as I’d already seen most of the content. I guess I was looking for something I hadn’t seen when I read the book.

Top Lessons:

  1. Hard work and lack of balance early in your career has a disproportionate impact later in your career. Speed matters. There’s no right way to do it. It involves trade offs.
  2. Most important decision you make is who you marry. Good sex is 10% of a good relationship but bad sex can be 90%. Aside from that, your values – especially on money matter a lot.
  3. The ratio of how much you sweat to watching others sweat is a leading indicator to success.
1. Read ASAP! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research

BR 246: The Diet Myth by Tim Spector

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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 must read. Tim Spector is a geneticist who does a fantastic job tackling the many myths that surround nutrition. This is a book I’ve recommended in every conversation about diet since.

Top 3 Lessons:

1. There is no perfect diet because it is an interaction between the person’s gut microbes and the food. Everyone reacts to different things differently.

2. Focus on natural, plant based, foods, Milk and food with living bacteria (yoghurt, cheeses), etc., are recommended. You won’t go wrong with diet that worked for your grandmother. Everything is best in moderation.

3. Avoid artificial/synthesized food, vitamins, and antibiotics.

4. SOMEDAY it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Management

BR 245: Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan

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

Comments: I think this might work for folks who are working in an old-world industry with no exposure to technology driven workplaces. It didn’t work for me. I got through 80% of the book before I quit.. so, I might have missed something game changing in the last 20%…

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Design

BR 243: Microinteractions by Dan Saffer

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

Comments: An interesting book on the importance of getting the small details in Ux design right.

Top 3 Lessons:

1. When microinteractions are done well, you get to design “signature moments” – e.g. “You’ve got Mail.”

2. The more frequent the microinteraction, the more visible it should be.

3. The best, most elegant, microinteractions are often those that allow users a variety of verbs with the fewest possible nouns. E.g. users can enter any credit card and the field auto detects which one it is (versus asking users to select a credit card first).

3. SHELF it · Bio/Autobiographies · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Business · Management · Psychology

BR 242: Principles by Ray Dalio

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

Comments: This is going to be a controversial rating for a book that has been lauded a fair bit in the mainstream media. Ray Dalio is a legendary investor and is clearly very smart. I just happened to follow his work via his videos and his “Principles” website after having done a case on Bridgewater in graduate school. So, a lot of the book wasn’t new to me. It would be in the “Buy it” category otherwise.

Top 3 Lessons: 

1. Ray Dalio’s success built on investing since he was 12 + reflecting on experiences + approaching every decision with a fear of being wrong (never being over confident).

2. First order and second order consequences are often in opposition. Unhealthy food has a good first auto consequence but a bad second out a consequence.
Question – Will you choose a painful healthy route or an unhealthy comfortable delusion?

3. Managers are engineers. They focus on setting up the machine to create the outcomes they seek. Build systems first, then put people in.

1. Read ASAP! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Fiction · Technology

BR 239: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

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

Comments: Ready Player One was a fun and riveting read that I’m sure I’m going to revisit. The book has a lot of references to 80s pop culture that I didn’t get – it still was that good. Great fiction transports you to a different world – and, as I was reading Ready Player One, I felt fully immersed in the world created by Gregarious Simulation Systems.

It changed my point of view on Virtual Reality from a skeptic to someone who believes it is likely to change how we think of life on this planet. It also inspired me to read more fiction.