Category: Psychology

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BR 121: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

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

Comments: Great research put together by an excellent writer. It is the equivalent of a Dan Brown-esque page turner for the psychology genre.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. We are creatures of habit – every one of us – much more than we realize. Habits are the “efficiency” unit of our brains and almost everything we do comes down to the habits we have in place. Luckily, these habits can be shaped and broken. Great people are just by-products of great habits.

2. A habit is a combination of a cue, an routine and a reward. e.g. To form an exercise habit, the cue could be leaving your clothes near your bed, the routine is exercise of course and the reward could be a cup of coffee!

3. There are some habits that are critical – called keystone habits. These are habits that influence almost all other habits. For manufacturing companies like Alcoa, safety was found to be the keystone habit. For humans, it has been found to be exercise.. (this has inspired me to no end to change exercise routines from 2-3 times a week to 5 times a week).

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BR 120: Authentic Happiness by Martin E.P. Seligman

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

Comments: Martin E.P. Seligman is the father of positive psychology and his book lived up to expectations. I didn’t find it “ground breaking” and that’s thanks to having read many a happiness book that builds on Seligman’s ground break findings.

The only miss is the lack of a “framework” in the book. I remember it as a collection of great anecdotes, many of which I’m sure to write about. I’ve always maintained that great books give you a framework in which to remember the key learnings – e.g. the 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey.

Top 3 Learnings

1. Two groups of school kids were studied for their happiness level. Group I involved the geeky kids who studied hard, attended various classes after school and played hard. Group II involved the “cool” kids who hung out in the mall. It was found that the geeky kids tested happier on every aspect except one – they thought the kids in the mall were happier.

What an awesome story.

2. Optimism is an acquired trait based on the 3 P’s – Permanence, Pervasiveness and Personalization. Optimists don’t believe a bad event is permanent, pervasive and that the world is “out to get them.”

3. Expressing anger and negative emotions does NOT help – contrary to popular belief.

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BR 119: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor.E.Frankl

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

Comments: Man’s search for meaning is as sincere and heartfelt a book you will find. It’s one of those books that is a must read simply because it teaches us what it means to be human.

The story details the experiences of Dr Frankl in Nazi concentration camps and his observations about life and the importance of meaning.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. We are often told that the essence of life is the pursuit of happiness. Frankl’s experiences taught him otherwise. In his experience, it’s meaning that makes life worth living..

2. There is an incredible paragraph on love by Viktor Frankl. It’s one of those that reminds us of the importance of love in this world, and the special place it holds in our life.

3. Success and happiness will ensue if we keep doing the right things. At the end of the day, we will be successful only because we forgot to think about it. Here’s the link to that incredible paragraph.

1. Read ASAP! · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research · Psychology

BR 116: The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

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Comments: Another Dan Ariely masterclass with very practical information about cheating. Very useful for us when we define “trust” systems as well as in our lifelong quest to manage ourselves.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Most people, when given a chance, cheat just a little bit. The reason for the “little bit” is that we work hard to stay consistent with our self image of being honest, straightforward people. But, at the same time, we find it hard to resist easy gains when we feel we cannot be found out.

2. Any reminders of ethics and responsibilities completely removes this cheating element e.g. students who were asked to recollect the ten commandments before heading into this experiment did not cheap. Similarly, signing honor codes etc at the start of the document prevent all cheating.

3. Every little act of cheating gives rise to more. In a fascinating set of experiments, it was found that people who fear fake brands or rip offs were more likely to cheat and view the world with a more suspicious lens that people who didn’t. This was a big insight for me.

Essentially, the cost of fakes and illegal downloads goes far beyond reducing profits of the companies involved.

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Psychology · Self Improvement

BR 115: Quiet by Susan Cain

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Comments: A very good book. Make that very very good particularly if you are an introverted person.

Susan Cain nicely lays out many of the things about modern society that are overly extrovert focused and thus, broken.

My only issue is that Susan falls prey to her own stereotyping very often i.e. she tends to describe or refer to introverts as a shy, lonely bunch. While that may be true for the majority, it sometimes tends to discount the fact that you can possess very good social skills as an introvert. In parts, it feels a bit more autobiographical/biographical than it should be.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Introverts kick ass. No, seriously. Susan brings out a lot of evidence of the power of introverts. And a lot of it makes intuitive sense since introverts do tend to do well in roles that require reflection and serious thought.

2. When you build, manage teams and organize gatherings, events, meetings and offsites – make allowances for both the introverts and the extroverts. As a team leader, make sure introverts have enough non group time. And as an offsite organizer, make sure there is enough personal time in the agenda for introverts to recuperate.

3. As a parent, watch for your child’s preference of introversion and extroversion. It may turn out that your child’s preferences are opposite to yours. Many extroverted parents respond to this by taking their child to a psychologist! Beware..

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BR 111: What Every Body Is Saying by Joe Navarro

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Comments: Nice book. Not necessarily the most entertaining book in the world but definitely has interesting insights.

Top 3 learnings:

1. The most honest parts of our body are our legs. As we move further up the body, we become increasingly dishonest as we learn to mask our emotions over time. As a result, if you see a couple in serious argument at a dinner table with their legs entangled – rest assured, all is well.

2. Any position that makes it hard for us to run is one that indicates our comfort. Our “lymbic” system is wired to react to any kind of threat. That explains why we immediately sit up when someone unknown enters a room (Especially if we are lying sprawled on the floor).

Another defence mechanism is covering important parts of our body. The best example here is the percentage of freshman girls who cover their chests with books.

3. Gravity defying gestures indicate happiness. Dancing, jumping, hugging, throwing our arms up are all gestures that define gravity and hence, indicate happiness.

Similarly, gestures that work with gravity i.e. shoulders drooping, head down etc indicate sadness. (Learnings here and here)

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BR 106: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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Comments: This is a legendary book. It should be in the ‘BUY it!’ category but I didn’t put it there for a few reasons –

1. The book is written a bit like a research thesis with very little synthesis. There are hundreds of great lessons, great stories of outcomes from experiments with the kind of insights that you would expect from Nobel laureate. That said, it could have benefited by having a writer help synthesize the many takeaways.

2. The other more personal issue I had is that this book, while comprehensive, felt slightly late in the game. I have been going down the path of understanding the mind and behavior over the past year and found that many of his insights had already been covered by other researchers.

3. It’s not a book that I would recommend to other’s who aren’t math geeks/knee deep in the subject. It is a rather geeky book and I realize not everybody would enjoy it.

4. I found it very difficult to get through. It really depends on why you read books. I generally read books with 2 things in mind – what can I apply in my life? And are there any stories I can use for my blogs, learnings etc?

While I did find a few great stories from the book, it took a lot of effort to figure out what is applicable. The ‘so what’ question wasn’t easily answered. Again, a real researcher’s book. Lots of great content. Just not that easy to discern the applicability in my point of view.

Top 3 Learnings: There were many learnings I took away from the book. Here are the top 3 that come to mind –

1. Our judgments and decision making are always extremely biased. There are too many biases to keep track of and biases are almost always unavoidable. The best thing we can do is to accept these biases that we do have and remind ourselves that we are biased when making big decisions. Just this act of acceptance and awareness could save us a lot of pain.

2. Be careful with trusting experts who use their ‘gut’. Essentially, expertise can be trusted in fields wher the natural behavior is recurring and predictable. The stock market, for example, is one of those fields where the ‘gut’ or ‘expert intuition’ or Kahneman’s system 1 doesn’t work.

3. We have 2 selves – the experiencing self and the remembering self. And, when it comes to experiences, we are almost fully dependent on the remembering self. At the end of the day, if our memory of an experience is great, we remember the experience well.

And what do we remember? We remember the peak and end of an experience. As long as the peak and end are good, our memory of an otherwise bad experience could end up being great!

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Philosophy · Psychology

BR 105: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

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

Comments: Deciding which category to put ‘The Geography of Bliss’ in was not easy. I eventually went for the ‘Buy it!’ category because it isn’t really a must read but, my god, I can’t think of any book that I have enjoyed reading more than this one.

Eric Weiner, a ‘grump’, journeys the world searching for the secret to finding happiness and chronicles his learnings from his travels. He has a wonderful sense of humor and his great writing style makes the book very hard to put down. (I listened to the book and he makes for a great narrator too!)

Every year, I pick a book to gift friends and family on their birthdays. This is my new ‘gift’ book. Loved it!

Top 3 Learnings: For a change, I decided to pick out passages as they are so well written!

1. “Money matters but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”

2. “Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don’t want to be happy, and that’s okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.”

3. “Attention’ is an underrated word. It doesn’t get the… well, the attention it deserves. We pay homage to love, and happiness, and, God knows, productivity, but rarely do we have anything good to say about attention. We’re too busy, I suspect. Yet our lives are empty and meaningless without attention.

My two-year-old daughter fusses at my feet as I type these words. What does she want? My love? Yes, in a way, but what she really wants is my attention. Pure, undiluted attention. Children are expert at recognizing counterfeit attention. Perhaps love and attention are really the same thing. One can’t exist without the other.”

Also, here is my take on attention

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BR 104: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

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

Comments: We are going through a golden age in understanding human behavior. And Dan Ariely’s research and book are definitely at the forefront of this shift in understanding. A very good book.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Conventional economics assumes we make logical rational decisions when, in reality, we exhibit repeated predictable irrationality.

2. I was astounded at some of the research on the placebo effect i.e. when medical treatments were substituted with ‘fake’ treatments that had equal (if not better) effect in terms of patient well being because the patients thought they had  been treated.

3. While the ability to choose gives us some happiness, choices do not. In fact, choices are amongst the biggest causes of unhappiness that exist.

Fascinating book. I’m well into my journey into modern behavioral economics and understanding. If  I had begun my journey with this book it would have been priority 1. A great book nevertheless. It will keep you intrigued and entertained..

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Creativity · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research · Psychology

BR 102: A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink

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Comments: A compelling read. I am a fan of Dan Pink’s work and this one didn’t disappoint.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Dan Pink’s thesis is simple – we moved from the era of physical labor to the era of the left brain where logical abilities were paramout. Now, we’re moving to the era of the right brain where abilities like creativity will take centre stage.

2. Here’s a learning on the importance of the ability to tell stories from the book.

3. Creativity is like a muscle. The more we engage it, the more we will develop it.

A compelling book with a clear thesis. I’ve read it 6 years late. But still worth reading!