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

BR 115: Quiet by Susan Cain

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

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..

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Self Improvement

BR 114: 9 Things Successful People Do Differently by Heidi Grant Halvorson

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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 an HBR article expanded into a book. A very short, breezy read.

Top 3 learnings:

1. There are 2 kinds of optimism – unrealistic and realistic.

Realistic optimists have a belief that good things will happen but caveat it with the understanding that hard work would need to go in, and that bumps along the way are inevitable.

2. There are 2 ways of interpreting the world i.e. entity theory and incremental theory.

This is essentially the “fixed” and “fluid” mentality concept. Entity theorists believe that intelligence and ability are constant while incremental theorists believe that everything is malleable.

The easy test is what you do when things go wrong. Entity theorists respond with “maybe I’m not any good at this” while incremental theorists focus on improving their preparation, their strategy etc.

3. There are 2 types of goals – “be good” goals and “get better” goals “Be good” goals are those that focus on showcasing excellence. If it is achieved, that’s great. But if not, they kill our confidence.

Get better goals are those that focus on constant improvement and that allow us to fail.

Conclusion: Be a realistic optimist, an entity theorist and set “get better” goals. :-)

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

BR 113: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

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Comments: Interesting book with a take on “lifestyle” entrepreneurs i.e. entrepreneurs who do things they like and fund a very good lifestyle for themselves.

If you are in touch with tech/entrepreneurship on the internet at large, it’s unlikely most of the ideas in the book are new. It still makes for a good read. (The other side of the story is – if you are interested in or are contemplating entrepreneurship, it’s a nice  book to read)

Top 3 learnings:

1. Launch fast and iterate. This has become common wisdom in a way but this books shows many examples of those who launched, iterated and got much better.

2. Keep working on side projects. Most of the lifestyle entrepreneurs’ ventures began as side projects.

3. Resourcefulness and initiatives go a long way. Lots of great examples again of people who generated significant value out of practically nothing (hence, the $100 start up)

Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Entrepreneurship · Technology

BR 112: Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

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Comments: Good book. Lots of good ideas packaged together by a team that clearly walk the talk. A nice breezy read.

Top 3 learnings:

1. Scale is optional. Everyone talks about having a big business. You don’t need to chase scale if you want to have a high quality business + a great life. (Resonates personally with my beliefs)

2. Quality is not optional. There’s a lovely story about a sandwich maker who are generally open only till early afternoon after which their sandwiches sell out. The reason for that is they are unwilling to compromise on having anything less than the first round of bread baked by their baker of choice.

3. Question a lot of the basic norms in work today. 37 Signals seem to be the anti thesis of a normal company today – they don’t work long hours, don’t do long meetings and do almost everything contrary to the norm. And it works. (Resonates fully again with my belief that we must always ask ‘why’ and understand why things are the way they are. If the reasoning doesn’t make sense, make sure we ask ‘why not’.)

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Psychology · Skills

BR 111: What Every Body Is Saying by Joe Navarro

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

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)

2. BUY it! · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Leadership · Marketing · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research · Self Improvement

BR 110: Start with Why by Simon Sinek

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Comments: It hammers home a simple idea and really demonstrates the power of a (simple) framework in making ideas stick. Only downside is that it can occasionally be repetitive – but, maybe, that is the point. :)

Top 3 learnings:

1. Start with Why

2. Start with Why. Then move to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’.

3. Start with Why. Always explain your purpose.

I have been working on implementing this in everything I do. It hasn’t become habitual yet but I’m hoping it will become soon. A simple, really powerful idea.

There are lots of other little lessons from the book that I could list in the top 3 learnings but I fear diluting what I really took away from the book.

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research · Self Improvement · Skills

BR 109: Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

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Comments: A compelling book built off the research of Anders Ericsson.

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

1. Deliberate practice is everything. EVERYTHING. Deliberate practice is what differentiates the average from the greats. It’s not just about 10,000 hours. It’s 10,000 hours of deliberate practice that makes the difference.

2. Over time, deliberate practice changes the constitution of our brains. When we look at top performers and say they are ‘different’, we are actually spot on. They are different because their practice has developed that particular part of their brains. So, in short, we are probably born with similar capabilities but the hours we spent developing our craft/ability is what separates us in the long run.

3. It’s all cumulative. Ability accumulates over time. And, there’s no such thing as talent.

4. So how does a kid become a genius? The typical genius starts very early and is egged on by her parents (not pushed, but egged). As she grows up, she develops the necessary intrinsic motivation that comes from experiencing success. That’s generally the beginning of something very special..

Great book. Must read. Go get it. You won’t regret it.

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

BR 108: Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky

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Comments: I read this thanks to many favorable reviews and I walked away feeling a bit let down. I really couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

It’s definitely a very interesting book and describes the inside workings of Apple very well. Just didn’t think it was amazing.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. Integrity. And here, I refer to Apple, the company. There is a certain ‘wholeness’ to everything Apple does. And their approach to communication, design showcases this from time to time. It’s one message and it’s always well delivered. That’s very hard to do in a big company.

2. Organizing the company around functional lines wherein you don’t need to ‘move up’ to management if you want to do better.

3. Maybe the whole purpose of the status quo is to change it. Change is the only constant in nature. Apple broke all traditional management beliefs and practices and became wildly successful. The nice thing here is that they lived their mission – to change the status quo.

And, of course, it will fascinating to see how Apple fare without Steve Jobs at the helm..

2. BUY it! · Bio/Autobiographies · Book Review Actions · Business · Money

BR 107: The Big Short by Michael Lewis

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

Comments: I am fast becoming a Michael Lewis fan. I loved the 2 movies his books inspired ‘The Moneyball’ and his fantastic article on Vanity Fair detailing the Irish bubble. ‘The Big Short’ was recommended to me by a colleague as a great book on the financial crisis.

This book takes a look at the unique characters who actually saw the collapse of the financial system coming and details the trials, tribulations and change they went through before and after the crisis.

Great book. A Dan Brown-esque page turner for those with an interest in understanding how we got to the biggest financial crisis since the great depression.

Top 3 Learnings:

1. ‘There is a fine line that divides investing and gambling.’ Not a new learning but the whole book’s essential synthesis was re-learning this concept.

2. The concept of rating agencies like S&P, Moody’s, Fitch and the like are broken. They are easily fooled by the smarter investment bankers far too often.

3. It’s amazing how badly broken the financial system was/is. When we pause for a moment, the financial system doesn’t really create anything. Yet, it accounted for 40% of the US economy in 2007. Banks essentially went from organizations that helped provide capital to businesses to profit generation machines. Sprinkle generous amounts of greed and take away any sense of principles/values from the dish and you can see the recipee for disaster.

And one more..

4. It’s amazing how each of the ‘outliers’ who actually saw the crisis coming was, by all accounts, a weirdo in his own right. Even the smartest people out there drank their own kool aid and got deluded in the mass hysteria.

3. SHELF it · Book Review Actions · Book Reviews · Novel Concepts and Interesting Research · Psychology

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!