Book Review

Book Review – Managing Oneself

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Key takeaways:

  1. Know your strengths. Know your weaknesses. Track your activities to find out what these are. Following this discovery, spend more time on what you are good at – the 80-20 rule. Analysis like this will show what you need to learn to get to where you want to go.
  2. Don’t take pride in the things you don’t know, that is a defeatist mentality.
  3. Listeners vs Readers: identify which you are and know your strengths and weaknesses.
  4. How do you learn? Sketching, listening, graphs and tables, reading, etc. Identify what works and stick to it.
  5. Do you work as a decision maker or as an adviser?
  6. What are your values? The “Why?” question. Answer this first before you embark on a new task.
  7. Know where you belong and do yourself a favor and step out of a position you are not meant to be at.
  8. Have the courage and discipline to say, “NO, I cannot do the task this way, but I can do it this other way”. Make sure your management understands how you work. If they don’t, then communicate this to them directly.
  9. Making predictions for the next 1.5yrs is reasonable; beyond that is not. It is important to measure and track your progress towards your goals.
  10. Working with others: understand their personality type and how they work, then adjust yourself accordingly. Be clear with your communications, spell things out.

These are the major points I took away from this book.

You can find this book wherever you get your books from.

Book Review – Getting Things Done

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Key takeaways:

  1. Batching: work at designated times only, e.g., check emails and respond to them during a blocked time session – do not exceed this time block. Parkinson’s principle: work will dilate as to fill the time allocated to it.
  2. Buckets: categorize tasks in buckets and tackle them together. This is more efficient than switching between task categories.
  3. Park it: during the day as thoughts and to-do tasks come up, write them down in categorized task lists. Once it is written down, it is out of your headspace, which frees your mind for more creative things.
  4. Some day tasks: list tasks that are unimportant together and check them off during blocked time sessions.
  5. Periodic reviews: review your process at set times, e.g., weekly. Write an SOP (standard operating procedure) for yourself and systematize your process. During periodic reviews, edit and optimize your SOP’s.

Tools that I use to help accomplish this: OneNote, Google Tasks, Google Keep, Insightly CRM (for project management), and my favourite, an old-fashioned notebook/pencil.

These are the major points I took away from this book.

You can get this book here: anywhere you get your books from.

Book Review – Think Like A Freak

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Key takeaways:

1. Herd mentality wins: most people make decisions based on what others are doing
2. Think like a freak, think like a kid: outside the box thinking comes naturally to kids
3. Identify the problem: take a step back and identify the root cause
4. I don’t know’ – the hardest 3 words in the English language: most people will not admit their ignorance and persevere in their wrong ways
5. Shift framework: look from the other person’s perspective
6. Let the garden weed itself: most problems go away with time, or the person who asked for help figures out out
7. Beware of false positives:
8. Stories stick: most people remember stories instead of facts
9. Fail fast, fail cheap: make mistakes early on and don’t be afraid of trying

You can get the book here: THINK LIKE A FREAK

Book Review – The 80/20 Principle

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Key takeaways:
80% is waste, 80% of decisions are idiotic; people/organizations are reluctant to change/stop the 80% waste; 80% of language is from 20% of words (useful to language learning hobbyists like myself).

Happiness:
Money not spent today will compound, happiness not spent today is lost; Do fun things that make yourself happy now; create a list of Happiness islands/unhappiness islands: list top 10 in each category and eliminate the rest.

Time management vs 80/20:
Not the same thing: Time management asks you to do more in less time; 80/20 says don’t do the things you don’t want to. To gain more time for doing the things you enjoy, Eliminate low value activities – just say NO. Low value activities are: things others want you to do, things you don’t enjoy doing, and things no one is interested in. Eliminate unreliable/low quality collaborators.

Work:
Identify yourself as:

Like to workSelf-employedManage others
High need of achievementorganization peopleprofessorsEntrepreneurs/founders
Low need of achievementvolunteerfree-lancersecretary/manager
Types of work-people


High achievement rules:
Specialize in a niche, enjoy the niche, knowledge is power, identify your core customers, identify 80/20, learn from the best, become self-employed early on, employ net-value creators, use outside contractors except for your core skills, exploit capital leverage.
*Outsource everything but your core competencies.
Arbitrage rule: in an organization, 80% of business comes from 20% of employees, these employees are not paid as such, if you want to get paid more, be in business for yourself, and if you can, hire like minded people.
Move. Find excuse to work for the best, they see things differently, spend time differently. Self employ to capture all the value you create.
If your current career/employer allows you to all of this, keeping you happy, continue doing that.


Negotiations:
Have many negotiation points, keep your core points hidden in the other unimportant points; give away the dummy points, people like to win points; use time: last minute demands are more likely to be met, if more time is given, the negotiation is not favorable.

Money:
Easy to get, easy to make more, but, marginal utility of money decreases sharply; Money obeys 80/20; Investing creates wealth due to compounding returns.

You can get the book here: THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE

Book Review – How to Win Friends and Influence People

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Key Takeaways:

1. Become genuinely interested in people: when active listening, pay attention to the details and be genuinely interested.

2. Smile: always be smiling; passively and when conversing with others.

3. Remember people’s names: to prove that you are genuinely interested, remember people’s names. Work out a system: for example, ask for the person’s hobby and associate that to their name.

4. Be a good listener: people remember how you make them feel, and everyone likes being heard, so encourage others to talk about themselves. In doing so, try to see the other person’s point of view.

5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interest: don’t discuss things they wouldn’t care about, instead, share relevant stories, ideas, and topics.

6. Make the person feel important: if you do all of the above right, this will come naturally. Remember to do it sincerely.

You can get the book here: How to Win Friends & Influence People

Book Reviews

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“Reading is the enemy of writing.” Not sure who said this, but it is wrongly attributed to Einstein. He is also, probably wrongly, attributed to have said, “After a certain age, one should stop reading.”

Having said this, I continue to read books on various topics that interest me. Self-help, finance, programming, academic books, etc. I mostly “read” in the form of audio-books, while I am driving, working-out, or doing something else that requires minimal cognitive effort. While I do this, I make notes to reflect on for myself. I am sharing these notes on my website. These notes are by no means comprehensive, rather, points from the book that were most meaningful to me.

I hope you find value in these notes and “read” the books for yourself if you like.

I will have links on my reviews where you can buy the books/audio-books. These are affiliate links, but, only for the books that I would buy and gift to my friends.

Cheers!

10 Must Read Books, and Why You Must Read Them

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This list is in order of influence it had on me.

1.The Selfish Gene

The single most significant book I have ever read. It talks about biology, evolution, society structure, individualism, genetics, memetics and everything that is Homo Sapien related. The ideas and discussions in this book were a door-opener for me into exploring other books on human society and religion.

2. How to Win Friends and Influence People

What is the best way to be liked? Show genuine interest in others, active listening and empathy. These are the core principles of successful sales people and leaders alike.

3. Rich Dad Poor Dad

Understanding the difference between Assets and Liabilities is very well explained in this book.

4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

No list of top ten books is complete without this. The habits in this book are explained in a practical way and easy to remember and implement. You can make wallpapers out of this.

5. Eat That Frog

If you are presented with a plate of frogs, which one do you eat first? Why eat the ugliest looking and biggest frog first.

6. The One Thing

We cannot multi-task. Focus on the important things that result in biggest affects – i.e. Pareto’s Law, i.e. the 80/20 principle.

7. The Compound Effect

Start with: your core values>choices you make>habits you develop>build momentum>compound over time>arrive to your destination.

This was the workflow outlines in this book to help achieve your goals.

8. The Power of Habit

Cue>Routine>Reward

To change a habit, keep the cue and reward, change the routine. Identify your triggers and root cause for the bad habits. Identify your Keystone habits. Realize that willpower is a limited resource.

These were my takeaways from this hugely practical book.

9. Managing Oneself

Another influential book to boost your productivity to the next level. It has simple English and practical lessons you can start using immediately.

10. Pitch Anything

In order to get others to do what you ask, realize that the human brain is primitive and limited in it’s capacity. There is just too much noise to pay attention to what you have to say. When two parties meet, their “frames” clash and stack. The frame on top is the dominant one.

11. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

This book is about the psychology of marketing.

12. Financial Intelligence of Entrepreneurs

Practical book for anyone interested in becoming an entrepreneur.

 

So there you go. A couple of bonus books. I could add a handful more, but these are the most significant ones.

 

Important Disclaimer

It is easy to get side tracked and forget the reason you started reading these “productivity books”. Remember your goal and what you need to accomplish. These books are just a means to help you get there.

The following tips are for optimum reading habits:

  • start with watching a summary video on the book or read a summary article. If the summary seems something that will help you, then dig deeper
  • do not “read” the book, instead listen to the “audio book” version
  • make your own summary notes as key takeaways while you listen to the book. This should be no more than a couple paragraphs, or a few bullet points. Every book just has a few ideas – about 2 ideas on average. The rest is “fluff”. Having a short summary means you can start to apply what you learnt
  • if you can find a copy of the book in audio format from your library, that is ideal. Use an app to do this. Do not pay for your first read because you don’t yet know if the contents are good for you. If they are significant, then you can put the book in your “personal library wish list”, with the intention of lending to other
  • track the books you listen to in a spreadsheet

 

Have fun!