Nash

great actionable and approachable book

Filled with anecdotes from the author's career in counseling people with various addictions, the book does a good job in contextualizing what went wrong, how to debug the problem and then how to solve it using various techniques. A lot of this is obvious but then again, the solution to most of our problems is obvious.

The singular most important book on sales

A fantastic book for leaders who want to get things done, cut through the fluff and take a hard look at their ambition

If you're a fan of Song of Ice and Fire, this is a fun, quick read. Broken in 3 stories, Dunk and Egg are affable characters set in the bigger backdrop of the Targaryen empire.

Absolutely the most significant book I've read in 15 years and I wish I had read it 15 years ago. While books on Getting Things Done etc focus more on tactical and process; this book is about strategy. It focuses on what you want done and why they want done. This book dives deep in human phyche, your fears and what is holding you back. If you want to restructure your life, achieve what you want or just want to be happy, start with this book. Toby does a great job of talking to you and walking you through the tools you need to get what you want.

Essential reading for people entering their careers. This books rules against the ill given advice of “follow your passion” or the idea that somehow there's a built in passion and you just need to find it. Instead, this books argues that you need to be good at something first, and passion will follow. Essentially: if you're good at what you do, all else will follow.

could've been a blog post, but some useful nuggets

If you're early in your productivity journey, this can be a helpful primer. It can get very proscriptive, which works for a beginner. Not as great for someone mid way in their journey and they already know how to get things done. The key take away is to aim high and work constantly to achieve those goals.

This was an entertaining read through the lens of a 20-something Jordan as he works on the classic Prince of Persia. It's an instructive read for anyone who is an entrepreneur or a maker. You sit in the mind of another maker and see first-hand the rollercoaster. There are weeks full of doubt and procrastination. Sometimes, the procrastination would last eight months. Then motivation would strike, and Jordan would work obsessively, sometimes leaving work by 3am.

The book is a collection of Jordan's own diaries written during this time period. They are augmented with modern-day notes from him on the sides. But I wish he had added more details. For example, one of the most innovative things Jordan did was use motion capture, probably one of the very first case of the use of mocap in a video game. How did he come to that, or why did he decide to do that? It wasn't covered in this book.

Or,when PoP launches, it feels like a flop. It doesn't catch on. It's frustrating for everyone. This is never addressed. It's only mentioned in passing that Jordan receives a sizable monthly check from loyalties one day. But it felt very anticlimactic. The book quickly starts to fizzle. Or maybe its Jordan maturing and being less fazed with the ups and down of life.

On the whole, its a very enjoyable read, highly recommended to fans of the game

Unfortunately, this books is 4 times as expensive as the Four Steps to the Epiphany and covers only fourth the ground.

The Leanstartup is a good starting book to read if you're about to start a startup. But I recommend Steve Blank's The Four Steps to the Epiphany if you're serious.

Great book on various possible models to pick if you don't have access to funding right away (which is the case in Pakistan). It talks about 5 possible business models that can work in this mode which are not capital intensive (for example, you can't make a power plant like this, you need lots of capex upfront.)

Some key models discussed were: marketplaces (a la Airbnb), subscription businesses (like SaaS with monthly recurring revenue), service-to-product (think Netsol's journey to LeaseSoft), scarcity model (like Zara or Banana republic and all the Flash Sale sites), pay-in-advance models (think air ticketing, dropshipping, threadless)

The book is written by an academic but he does a good job of talked about 2 successes and 1 failure in each model and their causes.

Decent summary of what's trapping your potential

While our lifestyles have moved forward with nee cool things, science is decades behind in figuring out the consequences. We saw this with cigarettes, we're seeing this now with refined sugars and saturated fats and the complete chaos they play with our hormones and our bodies. But we're trapped. The food tastes too good. The social media posts are too fun. We can't seem to disengage. This book is a good eye opener on how far we've all fallen down the pleasure trap.

The authoritative guide on using Kanban for development

Backed with years of large scale development, this book makes a compelling case and practical steps on how to implement Kanban in your dev team.

great science fiction!

The author has a knack for great (and often hilarious) writing. It's surprising to read a great story that was written so recently. I did expect more from the story progression but then there's book 2 and 3 as well. This book is smart, has a number of interesting sci fi ideas and themes.

A great, fun read

I really enjoyed reading this book both as an engineer, a product designer and a CEO. This is a great “view from below” of how an engineer's day was at Apple working on the next great thing and this has some great lessons. One striking thing about the way Apple worked (and maybe still does) was by assigning vast amounts of time and ownership to a feature. Ken worked on the iOS keyboard for years, same with the Safari browser. That kind of luxury is largely gone in the internet-time world where sprints are 2-weeks long, there's a major launch every quarter and so on. But this is only how you can create really deep, well-thought our products. There's a great lesson here about that, and I highly recommend you read it.

a good guide for “debugging” your emotions

This book does a decent job of summarizing contemporary books on emotions covering items like procrastination, resentment, jealousy and even depression. It's a quick read and refers to lots of other works but it's a good starting point on what is possible. You can dig into a topic or reference if there's something you like.

the critical handbook for a software practitioner/leader

A great summer of 24 practices, backed with data, analysis and fantastic commentary that when implemented well, can really change the way your company makes better, faster and happier software

Have you ever yearned to do something in life so bad that it became an obsession? That obsession hits you in your early years when you have clarity of purpose. As you grow old, things become less certain, your inner drive gets replaced with your inner demons, the lies we tell ourselves about what we can and cannot do. This book is a journey to your inner-self, about what it means to step back and listen; about following your Personal Legend and pushing forward. It's a great book for anyone trying to do something hard and keeps thinking about giving up.

Faulty correlations, pseudo-science-y, assertions without any substantiation. I bought this book looking to understand how good ideas are formed but I was highly disappointed.

Anecdotes and history lessons aside, my first clue was when the author extols how great the NeoNurture baby incubators that use automobile parts and how they solved a real problem. I looked up NeoNurture and it turns out, they were never manufactured. Not one.

Here's what the book itself says: “We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition.”

Looks like the author fell into his own romanticization. This was the start of my disappointment. He goes on and creates rather strange analogies such as early civilization acting like a “liquid”. He creates a 10/10 principle where he explains it takes 10 years for an idea to manifest and another 10 years for the idea to spread. Then he talks about YouTube and how they did it in 1/1 without a significant explanation why.

Critical book for anyone looking to begin a startup. The only problem is that it is terribly edited and reads like a bunch of school notes cobbled together. It's hard to read because of the format but an important one!

This is a different angle on being more productive: don't rely on willpower alone. Remove bad stimuli, remove bad actors, remove anything negative from your environment and build an environment of accountability and one that helps you reach your goals.

As someone who averages 8 hours per day on the phone, this was the right book to take me through actionable steps to cut out the things I didn't need and improve my focus and win back lost time.

Nice quick read on how great companies die. My quick take aways were:

It's a five stage process which a company goes through when it starts falling. At any stage, they can reverse their fate.
Interesting failure signs:
- Trying to find Big-Bang, silver bullet solutions to problems rather than incrementally fixing the core through data
- Junior staff shielding senior from bad news
- “Explaining Away” bad news or bad data

After reading this book, turns out, no one can teach you self-discipline

Jocko is the drill Sargent that wants the best out of you. But he doesn't want to enforce the discipline. He wants it to come from within you. But how can one cultivate self-discipline? Surprisingly, the book gives to direction in that other than “Just do it”. And I understand that. It's hard to explain how and where self-discipline comes from. What this book is good for is explaining the benefits of self-discipline. It's about busting down your excuses, about countering the self-love movement of do-what-you-love with bullshit,-you-do-this-because-you-need-to.

This book is a breath of fresh air during a time when exerting yourself, doing hardwork and doing tough things is frowned upon. If you want to get shit done, pick this up.

You almost forget this book was written in 1956; it gets so many things right and it still blows your mind. It's a great story about a man possessed and what he'll do to get what he wants through space, people and time