Ethan
Lots of practical non-trivial advice. Lots of parts where I realized I've been accidentally impolite but didn't realize. Or found someone else annoying but couldn't figure out what it was about them. Also I never really thought about the impact this will all have on your daily livelihood.
Enjoyed enough that I should look into more from this author.
Similar but more modern follow up to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. My problem with the book is that it seems to claim you can't derive the same sort of satisfaction of doing good work when you're doing knowledge work for an employer with a strong profit motive. In my experience I'm not sure this is true, vs doing a “traditional” craft job where you can easily see the impact on your neighbor of the work you're doing. That said, the book was well written and an enjoyable read. I loved the depiction of the lower-level manager who finds himself caught in the position where he to show his employees that he's really “fighting for them” emotionally while having to turn around and show his higher ups that he's really “getting their goals accomplished” in rational presentations.
I thought it would be the audio of the full book, but it was something else, as other reviewers have noted. I really enjoyed the author's reading voice, it felt like this is a guy who has studied how to find a rhythm and get through things. I'm sure reading so much content aloud can feel like a chore, but the author has found a way to get it into his brain that he's going to smoothly sail through the task by enjoying each second of it (ie. he'll find the flow in it).
The authors make their points so clearly. It isolated and characterized a lot of the nagging pains I have when listening to some of the people I meet in daily life. Specifically it calls the recent pc leftist culture out for being — in a select few instances — hypocritical (eg. violent power-grabs), counterproductive (eg. over-parenting), and immature (eg. safe spaces).
Haidt read the audiobook and did a fantastic job. The book got repetitive at times, so I was able to speed some parts up and know when to tune back in because the reading voice is so clear even at high speeds.
The tone of the book was studiously non-melodramatic. This tone itself spoke to me, it said, “don't try to argue against my points with fallacious over-emotional self-protectiveness.” Aka “I am the fatherly voice of reason; and your bedtime is not up for discussion so stop whining.”
Compared to the other Haidt book I read (twice) about cultural moral axes (called The Righteous Mind), this one was less mind-blowing. I recommend folks read that one first (or instead), though this was a great book too.
Overview: Some intro history of yoga, then a giant list of the poses, then a rundown of the formats of modern yoga classes. If that sounds appealing to you then by all means it's a great book. It just wasn't a book I found use for, since having read the Science of Yoga, which is more detailed and the way it's illustrated makes it easier to follow.
Especially loved the last few chapters. Very motivational way of looking at training. Sometimes you are not feeling it: just go in and go easy, and use the time getting a better feel for the movements. It's all about your attitude: if you love it, you will be rewarded for that. Don't over-analyze all the little details and make things too complicated for yourself. Just do some experimentation to find what you like and keep doing it.
Learned so many things. The most profound thing I learned is that I don't want to invest in real estate.
The methods outlined in this book did not sound attractive to me as a lifestyle. This insight is life-changing. I could have spent so much effort to figure that out. I much prefer investing in ETFs like a “Boglehead”.
I also learned a lot about what landlords want in a tenant, and what their responsibilities are to the tenant. This helps me since I am still a renter and am planning to buy a house in a year or so.
I learned a lot of basics of homeownership. Next, I'm planning to read “The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs” by J Scott which was recommended herein.
Not worth the price. It's basically just a really well-written productivity listicle, like one would find on WikiHow. Want to have better focus? Silence your phone while you're working; outline your task before starting; don't spend too much time in preliminary background reading. These are good tips, but I'm pretty sure my middle school English teacher suggested these too.
Part documentary, part geeky space thriller.
I enjoyed reading tales of pouring your life into a project and having it ultimately work out due to acts of bravery, diligence, and heroism. Plus it's all factual and very recent history of a story of commercial space flight which is still a nascent industry.
However, I'm not as into the space thriller genre and I'm more into engineering itself. This was not a book about engineering. It would bring up the name of these different types of engines and different spacecraft components but never tell you specifics about them. It's just not a technical intro to SpaceX, it's a startup-to-dominance, rose-tinted tale of early company days; like going to a company reunion and listening to people recall their favorite memories to each other. I'm sure technical aspects are available if I google it.
The thing that stuck with me from the book is an excitement about SpaceX and what it might do in the future. Also, the singularity of Elon Musk is astounding; everyone knows that but it comes through the book a bit as well. Also, any story of difficult engineering working out is inspirational to me as an engineer. I don't typically approach my work with this kind of insane zeal, but I hope some zeal has sept into me out of this book.
I wish I could have finished it since I'm kind of curious what he says, to see if I can find valuable info within. However, I really don't like his tone. He uses a lot of statements like “we have proved [this or that]” but it doesn't cite any peer-reviewed research. I didn't start the book with any backstory of what I was getting into I just liked the cover and title. But it turns out its quite a controversial book with a lot of cultural baggage. This made me more curious to get through it. But it's such a slow read, I was several hours into it and it still all felt very introductory. There's some cool ideas like “engrams” and some interesting heuristics about how people develop neuroses. I have plenty of neuroses so I was like ooh finally a cure. But nah, I didn't find this to be a promising route of inquiry.
Easily one of my favorite books ever. It took me years before I found time to read such a long book, and once I started it took 6 months to finish it, but I was enthralled the whole time. It brings a lot of clarity to a more right-wing way of viewing the world/politics. I never got into objectivism from the pamphlets Ayn Rand wrote (I was like gosh this seems so cold-hearted, a reaction that's well-addressed in this novel). I'm still not fully onboard with all the ideas, but this book was still profound.
I saw another review saying that the characters were too molded to be symbols of the philosophy and that reduced their humanity/verisimilitude. Ok sure I don't think this is the book for you if you're looking for “amazing character development”. I found it a well-written novel, but I'm not really into fiction so probably it is not up to par.
Also, I was told by other readers that the whole book can just be summarized into the huge speeches given by the protagonists. I have to whole-heartedly disagree with that. The point of reading the book is to see the demonstration of what happens to a society that veers too-far-left too-fast and doesn't protect individual liberties properly. Maybe some of the ideals of objectivism were clearly stated in the speeches, but if you just want a description of the philosophy I recommend wikipedia as a better alternative.
The sci-fi aspects of the book were not necessary to get the point across and seemed out of place to me. There were several other aspects of the book that make it not the most amazing piece of “fine literature”. That's fine by me; it made me think in various new directions and that's what I really want from a book anyway.
I guess the next move is to read The Fountainhead. But that's also intimidatingly long, so I'm not really rushing over to it.
True I was able to “read” this book in under 2 hrs. But that's because it was extremely wordy. The techniques work great on a book like this where if you miss something you're not really missing anything. That said I highly appreciated the reminder to read faster and not get bogged down in the sentence-by-sentence level of the book and remain cognizant of WHY I'm actually reading this thing in the first place; because there's something I want to know, which may be slightly different from what the author is trying to teach me, hence the usefulness of speed reading.
Key practical quote from the book:
“You're going to have to have something to talk about beyond a self-serving assessment of what you want. And you had better be ready to respond with tactical empathy to your counterpart's arguments; unless they're incompetent, the other party will come prepared to argue an interpretation of the facts that favors them. Get on the same page at the outset. You have to clearly describe the lay of the land before you can think about acting in its confines. Why are you there? What do you want? What do they want? Why? You must be able to summarize a situation in a way that your counterpart will respond with a “That's right.” If they don't, you haven't done it right.”
Easy quick casual read. Opinionated. I agree with the theme but didn't agree with a lot of the specific practices. I like their vibe though. A little bit over-combative perhaps but it causes you to be like, wait if I want it to not have to be crazy at work maybe I have to take stock and take charge of my situation, since that's not always the default.
I thought it'd be super corny. I'd watched the graduation lecture that it's based on. By the end my jaw dropped so many times and I was crying. And it wasn't boringly long; crisply put. Actually inspirational message from someone who's actually been there and done it, instead of some career consultant who is witty with a pen. I've now bought a few of the author's other works.
A lot of good points. Emphasizes creating a “leader-leader” dynamic between managers and managees, as opposed to the standard “leader-follower” dynamic.
Discusses some of the challenges in getting to a real “leader-leader” situation. Specifically: How to make people feel empowered to not have to ask permission all the time (allow them to make mistakes, don't jump in and correct them). How to make people think consciously before taking actions with severe consequences (say the action aloud to yourself). How to inspire people to connect the information they're receiving to the higher level objectives of the team, in order to make good decisions without needing to send everything up the chain of command (teach them concrete, applicable principles for how this team makes decisions). How long to expect this dynamic-shift to take (a few years).
When I do guided yoga, they get me into the pose bit-by-bit and I don't really have the time to really ensure that every muscle in my body is doing exactly what it should do to really do the pose with proper form. In the beginning, sure, the vocal guidance is plenty good-enough. However, since I want to unleash the full magic of each of the poses, this book serves as an amazing guide. It says for each pose, for each muscle in the body, should it be stretching or pushing. Turns out muscles I didn't realize were supposed to be engaged at all are an important part of most poses. This format works much better to me than the list of vocal cues with photos of models that other books I've seen have.