Lee Herman
This book is a polemic. Styling himself as “the world's leading Google critic” in his dust jacket bio, Scott Cleland certainly has an ax to grind. Sadly, his points about Google's bad side get lost in vitriol, absurd jumps in reasoning in lieu of logic and misinterpretation of many of his sources make the book almost unreadable. It took me multiple tries to get through the book because it is so badly written. It is repetitive enough that the author could have covered the material in half the space or less. There is an attempt at organization in the chapter titles, but the contents of the chapters frequently has nothing to do with the titled subject.
Truly a disappointment of a book and for Mr. Cleland, a missed opportunity to raise some valid concerns over privacy and other societal issues and Google's unique profile as an Internet company. Written in 2011, there is some foresight about the directions the web is taking, but those issues are far from unique to Google. And although there is a wealth of material, key sources like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://eff.org) and others with similar privacy concerns are never mentioned.
While the authors do some justice to the serious side of the topics they are raising, the book has some flaws, in my opinion. It was written in the late 1970s, so it reflects a certain point in time in the history of computers. My objections are unrelated to the inevitable datedness since it is simply a consequence of when it was written. In fact, a number of the predictions they make which seemed far-fetched at the time have come to pass and even be surpassed by futher technological change.
I have two complaints. One is that in attempting to lighten up a fairly serious book, they got way too cutesy with language and too loose in making clever wordplay at the expense of using technical terms properly and precisely.
My second complaint is that in discussing the negative impacts of computers on society, the book turns polemical and even almost hysterical ranting which takes away from the serious issues raised.
An interesting book if a little dated. The basic idea is around getting clarity on organizational mission and goals and asking questions to focus on how to achieve them. There is a big focus on improving the availability and accessibility of information and providing people with appropriate tools to do their jobs.
This book is a collection of articles reviewing the state of research into self-efficacy in a variety of contexts (see the table of contents below). It's an interesting book, somewhat challenging if you are not a professional or academic in this space.
The takeaway is that perceived self-efficacy, defined by psychologist Albert Bandura as one's belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task can play a major role in how one approaches goals, tasks, and challenges. (Luszczynska, A., & Schwarzer, R. (2005). Social cognitive theory. In M. Conner & P. Norman (Eds.), Predicting health behaviour (2nd ed. rev., pp. 127-169). Buckingham, England: Open University Press. cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy).
Each article expands on the specific application of self-efficacy theories (and frequently compares them with other theories used in the application area under discussion) and reviews research and how it supports the theories.
A basic knowledge of statistics is helpful to reading the book since the discussion of research frequently includes the statistical analysis and inferences about causality and magnitude of self-efficacy in the areas of behavior being studied.
It's not a light read but there is a lot of detail about self-efficacy in a wide variety of contexts. Recommended if you are interested in understanding self-efficacy theory in a fairly in-depth psychologically rigorous way. Stay away if you want a fast, summarized introduction with little effort needed to read.
Table of Contents
1 Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies
2 Life trajectories in changing societies
3 Developmental analysis of control beliefs
4 Impact of family processes on control beliefs
5 Cross-cultural perspectives on self-efficacy
6 Self-efficacy in stressful life transitions
7 Self-efficacy and educational development
8 Self-efficacy in career choice and development
9 Changing risk behaviors and adopting health behaviors: The role of self-efficacy beliefs
10 Self-efficacy and addictive behavior
The cover blurb from Studs Terkel sums this book up nicely:
“A vivid portrait of a mercurial being whose spontaneous utterings are less than meet the ear.”
Written in a casual style, the author provides a fairly comprehensive and well documented description of the theory and practice of the Paleo diet and lifestyle. The book is marred by what I suppose were intended to be humorous jabs at vegetarians and vegans. Since they are among his targeted audience, this is counterproductive. And the comments are too mean spirited to be funny. A woeful lapse from an otherwise decently written book, designed to try to get folks without a huge tolerance for detailed scientific information past the technical details of why the food choices are what they are and the expected benefits at a fairly detailed chemical and metabolic level. Recipes and menu plans could be stronger - for someone who claims to be a great cook, a number of them are pedestrian. The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain is a more serious treatment and just as easy to read, in my opinion. I don't regret having this book but I don't use it as much as others day to day.
Interesting coverage from the person who literally wrote “the” book on how to make games and social media addictive. Good advice and for a fairly directive self-help book, recognition that the problems to be solved fit everyone but not every technique for addressing them will fit everyone. It was definitely useful for his framework on how we get distracted and ways to interrupt those cycles.
An interesting approach to focusing your attention on what you care about. The core idea is picking a Highlight for every day. The book provides a framework for why this works and over 80 specific approaches to keeping what you do and where you focus on what you want as opposed to what sucks you in. Along the way, the tips aim towards a healthier, more balanced life. While many of the tips may be familiar to readers of other books on improving focus, the Highlight framework is a little different take. And the authors wrote the book in an informal, conversational style that's fun to read. They are also very cognizant that not every tip will work for everyone, and not doctrinaire about your following every detail exactly as written. They suggest picking specific individual tips to work on, only a couple at once, and trying them and modifying them as needed or moving on if they don't work for you. If you decide you want to implement their tips, you'll need to buy the book so you can keep referring to it as you work on implementing various tips of your choosing. It's very much about making small changes and seeing what they do and building to big change from lots of little changes over time.
Quarterly results or sustainable enterprise founded on a just cause, able to flex and change to continue pursuing the just cause, while putting people first. Sinek explains why the latter approach is both sustainable and profitable.
This is set out as a transformational book. In spite of my resistance to rah-rah self-help books and mnemonics for lists or turning everything into an acronym, the fundamental ideas in this book make a lot of sense and are consistent with other sources I've read for being more energized and successful at reaching goals and having higher energy levels. I can't answer transformative since I've only done one day but so far I'm pleased.
John Doerr was an early OKR practitioner and has spent much of his life enabling organizations to use OKRs to reach dramatic levels of success. This book is his effort to make that work available to a wider audience. This was my first reading and I will be going back to the book as a reference for setting my own OKRs.
An interesting take on using a mix of simplifying life, disconnecting from work in the office and geographic ties and setting up an Internet-based business to take “mini-retirements” during your entire life instead of working and then retiring.
It's an interesting measure of how the world has changed that even the revised 2009 edition seems a bit dated - the concept of telecommuting was still fairly new when the book was originally written - it's been routine for over a decade now.
For those with strong reasons to stay in one place, some of the approaches will work better than others. And while Ferriss advocates for fully following the approach, he acknowledges that it won't fit all readers' situations and recognizes that people will take away pieces from the book as well as jumping in. Regardless, there is lots of specific advice, presented with the expectation that the reader will take the advice as places to start making changes they want to their lives and work.
Excellent story. I had not realized that the movie followed the book so closely. The movie follows the book to the letter.
An engaging book about eating proper food. The science is sound and the author has done her homework. In spite of some important material, it's an easy read with a tone of blog posts and an informal memoir. Enjoyable and inspirational, especially if you think you should be eating better food and less junk from the supermarket.
Excellent book on how we are perceived (and perceive others) and how to improve how and how accurately we are perceived and how to improve the accuracy of our perception of others. While the book is supported by research cited in detail, it's a very accessible read. The author is careful to explain the psychological terms used in the book. I'll be reading it again to move beyond understanding the mechanisms explained to employing some of the suggested approaches to better communication.
Kaizen is an approach to making changes by small steps - teeny, tiny ones if necessary. The idea is to overcome nature resistance, fear, procrastination and other obstacles to dramatic change by making changes so small they don't provoke fear or resistance. By taking the small steps, repeating them for a while if necessary to start a habit, the difficulty of starting on the path to change goes away because the small steps have started you on the path to change.
An easy read, accessible and more matter of fact than preachy (a danger for books on self-improvement). While it's simple, there is depth to the suggested approach and the author cites numerous examples of personal and organizational change he has seen and/or helped bring about with these methods.
I couldn't finish this book - it's too dated and it's viewpoint is too narrow due to the worldview of the author's time and place.
Contemporary thriller with science content. Fast paced, well-written with food for thought about current military balance of power and potential rogue weapons use. Not for those looking for deep character development. More of an high science content political thriller than science fiction.
As horrific as it is to have Trump as President, Klein shows how his election is part of the pattern of corporate dominance of the governing of the country, going back many years. This is a highly enlightening analysis. She also relates the shock politics (get everyone focused on a crisis, then make the changes to benefit corporations and the rich) currently used to past uses of these techniques. While the section on what to do is uplifting and hopeful, it leaves a lot yet to be figured out. Passionate leadership to harness people to take back their government is needed and no one seems to have figured out how to make that happen or stepped up to lead.