Mikey

This was a great adventure - magic, jungles, kings, princess and princesses across a sprawling story. Passing on my copy to friends so more can enjoy.

I want to get back to a creative practice, and thought I would kick it off by reading some of the highly regarded books around creativity. Some of the key themes resonated with me, and will shape how I approach establishing a regular practice. The advice I took to heart was to set aside stereo types about what a creative person is and look for ways to find individual self expression across a diverse set of mediums, to forgo conceptual ideas and instead embrace working in the medium as an exploration of emergent ideas or styles, that repetition is okay - good, and vital to exploring, and to not self identify too strongly with any by products of creative exploration. The book offered lots of ideas and exercises along the way, embedded among more of the philosophical advice, of which I did only a few. Overall, I would recommend ‘Trust the Process' as a worthy read for anyone looking to explore creativity with a wider lens.

I enjoyed this one, and it justifiable weaved a lot of interesting details in on the history of computing, I would have liked to see more of a focus on the designers, story tellers and artists who create video game. The book over indexed on the technical aspects of video game computation.

Amazing story, and the first audio book that really elevated the listening experience for me.

Overall, the concepts in the book resonated with my past attempts to limit distraction in the work place, and get more done. The sentence structure and prose were long for my taste. On content, I think Deep Work pulled together concepts and research from other sources on working efficiently, and my main complaint is that too much of the justification fell to the authors personal anecdotes and experience. I would have preferred to see a wider range of interviews and sources, across different disciplines and careers, relating to the strategies suggested. This would have added more strength to practical application of Cal's advice. There is a long section on social media use, but fails to add any new perspective. I think this chapter would have been much better structured talking about the nature of digital distraction as a whole, and then making suggestions to manage and carefully select what you allow to consume your attention (including social media simply in the broader spectrum of app or phone usage).

The practical advices that I intend to apply:
1. Putting more effort into structuring my down time to advancing personal projects (creative outlets like drawing and painting, fitness focused on yoga and cycling, cooking).
2. On focused projects, think about how to chunk the work between ‘deep work' focused sessions, and actively seeking collaboration to improve the overall end product.
3. Read the referenced Christensen book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, as I've see these concepts being applied at work but not the source of the execution strategy before.
4. Try to ‘close the loop' more efficiently in email with more specificity in responses, try not to allow simple threads to get dragged out.
5. Extend ‘meeting free time' focused currently on output production (doc writing, launching campaigns, etc.) to include research time and more longer term thinking. I'm going to try the advice to not just disable notifications, but work offline completely sans internet for these time chunks.
5. Implement an end of day shutdown ritual to clear out any remaining threads, and schedule the next day. Cleaning up incomplete tasks to not dominate my attention until the following day.

This was a tough and thought provoking book - the beginning half covers trauma and PTSD experiences and how it effects the whole bodies response and ability to think. It was hard to read about child abuse and trauma, and all the lasting impacts it can have later into life on many fronts, including incarnation and substance abuse. The second half dives into possible treatments for trauma and is really fascinating exploring how important it is to feel safe, and feel comfortable in our bodies, to process experiences and think & feel clearly. With 2020 causing disruption to so many, and our existing support systems and routines - it was really interesting to read about therapies that help people process and cope.

Very difficult book to read about first hand accounts of the Gwangju Uprising, and fight for civil rights in South Korea. Five stars, very well written and translated about such difficult subject matter - a book I will continue to remember, and revealing about history I have known little.

Interesting story with good pacing, moving between telling of a fable to living in it's own adventure. A book that continues to hold a sense of wonder post reading.

I think I enjoyed the first in the trilogy most, followed by the third.

This book is a fascinating look at decision making, it convinced me my life is much more driven by chance that I would like to admit. Key themes are to be on the look out for for when and how you might substitute an easy question in place of answering a hard question (without knowing it), how decisions are framed can dramatically alter the answer evening with professionals and experts, and that we're very bad at applying fully rational logic to decisions of probability. I highly recommend the book, it made me aware of many potential flaws we make around decisions - but my only compliant is that it offered few tools to improve how we make decisions.