pranav
Super dense book. Goes into the details of rich dad's ideas, the Cashflow Quadrant, levels of investors, and types of incomes. Tends to get a bit rambling due to the story based approach, but the book is worth the 350+ pages.
Nifty guide to starting your own blog. Useful tips and tricks. One time read. Make sure to implement the actionable advice in this book.
Extremely honest journey of a stock market whiz kid. Must-read for all wannabe traders and aspiring finance professionals.
Sets a new standard in travelogues. So many laugh out loud moments in this authors honest and genuine journey through the middle east region. Humanises the whole conflict which most of us only know through the media. Superb writing.
Absoltely hilarious book! So many side stories that will make you laugh out loud. Writing style that makes you empathise with the characters, and you just can't put this one down.
Must read for all finance and law professionals. Helps you understand what went on behind the scenes of one of the most famous financial scandals in recent times. Well written and peppered with the authors own thoughts and tidbits.
Fairly interesting take on the concept of Nirvana. Tries to mark the eastern and western philosophy is through quoting both the Buddha as well as modern authors like Stephen Covey. There is also a peppering of our Vedic wisdom. The description of the eightfold path towards the end is quite useful.
Widely ranging topics are touched in this easy to read book, compiled from the YouTube videos of Sadhguru. Gives introductory understanding of many aspects of life, and creates curiosity towards undergoing the many Isha Yoga programs.
Lovely book in the Malory Towers series, starting with the Third one due to availability issues, but easy to get into and familiarize with the characters. Hilarious at times and almost each character is explored in superb detail, without it becoming boring.
A breezy two hour read. Entertaining and flowing well, the book will provide nourishment for the child within you.
A good old Fiction break after two years of Non-Fiction and self help!
A worthy best-seller. Must-read for both financial and non-financial people, to learn and ground themselves in the basics of the habits of the wealthy. A good primer to get started with, and move on to more advanced books in the series, as well as other books on saving, investing, trading, and basically creating indestructible, old-money wealth.
I've watched a couple hundred hours of Gary Vee content till date. This was a lovely surprise, given his affinity for video. Finished it in 3 hours, two sittings. This is a non fiction book grounded in principles, yet has an actionable steps you can take today, to get started on building your personal brand online.
No jargon or B.S here. A feel-good read that emphasises - it is not only important to do what you love (and are good at), but also that it is the only way to survive (and eventually, thrive) in the economy of the future.
First half of the book, pages is a bunch of interesting case studies and a description of the problems with email. The author also quotes from academic papers and research, given his background as a Professor. The basic problem is that we tend to keep checking mail throughout the day, which keeps us distracted from actual deep work.
Interesting quotes:
“Those who retained access to Marshall were provided a clear structure for their interactions, turning briefing the general into an exercise in controlled efficiency. You were instructed to enter his office and sit down without saluting (to save time). At Marshall's signal, you would begin your brief while he listened with “absolute concentration.” If he discovered a flaw or something missing, he would become angry that you hadn't noticed and resolved the issue before wasting his time. When you finished, he'd ask for your recommendation, deliberate briefly, then make a decision. He then delegated taking action on the decision back to you.” – a model for manager-employee communication.
Try reducing your actual working hours from the existing ones to maybe 2 hours lesser, and see how you are able to finish your work in the reduced time. It will make you prioritise better and also prevent you from stretching your work just to fill up the timeclock. It will also reduce context switching, and thus overload.
“If people trust you to handle the work they send your way, then they're generally fine with not hearing back from you right away. On the other hand, if you're flaky, others will demand faster responses, as they'll feel they have to stay on you to ensure things get done.”
“He notes that without this structure, you're left with only one option for increasing productivity: figuring out how to get people to “work faster.” Once you see the whole process, however, a much more powerful option emerges: “We can change the nature of the work performed.” Optimize processes, he urged, not people.”
“An email arrives that informally represents a new responsibility for you to manage; because there's no formal process in place to assign the work or track its progress, you seek instead the easiest way to get the responsibility off your plate—even if just temporarily—so you send a quick reply asking for an ambiguous clarification. Thus unfolds a game of obligation hot potato, as messages bounce around, each temporarily shifting responsibility from one inbox to another, until a deadline or irate boss finally stops the music, leading to a last-minute scramble to churn out a barely acceptable result.”
“As Johnson explained, the manager in question has a schedule that begins every day with three hours of uninterrupted deep work before he receives “even a single input.” This is time set aside for the manager to think intensely about his projects—making informed decisions on how to go forward, where to focus next, what to improve, and what to ignore. Only after this morning block ends does the manager turn his attention to actively managing the projects he runs.”
“Every employee of Optimize is expected to spend at least the first ninety minutes of every day in a deep work block, free from inputs (some people, like the manager profiled above, spend much more). One of the key uses of this morning block is to think about processes and how to improve them.”
The Protocols part of the book is extremely insightful, and has plug-and-play principles which can be applied.
On the whole, this book will have its biggest impact on you if you know Newport's style of writing, and have read his previous books, especially Deep Work.
A book that has redefined Franklin in my eyes. Tells the story of his highly remarkable life from his own perspective. Gives insights into productivity, leadership, wealth creation, philanthropy, and social good.
I am re-reading it to get all identified action points executed, for example, the day planning method.
Mainstream book that I wanted to read from a long time. Good pearls of wisdom scattered throughout this. Story gets a little slow sometimes, but worth the read.
A useful summary of Uncle G's ideas in one nifty resource. A lot of exploration of his past experiences. An important takeaway is that staying poor/middle class is selfish, as you help less people this way.
Whenever you get more income from any source, move it off into separate accounts from your spending account. Be broke, not poor. When we you get a bonus or a sudden income, use this surge to stash away some more.
When you set aside money like this, it motivates you to work for more. Do this for a minimum of 10 years. By then, you should have made a large enough bulk of money, off which you can make sustainable passive income, which, you guessed it, will be put into more investment that will throw off more cash flow.
Be concentrated in your investments. Go through every possible worst case before Investing, and once you're satisfied, don't be afraid to go all in.
You don't need to replace one flow of income. Supplement that first flow with a second one which is related to the first one. Something which uses the same skills. See how you can make your employer, clients as well as yourself money.
Don't know why this book's getting so much hate. The Mindvalley promotion has gone slightly overboard, but the content is not that bad. Definitely a transformational book which pushed my set up a Life Plan excel document. I can say with conviction, that I'm left better off after reading this book.
A must-read. Contains actionable advice for people who want to start a business that will supplement or even replace their core source of income (trading time for money).
Top 3 Takeaways -
1. The money that you will make in business will correspond to how much VALUE you provide to your customer, who is in great need of your service.
2. You don't need to reinvent the wheel or make a huge breakthrough. Just identify pain-points that abound everywhere, and DELIVER the existing services with better customer service or more convenience.
3. Making money in a business - either sell your product/service at a high cost to few customers (magnitude), or at a low cost to many customers (scale).
A breezy sub-200 page read. Love the conversational writing style. I've been a reader of James' blog from a few years, and I'm really impressed with what he's done with this book. This book helped me think clearer, start living a simpler life, and get a whole lot of tweet-ready quotes. Lovely book.