Hidden Potential – Adam Grant

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
Date read: 8/9/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

This is a great complementary book to Range by David Epstein, that focuses on dispelling the belief that greatness is mostly born. Grant illuminates how we can achieve greater things by focusing on the forces fueling our progress. The book is built around three sections: developing character skills, creating structures to sustain motivation, and building systems to expand opportunity. I love the sections about asking for advice, not feedback, character vs. personality, and the power of writing to clarify your thinking. Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Character:
“Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.” Adam Grant

“If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.” Adam Grant

The primary character skills that matter most are proactivity, determination, and discipline. 

Discomfort:
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

Becoming a creature of discomfort requires three kinds of courage: “to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts.” Adam Grant

Similar to voluntary hardship: “Embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.” Adam Grant

Writing:
“Writing is more than a vehicle for communicating—it’s a tool for learning. Writing exposes gaps in your knowledge and logic. It pushes you to articulate assumptions and consider counterarguments.” Adam Grant

“Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking.” Adam Grant

Reading:
Reading improves comprehension and activates analytical processing. Reading is the key to building critical thinking skills. While listening helps promote more intuitive thinking.

Pay attention to what you pay attention to: “If we want our kids to enjoy reading, we need to make books part of their lives. That involves talking about books during meals and car rides, visiting libraries or book stores, giving books as gifts, and letting them see us read. Children pay attention to our attention: where we focus tells them what we prize.” Adam Grant

Growth mindset:
Absorptive capacity: “Absorptive capacity is the ability to recognize, value, assimilate, and apply new information.” It hinges on how well you acquire new information and the goal you’re pursuing when you filter new information—ego or growth?

Seek advice, not feedback:
People suck at giving feedback, it focuses on past performance. Instead, ask for advice, and it shifts people’s mindset to focus on more specific suggestions and constructive input. 

Hidden Genius – Polina Marinova Pompliano

Hidden Genius by Polina Marinova Pompliano
Date read: 4/8/24. Recommendation: 9/10.

After interviewing thousands of top performers, Pompliano has assembled the mental frameworks they use to navigate life and understand the world. This book surprised me in all the best ways because it feels like a practical, modern-day philosophy book. There’s no fluff, and it doesn’t rely on hacks, it’s about systems. Pompliano gives readers a no-nonsense guide to the art of living well. I loved the chapters on creativity, mental toughness, risk-taking, and embracing the constant act of self-discovery.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Creativity:
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect the experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” Steve Jobs

“But here’s the catch about doing something truly original: It’s sometimes messy, which makes it vulnerable to criticism—especially by incumbents.” Polina Marinova Pompliano

Mental toughness:
Accountability mirror: Face your insecurities to overcome them. When David Goggins wanted to become a Navy SEAL, he looked at himself in the mirror and said, “You’re fat, you’re lazy, and you’re a liar. What are you going to do about it?”

Voluntary hardship: Do something that sucks every single day. Helps you shift to offensive mindset and gets you out of comfortable routines. “I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort.” David Goggins

Choose the path of most resistance: “To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. That’s just nature. Each specific life comes with its own personalized portion of pain. It’s coming for you. You can’t stop it. And you know it.” David Goggins

Listening to yourself vs. talking to yourself: “When you listen to yourself, you hear all the negativity and all the reasons why you can’t go on…but when you talk to yourself, you can tell yourself the things you need to hear in order to overcome the challenge ahead of you.” Polina Marinova Pompliano

Control your inputs:
“Who wrote the software running in your head? Are you sure you actually want it there?” Elon Musk

Multidisciplinary approach:
“We think we are in this one-room house. Books help us realize we are in a mansion. Reading is a way to find the lost parts of us.” Matt Haig

Moving target:
“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.” Dan Gilbert

“In order to understand who you are, you must first understand who you are not.” Polina Marinova Pompliano

“Once we’ve reached a certain level of success, we get comfortable and complacent. We wrap our identities around jobs, relationships, and material possessions—all things we could lose. Over time, we begin to trust ourselves less, and leave our destinies in other people’s hands. It’s the one thing preventing us from unlocking our own hidden genius: We are scared to bet on ourselves.” Polina Marinova Pompliano

Same as Ever – Morgan Housel

Same as Ever by Morgan Housel
Date read: 1/29/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

People are obsessed with trying to predict the future. In Same as Ever, Morgan Housel cautions us against trying to predict specific events and instead focus on predicting people’s behaviors, which have remained the same for thousands of years. We still respond to fear, greed, uncertainty, and social persuasion in the same ways that we always have. If we want to understand a rapidly changing world, it’s far more effective to focus on what stays the same. Each of the 23 short stories in this book offers a different framework to help us understand risks, consider opportunities, and build more meaningful lives. We would all benefit from spending more time reflecting on the wisdom we’ve earned through our past.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Focus of the book:
Base predictions on people’s behaviors, not specific events. “Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now is impossible. But predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations, and social persuasion in the same way is a bet I’d take.” Morgan Housel

In victory, know when to stop:
“An important life skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. It’s also one of the hardest.” Morgan Housel

Moderation:
“Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.” Morgan Housel

Challenging assumptions:
“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.” John Boyd

Evaluate probabilities and play to the 51%:
“Most people get that certainty is rare, and the best you can do is make decisions in which the odds are in your favor….But few people actually use probability in the real world, especially when judging others’ success.” Morgan Housel

Uncertainty blinds us:
People claim they want an accurate understanding of the future. But this is a lie. They want certainty. And they will ignore reality to get here. 

“We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need.” Morgan Housel

Patience + scarcity:
“Most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into.” Morgan Housel

It’s supposed to be hard:
Pain is a necessary, important part of life. The more you come to accept this, rather than always seeking shortcuts, the better off you’ll be.

Seinfeld on getting asked if he could have outsourced writing to a consulting company like McKinsey to keep the show going: “If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting.” 

“If you can get your work life to where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing. Very few people ever achieve that.” Jeff Bezos

Margin of safety:
“The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.” Benjamin Graham

Master of Change – Brad Stulberg

Master of Change by Brad Stulberg
Date read: 1/22/24. Recommendation: 9/10.

The modern self-help twist on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile. Stulberg explores “rugged flexibility,” arming readers with the mindset they need to navigate a rapidly changing world and thrive in, rather than resist, life’s instability. The result is a similar concept to antifragility but packaged in a way that’s more accessible than Taleb’s framing. Stulberg offers readers a system for embracing change and leans on stories from artists, athletes, and scientists to bring his ideas to life.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Adaptation:
“In the vast majority of situations, healthy systems do not rigidly resist change; rather, they adapt to it, moving forward with grace and grit.” Brad Stulberg

Allostasis: Stability through change. Term coined by Peter Sterling (neuroscientist) and Jospeh Eyer (biologist).

“Following disorder, living systems crave stability, but they achieve that stability somewhere new.” Brad Stulberg

Rugged flexibility:
Stulberg’s equivalent of Nassim Taleb’s “antifragility.” See Antifragile book notes for references.

Applies non-dual thinking to stability and change: “To be rugged is to be tough, determined, and durable. To be flexible is to consciously respond to altered circumstances or conditions, to adapt and bend easily without breaking.” Brad Stulberg

“This is rugged flexibility, the quality you need to become a master of change, to successfully navigate disorder and chaos and endure over the long haul.” Brad Stulberg

Resisting change:
“Remember, life is change. If you fear change, then, in many ways, you fear life—and chronic fear becomes toxic both in self and in the culture at large.” Brad Stulberg

Reality is your friend:
“Once you accept something as an immutable reality in the present moment, you give yourself to stop wishing it away or trying to manipulate it on your terms. This allows you to direct all of your energy toward acceptance and moving forward.” Brad Stulberg

How to Know a Person – David Brooks

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
Date read: 11/20/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

David Brooks has been my favorite author this year—his focus on the messiness of life and learning to invest more of yourself in what matters just hits differently as you get older. I absolutely loved The Road to Character and enjoyed this latest book just as much. As Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen…” And to be clear, most of us suck at this. Myself included. But Brooks offers a practical guide and exploration of how we can try to develop one of the most important skills we can invest in—learning how to truly see and illuminate another person.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

The power of being seen:
“There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.” David Brooks

“In how you see me, I will learn to see myself.” David Brooks

“The purpose of this book is to help us become more skilled at the art of seeing others and making them feel seen, heard, and understood.” David Brooks

“To be able to understand people and be present for them in their experience—that’s the most important thing in the world.” Mary Pipher

Pitfalls:
“On social media you can have the illusion of social contact without having to perform the gestures that actually build trust, care, and affection. On social media, simulation replaces intimacy. There is judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere.” David Brooks

“Politics doesn’t make you a better person; it’s about outer agitation, not inner formation. Politics doesn’t humanize. If you attempt to assuage your sadness, loneliness, or anomie through politics, it will do nothing more than land you in a world marked by sadistic striving for domination. You may try to escape a world of isolation and moral meaninglessness, only to find yourself in the pulverizing destructiveness of the culture wars.” David Brooks

Illumination:
“Respect is a gift you offer with your eyes.” David Brooks

“Nothing in life is of any value except the attempt to be virtuous.” Iris Murdoch

Interpretation:
“Experience is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.” Aldous Huxley

Stop asking “What happened to this person?” Start asking “How do they interpret what happened? How do they construct their reality?”

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Anaïs Nin

“A person is a point of view. Every person you meet is a creative artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world.” David Brooks

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” George Bernard Shaw

Identity:
If you find what is sacred to a person, there you will find rampant irrationality (paraphrasing psychologist Jonathan Haidt). “A person with an overreactive defense architecture is thinking, My critics or opponents are not just wrong, they are evil.” David Brooks

“Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve.” Thornton Wilder

The Gifts of Imperfection – Brené Brown

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
Date read: 8/2/23. Recommendation: 9/10.

Whereas Robert Greene’s niche is human nature and power dynamics, Brené Brown’s is vulnerability and shame. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brown advocates for wholehearted living built upon authenticity, worthiness, and the realization that your story matters because you matter. Brown focuses on a familiar problem—what she refers to as a “midlife unraveling,” where the universe challenges you to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and embrace who you are. Brown relies on her background as a researcher and pulls from personal stories to land her message of developing our capacity for courage, compassion, and connection.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Embracing your story:
“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” Brené Brown

“She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful.” Terri St. Cloud

Reckoning:
Midlife unraveling = challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and embrace who you are.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s out of fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” Brené Brown

Wholehearted living:
Engaging with life from a place of worthiness.

“It’s; so much easier to say, ‘I’ll be whoever or whatever you need me to be, as long as I feel like I’m part of this.’ From group-thinking to gossiping, we’ll do what it takes to fit in if we believe it will meet our need for belonging. But it doesn’t. We can only belong when we offer our most authentic selves and when we’re embraced for who we are.” Brené Brown

Authenticity:
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” Brené Brown

“Authenticity demands wholehearted living and loving…it’s how we invite grace, gratitude, and joy into our lives.” Brené Brown

“To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.” E.E. Cummings

“When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves.” Brené Brown

Perfectionism:
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” Anna Quindlen

“Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame…It’s stopping us from being seen.” Brené Brown

“Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?” Brené Brown

Creativity:
“When I make creating a priority, everything in my life works better.” Brené Brown

Early inclinations:
“What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.” Mary Jo Putney

LifePass – Payal Kadakia

LifePass by Payal Kadakia
Date read: 7/15/23. Recommendation: 9/10.

Payal Kadakia’s story makes this book worth picking up. Lots of wisdom around how to navigate your own creative entrepreneurial journey. But as she demonstrates, it starts with revealing more of yourself. Only by putting yourself out there can you open yourself to the right opportunities and self-select out of the wrong ones. The generic self-help exercises at the end of each chapter are forgettable. But it’s easy to look past those.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Post-college (Bain):
Took a job at Bain & Company (management consulting) because it looked good on her resume and made her parents proud. For 2.5 years worked 70 hours/week as an associate consultant, then six months before contract renewal was sitting in her manager’s office receiving negative feedback for the first time. She questioned Payal’s reliability and commitment to clients. “If you really want to further your career as a consultant, your clients are going to have to come first. I don’t know if that’s the case for you.”

Her manager was referring to the fact that Payal was studying dance and performing with a troupe, Bollywood Axion, outside of consulting on nights and weekends. Six months before they had a big performance on the same day as an important client meeting and she chose to be at the show. Her manager didn’t make a big deal about it then, but 6 months later it was rearing its head and impacted the way her boss saw her.

Her initial instinct was to dive back into work and prove to her boss that she was worthy of staying on as a consultant. But as she worked harder she realized she would have to give up dance, what she truly loved doing, which wasn’t a compromise she was willing to make. 

“I realized my boss was completely right. I wasn’t fully committed to being a consultant. I wasn’t making Bain my everything, because it simply wasn’t enough for me.”

Warner Music Group:
When her contract was up at Bain, Payal found a job in 2008 working on licensing agreements for digital music at Warner Music Group. It paid less and wasn’t as prestigious, most of the people in her life looked at her like she was crazy. But this was the most comfortable compromise at that time, she wasn’t quitting to dance full time and was giving herself more predictable hours. She had a steady income, work ended at 5 p.m. every day and she could attend dance classes and rehearsals all evening. 

This was a period of transition. Also left Bollywood Axion and started choreographing her own dance pieces (something she found to be a powerful expression of herself). Led her to start her own dance company that showcased Indian dance as an art and culture beyond merely a form of entertainment and fun. Started Sa Dance Company. 

Sa Dance Company:
Applied to participate in an annual Indian dance festival in downtown Manhattan. NYT dance critic, Alastair Macaulay, decided to do a piece on the festival in the next day’s arts section and Sa would be on the Saturday morning cover. Huge half-page image of Sa in motion, dancers looked radiant—a sign she was on the right track. She felt like the universe was telling her to believe in herself and what she was doing.

Spent the next several months planning Sa’s weekend-long Premier NYC Showcase. Dove into making her own production, writing her own story, creating new choreography, and rehearsing for hours with the dancers with the goal of sharing the beauty of Indian dance. To reserve the theater, Payal fronted $20k, her entire savings account. It was on her to sell tickets to break even. Had to sell 1000 tickets to cover her costs. All three shows sold out. 

Sitting in her office at Warner, she realized there was still a disconnect between the person she was at work and the life she wanted for herself. 

San Francisco:
During the Warner and Sa years, she spent all her time working and dancing. But in the summer of 2010, one of her close friends (Parul) invited her to San Francisco for her birthday. This helped create some distance and the change of pace helped her gain new perspective. 

At the birthday gathering, she chatted with Parul’s friends, who all seemed to be developing apps, starting companies, or embarking on some type of entrepreneurial journey. People were pursuing exciting, creative projects as actual career paths. Unlike anyone she knew in New York.

On Sunday night red-eye flight back to New York, her mind was racing. Idea of creating something of her own as her career fascinated her. How could she create something that provide the same type of freedom and inspiration? She gave herself two weeks to come up with an idea for something she would be passionate about creating. 

Back in NYC, as she settled into the week, she opened her laptop and looked for a ballet class to attend. She searched websites for different studios across the city, comparing schedules, researching their instructors, mapping out their locations. Two hours later looked up and had thirty browser tabs opened and realized she wasted her afternoon without finding anything. Entrepreneurial epiphany: why wasn’t there one place you could go to find and book classes?

This was the earliest inkling for ClassPass, an app to give people the opportunity to keep moving and try new things, and as a business, it became a new path for my life that aligned my calling with my career. 

Leaving Warner:
Created business plan and built up courage to leave her job. The day she quit got a message from the vice chairman of Warner asking her to come to his office. He wanted to hear about what she was doing next. He told her he wanted to invest, gave her a check for $10k and introduced her to David Tisch, who was heading up Techstars (one of hottest tech incubators in NYC). 

ClassPass:
Built beautiful product, homepage colors were just right, launched to fanfare and publicity, but then zero bookings came through. Social media, brand partnerships, press hits were not leading indicators of success. The false signals of success shielded them from seeing the real problems right in front of them. Hadn’t fully understood the challenges our customers were facing in getting to class. Reservations were the most important metric. 

1.5 years after visiting SF, went back to try to raise capital, met with big-name VC firms. None of them wanted to give her money. And no one was signing up for classes on their website. Sent email blast to 10k subscribers asking people to sign up for a free class, and not a single person converted. 

Decided to launch something new with a value prop that was more enticing. There wasn’t anything motivating customers to book classes through their site. Passport idea allowing them to bundle together trial classes at different studios to explore new classes over the course of a month. But this was only available to new customers for first month. Sales improved but then people dropped out or used new emails to sign up for another month, upsetting the studios when people returned at discounted prices after their initial trial. 

Eventually pivoted into a subscription service for fitness classes that allowed customers to return to classes they liked and continue exploring month after month.

Years later ClassPass was acquired by Mindbody, thanks to a connection and partnership she cultivated with Rick Stollmeyer (their founder) in the early days.

The Road to Character – David Brooks

The Road to Character by David Brooks
Date read: 4/28/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

Brooks examines the generational shift from humility to the “Big Me”—where everyone’s now encouraged to see themselves as the center of the universe. As part of the “Big Me,” we’ve become obsessed with resume virtues—wealth, fame, status—things that exist beyond our control and don’t necessarily correspond to living a meaningful life. When in fact, we should be focused on eulogy virtues—kindness, bravery, honesty. But to get here, we must get out of our own heads, stop asking ourselves what we want out of life, and instead ask ourselves what our lives and circumstances want out of us. Brooks cites examples of those throughout history who faced crucible moments and used the struggle against their limitations to develop more enduring virtues.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Resume virtues versus eulogy virtues:
Resume virtues: Skills you bring to the job market that contribute to external success.

Eulogy virtues: Exist at the core of your being, whether you are kind, brave, honest, or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed. 

One book that helped him think about these two sets of virtues was Lonely Man of Faith by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik who observes two accounts of creation in Genesis and argues these represent two opposing sides of our nature, Adam I and Adam II.

“If you are only Adam I, you turn into a shrewd animal, a crafty, self-preserving creature who is adept at playing the game and who turns everything into a game. If that’s all you have, you spend a lot of time cultivating professional skills, but you don’t have a clear idea of the sources of meaning in life, so you don’t know where you should devote your skills, which career path will be highest and best.” DB

“This book is about Adam II. It’s about how some people have cultivated strong character. It’s about one mindset that people through the centuries have adopted to put iron in their core and cultivate a wise heart. I wrote it, to be honest, to save my own soul.” DB

“Good, wise hearts are obtained through lifetimes of diligent effort to dig deeply within and heal lifetimes of scars. You can’t teach it or email it or tweet it. It has to be discovered within the depths of one’s own heart when a person is fairly ready to go looking for it, and not before.” Dave Jolly

Adam II: “Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have achieved inner integration. They are calm, settled, and rooted. They are not blown off course by storms. They don’t crumble in adversity. Their minds are consistent and their hearts are dependable.” DB

“They possess the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline.” DB

“These are the people who have built strong inner character, who have achieved certain depth. In these people, at the end of this struggle, the climb to success has surrendered to deepen the soul.” DB

Rites of Passage:
“The road to character often involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery. When they were in crucible moments, they suddenly had a greater ability to see their own nature. The everyday self-deceptions and illusions of self-mastery were shattered.” DB

“Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved.” Kierkegaard

“Such people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They find a vocation or calling. They commit themselves to some long obedience and dedicate themselves to some desperate lark that gives life purpose.” DB

Resist self-promotion:
When George H.W. Bush was running for president, if a speechwriter put “I” in one of his speeches, he would cross it out. In speeches he didn’t, his mother would call the next day and tell him he was talking too much about himself again. 

Shift from a culture of humility to a culture of “Big Me” where everyone’s encouraged to see themselves as the center of the universe. 

Purpose:
Don’t ask what you want from life, instead ask: “What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do?” DB

You have been thrown into a specific place with specific problems and needs. “Your job is to figure certain things out: What does this environment need in order to be made whole?” DB

“We don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life.” DB

“The true self is what you have built from your nature, not just what your nature started out with.” DB

Putting lower loves above higher ones:
“If someone tells you something in confidence and then you blab it as good gossip at a dinner party, you are putting your love of popularity above your love of friendship. If you talk more at a meeting than you listen, you may be putting your ardor to outshine above learning and companionship.” DB

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Immanuel Kant

“The most important thing is whether you are willing to engage in moral struggle against yourself.” DB

Inner scorecard:
“Adam I achieves success by winning victories over others. But Adam II builds character by winning victories over the weaknesses in himself.” DB

“Self-respect is produced by inner triumph, not external ones.” DB

“The central fallacy of modern life is the belief that accomplishments of the Adam I realm can produce deep satisfaction. That’s false. Adam I’s desires are infinite and always leap out ahead of whatever has just been achieved. Only Adam II can experience deep satisfaction.” DB

“Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one.” 

Legacy:
“The message is the person, perfected over lifetimes of effort that was set in motion by yet another wise person now hidden from the recipient by dim mists of time.” DB

“But if you serve work that is intrinsically compelling and focus on just being excellent at that, you will wind up serving yourself and the community obliquely.” DB

Maturity:
“Maturity does not glitter. It is not built on the traits that make people celebrities. A mature person has moved from fragmentation to centeredness, has achieved a state in which the restlessness is over, the confusion about the meaning and purpose of life is calmed.” DB

Flaws:
“We are all stumblers, and the beauty and meaning of life are in the stumbling—in recognizing the stumbling and trying to become more graceful as the years go by.” DB

Atlas of the Heart – Brené Brown

Atlas of the Heart – by Brené Brown
Date read: 8/14/22. Recommendation: 9/10.

I dearly needed to read this book when I did. I’ve been struggling to truly understand the nuance between different emotions and experiences and working to hone my own empathy so I’m able to show up in a more helpful way for the people in my life. Brené delivers the perfect book for making sense of our feelings and experiences. she emphasizes the impact of language—it’s not just to communicate emotion, it also shapes what we’re feeling. She digs into 150 human emotions and experiences throughout the book, detailing each. To wrap up the book, she spends time exploring the concept of ‘near enemies’ which I found incredibly helpful. As Brené explains, on the surface, the near enemies of emotions or experiences might look and even feel like connection, but ultimately they drive us to be disconnected from ourselves and from each other.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

The power of language:
“Language does more than just communicate emotion, it can actually shape what we’re feeling. Our understanding of our own and others’ emotions is shaped by how we perceive, categorize, and describe emotional experiences.” BB

Making sense of our feelings and experience:
“Just like a map, the interaction between the layers of our emotions and experiences tells our story. But rather than elevation and roads and water, human emotions and experiences are layers of biology, biography, behavior, and backstory.” BB

1. Understand how they show up in our bodies and why (biology)

2. Get curious about how our families and communities shape our beliefs about the connection between our feelings, thoughts, and behavior (biography)

3. Examine our go-to (behaviors)

4. Recognize the context of what we’re feeling or thinking. What brought this on? (backstory)

Stressed and overwhelmed:
“Feeling stressed and overwhelmed seem to be related to our perception of how we are coping with our current situation and our ability to handle the accompanying emotions: Am I coping? Can I handle this? Am I inching towards quicksand?” BB

Not a setup for successful decision-making: “I’m feeling my emotions at about 10, I’m paying attention to them at about 5, and I understand them at about 2.”

Admiration and reverence:
“Admiration fosters self-betterment, reverence seems to foster a desire for connection to what we revere—we want to move closer to that thing or person.” BB

Resentment:
“Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger…It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.” BB

“Now when I start to feel resentful, instead of thinking, What is that person doing wrong? or What should they be doing? I think, What do I need but am afraid to ask for?” BB

Freudenfreude:
The enjoyment of another’s success.

“Shoy: intentionally sharing in the joy of someone relating a success story by showing interest and asking follow-up questions.” BB

“Bragitude: intentionally tying words of gratitude toward the listener following the discussion of personal success.” BB

Expressing gratitude when others share joy: “Thank you for celebrating this with me. It means so much that you’re happy for me.” BB

Unexamined expectations:
As Brené and her husband were raising their children, they would often find weekends where the other person was out of town were easier, despite having to manage all the kids solo. When they were both parenting together on weekends they would often feel like the other wasn’t unhelpful and didn’t make it easier. What they realized is that when they were solo parenting, they let go of all expectations to get their own stuff done. They each gave up their to-do list and just rolled with the chaos. Now before weekends, vacations, or busy workweeks, they talk about expectations and ask each other, “What do you want this weekend to look like?” Brené might say, “This is going to be a busy weekend. I’m down for whatever we need to do, but I would like to swim at least one day.” 

Awe and wonder:
“Wonder inspires the wish to understand; awe inspires the wish to let shine, to acknowledge and to unite.” Ulrich Weger and Johannes Wagemann

“Wonder fuels our passion for exploration and learning, for curiosity and adventure.” BB

Hope:
“Hope is learned…To learn hopefulness, children need relationships that are characterized by boundaries, consistency, and support. Children with a high level of hopefulness have experience with adversity. They’ve been given the opportunity to struggle, and in doing that they learn how to believe in themselves and their abilities.” BB

“Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.”

Empathy:
“Empathy, the most powerful tool of compassion, is an emotional skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding.” BB

“Cognitive empathy, sometimes called perspective taking or mentalizing, is the ability to recognize and understand another person’s emotions…If someone is feeling lonely, empathy doesn’t require us to feel lonely too, only to reach back into our own experience with loneliness so we can understand and connect.” BB

“We can respond empathetically only if we are willing to be present to someone’s pain.” BB

Empathy is not walking in someone else’s shoes. It’s about learning how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experience. 

“Empathy is not relating to an experience, it’s connecting to what someone is feeling about an experience.” BB

Theresa Wiseman’s attributes of empathy:

1. Perspective taking: What does that concept mean for you? What is that experience like for you?

2. Staying out of judgment: Just listen, don’t put value on it.

3. Recognizing emotion: How can I touch within myself something that helps me identify and connect with what the other person might be feeling. Check in and clarify what you are hearing. Ask questions.

4. Communicating our understanding about the emotion: Sometimes this is elaborate and detailed, and sometimes this is simply, “Shit. That’s hard. I get that.”

5. Practicing mindfulness: This is not pushing away emotion because it’s uncomfortable, but feeling it and moving through it.

“The antidote to shame is empathy…Shame needs you to believe that you’re alone. Empathy is a hostile environment for shame.” BB

Be the learner, not the knower.

Sympathy:
“Sympathy is removed: When someone says, ‘I feel sorry for you’ or ‘That must be terrible,’ they are standing at a safe distance. Rather than conveying the powerful ‘me too’ of empathy, it communicates ‘not me,’ then adds, ‘But I do feel sorry for you.’” BB

Perfectionism:
“Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working toward excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think?” BB

“Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, work perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.” BB

Humiliation:
“Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.” Elie Wiesel

Belonging:
“We have to belong to ourselves as much as we need to belong to others. Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging.” BB

Love:
“Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can be cultivated between two people only when it exists within each one of them—we can love others only as much as love ourselves.” BB

“We need more real love. Gritty, dangerous, wild-eyed, justice-seeking love.” BB

Trust:
BRAVING tool
Boundaries: You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no. 

Reliability: You do what you say you’ll do.

Accountability: You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.

Vault: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share.

Integrity: You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy.

Nonjudgment: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need.

Generosity: You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

Gratitude:
“Gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things—movies, computer screens, sports—but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.” Robert Emmons

Self-righteousness:
The conviction that one’s beliefs and behaviors are the most correct. Leads to inflexibility, intolerance to ambiguity, and less consideration of others’ opinions. 

Mostly, self-righteousness is a sense of moral superiority and trying to convince ourselves and others that we’re doing the right thing. Shows up as performative moral outrage on social media.

Near enemies:
“Near enemies are states that appear similar to the desired quality but actually undermine it. Far enemies are the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve. For example, a near enemy of loving-kindness is sentimentality—similar but different. A far enemy of loving-kindness is ill will—the opposite of loving-kindness. Similarly, a near enemy of compassion is pity and a far enemy is cruelty.” Chris Gerner

“On the surface, the near enemies of emotions or experiences might look and even feel like connection, but ultimately they drive us to be disconnected from ourselves and from each other. Without awareness, near enemies become the practices that fuel separation…” BB

“The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, ‘I will love this person (because I need something from them).’ Or, ‘I’ll love you if you’ll love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want.’ True love allows, honors, and appreciates; attachment grasps, demands, needs, and aim to possess.” Jack Kornfield

“It’s the near enemies of connection—the imposters than can look and feel like cultivating closeness—that sabotage relationships and leave us feeling alone and in pain.” BB

The 33 Strategies of War – Robert Greene

The 33 Strategies of War – by Robert Greene
Date read: 8/1/22. Recommendation: 9/10.

Robert Greene is a generational talent. He’s my favorite author and fortunately, I haven’t read his entire library of work yet. This is an older book of his that I just read through for the first time and it’s as brilliant as any of his other work. He follows his tried and true template of bringing each strategy to life with historical examples of those who have embodied that strategy, as well as those who have failed to observe its importance. There are countless practical applications in our daily lives and careers.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Strategy:
“Our successes and failures in life can be traced to how well or how badly we deal with the inevitable conflicts that confront us in society. The common ways that people deal with them—trying to avoid all conflict, getting emotional and lashing out, turning sly and manipulative—are all counterproductive in the long run, because they are not under conscious and rational control and often make the situation worse.” RG

“Strategic warriors operate much differently. They think ahead toward their long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid and which are inevitable.” RG

“Strategy makes a better woodcutter than strength.” The Iliad, Homer

“Tactical people are heavy and stuck in the ground; strategists are light on their feet and can see far and wide.” RG

“In this world, where the game is played with loaded dice, a man must have a temper of iron, with armor proof to the blows of fate, and weapons to make his way against men. Life is one long battle; we have to fight at every step and Voltaire rightly says that if we succeed, it is at the point of the sword, and that we die with the weapon in our hand.” Schopenhauer 

Self-sufficiency:
“Being unconquerable lies with yourself.” Sun-tzu

“Dependency makes you vulnerable to all kinds of emotions—betrayal, disappointment, frustration—that play havoc with your mental balance.” RG

Trust yourself more and others less.

Enemies:
“Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target. You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself.” RG

It took Joe Frazier to make Muhammad Ali a great fighter—tough opponents will bring out the best in you.

Allow yourself to evolve and remain fluid:
“Your tendency to fight the last war may lead to your final war.” RG

“Strategy is not a question of learning a series of moves or ideas to follow like a recipe; victory has no magic formula. Ideas are merely nutrients for the soil; they lie in your brain as possibilities, so that in the heat of the moment they can inspire a direction, an appropriate and creative response.” RG

“Apply no tactic rigidly; do not let your mind settle into static positions, defending any particular place or idea, repeating the same lifeless maneuvers. Attack problems from new angles, adapting to the landscape and to what you’re given. By staying in constant motion you show your enemies no target to aim at. You exploit the chaos of the world instead of succumbing to it.” RG

“Water. Adapting its shape to wherever it moves in the steam, pushing rocks out of its way, smoothing boulders, it never stops, is never the same. The faster it moves the clearer it gets.” RG

“The future belongs to groups that are fluid, fast, and nonlinear.” RG

“Anything that has form can be overcome; anything that takes shape can be countered. This is why sages conceal their forms in nothingness and let their minds soar in the void.” Huainanzi

Reality is your friend:
Scout mindset: superior strategists see things as they are. They don’t dwell on the past, the present is far more interesting.

“To remain disciplined and calm while waiting for disorder to appear amongst the enemy is the art of self-possession.” Sun-tzu

Preparation: 
Never allow yourself to be underprepared—calmness and relaxed concentration come from relentless preparation.

Alfred Hitchcock stayed calm and detached during filming because he had prepared so relentlessly leading up to the production. Nothing caught him off guard. 

“Deep knowledge of the terrain will let you process information faster than your enemy.” RG

Grand strategy:
“Ignore the conventional wisdom about what you should or should not be doing….You need to be patient enough to plot several steps ahead—to wage a campaign instead of fighting battles. The path to your goal may be indirect, your actions may be strange to other people…” RG

Grand strategist = calm, detached, far-seeing. 

“The prudent man might seem cold, his rationality sucking pleasure out of life. Not so. Like the pleasure-loving gods on Mount Olympus, he has the perspective, the calm detachment, the ability to laugh, that come with true vision which gives everything he does a quality of lightness—these traits comprising what Nietzsche calls the ‘Apollonian ideal.’ Only people who can’t see past their noses make things heavy.” RG

“We often imagine that we generally operate by some kind of plan, that we have goals we are trying to reach. But we’re usually fooling ourselves; what we have are not goals, but wishes.” RG

“What have distinguished all history’s grand strategists and can distinguish you too, are specific, detailed, focused goals. Contemplate them day in and day out, and imagine how it will feel to reach them and what reaching them will look like.” RG

Clear line of command:
“Better one bad general than two good ones.” Napoleon

“No good can ever come of divided leadership. If you are ever offered a position in which you will have to share command, turn it down, for the enterprise will fail and you will be held responsible. Better to take a lower position and let the other person have the job.” RG

Lead from the front:
“Right from the beginning, your troops must see you leading from the front, sharing their dangers and sacrifices—taking the cause as seriously as they do. Instead of trying to push them from behind, make them run to keep up with you.” RG

LBJ was relentless and demanding, but never asked his staff to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. 

Shift the battlefield:
“The best way to attain control is to determine the overall pace, direction, and shape of the war itself. This means getting enemies to fight according to your tempo, luring them onto terrain that is unfamiliar to them and suited to you, playing to your strengths.” RG

“Your enemies will naturally choose to fight on terrain that is to their liking, that allows them to use their power to best advantage…Your goal is to subtly shift the conflict to terrain of your choice. You accept the battle but alter its nature. If it is about money, shift it to something moral. If your opponents want to fight over a particular issue, reframe the battle to encompass something larger and more difficult for them to handle. If they like a slow pace, find a way to quicken it.” RG

Center of gravity:
“Everyone has a source of power on which he or she depends. When you look at your rivals, search below the surface for that source, the center of gravity that holds the entire structure together. That center can be their wealth, their popularity, a key position, a winning strategy. Hitting them there will inflict disproportionate pain. Find what the other side cherishes and protects—that is where you must strike.” RG

“Power is deceptive. If we imagine the enemy as a boxer, we tend to focus on his punch. But still more than he depends on his punch, he depends on his legs; once they go weak, he loses balance, he cannot escape the other fighter, he is subject to grueling exchanges…” RG

To find the center, it often takes multiple steps to peel back the layers. Scipio first saw that Hannibal depended on Spain, then that Spain depended on Carthage, then that Carthage depended on its material prosperity. Instead of striking Carthage, he struck its fertile farming zone which was the source of its wealth, debilitating Carthage completely. 

“The Wall. Your opponents stand behind a wall which protects them from strangers and intruders. Do not hit your head against the wall or lay siege to it; find the pillars and supports that make it stand and give it strength. Dig under the wall, sapping its foundation until it collapses on its own.” RG

In victory, learn when to stop:
“You are judged in this world by how well you bring things to an end…The art of ending things well is knowing when to stop, never going so far that you exhaust yourself or create bitter enemies.” RG

“The worst way to end anything—a war, a conflict, a relationship—is slowly and painfully.” RG

“Before entering any action, you must calculate in precise terms your exit strategy.” RG

Gambles versus risks:
“Both cases involve an action with only a chance of success, a chance that is heightened by acting with boldness. The difference is that with a risk, if you lose, you can recover: your reputation will suffer no long-term damage, your resources will not be depleted, and you can return to your original position with acceptable losses. With a gamble, on the other hand, defeat can lead to a slew of problems that are likely to spiral out of control.” RG

The Power of Fun – Catherine Price

The Power of Fun – by Catherine Price
Date read: 7/7/22. Recommendation: 7/10.

I picked this up because I needed to establish better balance in my life post-COVID and generally make more room for having fun. I hit a point in 2022 where the only thing I prioritized for the previous two years was my career, working seven days a week for as long as I could remember, and just grinding it out. As a result, all I knew how to talk about was work. I forgot how to channel energy into letting go and having fun. The Power of Fun was a helpful resource for getting things back on track. Price defines true fun as the intersection of playfulness, connection, and flow. She walks through examples and self-guided activities for you to rediscover what this means to you. And she also details fun killers like judgment and distraction that you should avoid.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Components of fun:
“True Fun is the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow.”

“True Fun helps us tap into a rising current of air that lifts us up.” CP

Playfulness:
Characteristics: Spirit of lightheartedness and freedom. Not caring too much about the outcome. No sense of obligation. Smile frequently, laugh easily. 

“Play and playfulness can help us get back in touch with (or figure out for the first time) who we actually are.” CP

“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality…the self that emerges through play is the core, authentic self.” D.W. Winnicott and Stuart Brown

Connection:
Characteristics: Special, shared experience with someone (or something) else. Connection to your physical environment, activity you’re participating in, or your own body.

“Our lives are what we pay attention to.” CP

“This is why philosopher Simone Weil called attention ‘the rarest and purest form of generosity.’ If you reflect on your most cherished memories from when you were a child, often they will involve an adult who chose, out of all the things in the world, out of all the other demands on their time, to pay attention to you.” CP

“When it comes to dying early, being socially isolated is thought to be an even bigger risk factor than physical inactivity and health problems associated with obesity.” CP

Flow: 
Characteristics: Fully engrossed or engaged in your present experience to the point that you lose track of time.

Fun killers:
Distraction and judgment (prevent you from entering flow). Passive consumption. Resentment.

How fun people make others feel in their presence:
Everyone feels included. No one feels judged. Considerate of others’ feelings. They get excited with you. Create wonderful, shared memories. They’re generous, give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and are really open to others. They always have the time and energy to make people feel special.

The Art of the Good Life – Rolf Dobelli

The Art of the Good Life – Rolf Dobelli
Date read: 9/5/21. Recommendation: 8/10.

The book provides a toolkit with 52 guidelines for operating in a challenging modern world that we can struggle to understand intuitively. It’s a summary of lessons from modern psychology (Kahneman), Stoic philosophy, and value investing (Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger). If you enjoy those sources, you will enjoy this book. If you’re unfamiliar with those sources, Dobelli presents an approachable introduction that encourages further exploration. It’s a great overview of the powerful mental models and frameworks that some of the best minds use to navigate (and simplify) life.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Self-correction:
Education system oriented around factual knowledge and certifications, rather than the ability to reflect and self-correct. Degrees are nearing the point where they have less and less correlation to workplace success.

The wise man makes small adjustments: “What do you think: was it the set-up—the perfect genes, an ideal upbringing, a first-class education—that made this person so wise? Or was it acts of correction, of constant work on their own issues and shortcomings, a gradual elimination of these inadequacies from their lives?” RD

Flexibility is a trap:
Flexibility makes you unhappy, tired, and distracts you from your goals. There are two main traps: 1) Constantly having to make new decisions situation by situation saps willpower and leads to decision fatigue. 2) By being consistent on certain topics, signal where you stand and there’s no room for negotiation. Warren Buffett refuses on principle to negotiate. You get to make one offer.

Act while it’s uncomfortable:
“If you won’t attack a problem while it’s solvable and wait until it’s unfixable, you can argue that you’re so damn foolish that you deserve the problem.” Charlie Munger

Authenticity within reason:
“People are respected because they deliver on their promises, not because they let us eavesdrop on their inner monologs.” RD

“Restrict authenticity to keeping your promises and acting according to your principles. The rest is nobody else’s business.” RD

Prioritization + Focus:
Before ever responding to a request, wait five seconds. “If you say ‘No’ ninety percent of the time, you’re not missing much in the world.” Charlie Munger

Focusing illusion: “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it” Daniel Kahneman. The more narrowly we focus on a specific aspect of our lives, the greater its apparent influence. Step back, create some distance, and compare only once you pull yourself from the trenches.

Circle of competence: “Know your circle of competence, and stick within it. The size of that circle is not very important, knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.” Warren Buffett

Professional backgammon player makes a few deliberate mistakes to see how well his opponent will exploit them. If the other guy plays well, stop playing so you don’t throw away money. Knowing when you’re outside of your circle of competence and when not to bet is a critical life skill.

“A single outstanding skill trumps a thousand mediocre ones. Every hour invested in your circle of competence is worth a thousand spent elsewhere.” RD

Volunteer’s folly: “Many people fall for the volunteer’s folly—they believe there’s a point to voluntary work. In reality, it’s a waste. Your time is more meaningfully invested in your circle of competence, because it’s there that you’ll generate the most value per day.” RD

Purpose:
“One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” Bertrand Russell

When you’re starting your career, focus on stacking skills first, purpose second.

Prevention:
“Wisdom is a practical ability. It’s a measure of the skill with which we navigate life. Once you’ve come to realize that virtually all difficulties are easier to avoid than to solve, the following definition will be self-evident: ‘Wisdom is prevention.’” RD

Consider your health, career, finances, relationships: “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” Einstein

Prevention of mistakes and massive do-overs requires the ability to anticipate second and third-order consequences. Project multiple steps down the line.

Do the work:
“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird…So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” Richard Feynman

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – Eric Jorgenson

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – by Eric Jorgenson
Recommendation: 9/10. Date read: 11/6/20.

A collection of wisdom from entrepreneur and investor, Naval Ravikant. Jorgenson has consolidated years worth of interviews, podcasts, articles, tweets, and speeches from Ravikant. And he’s assembled the content in a way that’s intuitive, easy to follow, and genuinely helpful in highlighting Naval’s principles for building wealth and long-term happiness. Sections I found particularly insightful focused on Naval’s thoughts on habits, identity, moving with purpose, leveraging meaning as a force multiplier, and the importance of building specific knowledge.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Move with purpose:
Step one, you must know what you’re working towards or you’ll never get there: “Yes, hard work matters, and you can’t skimp on it. But it has to be directed in the right way. If you don’t know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out.” Naval Ravikant

“Spend more time making the big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.” NR

“Choosing what city to live in can almost completely determine the trajectory of your life.” NR

Specific knowledge is key:
Specific knowledge is the key: “Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage. Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Build specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others. When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools. Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative.” NR

Meaning is a force multiplier:
“If you’re not 100 percent into it, somebody else who is 100 percent into it will outperform you. And they won’t just outperform you by a little bit—they’ll outperform you by a lot.” NR

“The way to get out of the competition trap is to be authentic, to find the thing you know how to do better than anybody. You know how to do it better because you love it, and no one can compete with you.” NR

“No one in the world is going to beat you at being you.” NR

“I’m always ‘working.’ It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me. And that’s how I know no one can compete with me on it. Because I’m just playing, for sixteen hours a day. If others want to compete with me, they’re going to work, and they’re going to lose because they’re not going to do it for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.” NR

“Look at the kids who are born rich—they have no meaning to their lives.” NR

Ethics:
“Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.” NR

Patience:
“Great people have great outcomes. You just have to be patient.” NR

“Your real resume is just a catalog of all your suffering…the sacrifices you made, the hard things you did.” NR

Simplicity:
“‘Clear thinker’ is a better compliment than ‘smart.’” NR

“When it comes to medicine and nutrition, subtract before you add.” NR

Habits:
“You absolutely need habits to function. You cannot solve every problem in life as if it is the first time it’s thrown at you.” NR

“It’s really important to be able to uncondition yourself, to be able to take your habits apart and say, ‘Okay, this is a habit I probably picked up when I was a toddler trying to get my parent’s attention. Now I’ve reinforced it and reinforced it, and I call it a part of my identity. Does it still serve me?’” NR

“The genuine love for reading itself, when cultivated, is a superpower.” NR

“The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power.” NR

“A calm mind, a fit body, and a house of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned.” NR

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” Jerzy Gregorek

Identity:
Danger of ideologies: “Any belief you took in a package (ex. Democrat, Catholic, American) is suspect and should be re-evaluated from base principles.” NR

Allow yourself to evolve: “Facebook redesigns. Twitter redesigns. Personalities, careers, and teams also need redesigns. There are no permanent solutions in a dynamic system.” NR

“The fundamental delusion: There is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.” NR

Sustainability: “Don’t hang around people who constantly engage in conflict. I’m not interested in anything unsustainable or even hard to sustain, including difficult relationships.” NR

Impermanence: “Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again.” Homer, The Iliad

Leadership in Turbulent Times – Doris Kearns Goodwin

Leadership in Turbulent Times – by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Date read: 4/25/20. Recommendation: 10/10.

This was one of the best books, if not the best, that I’ve read in the past twelve months. Goodwin highlights lessons in leadership demonstrated by four US Presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Goodwin explores how each president came from a very different upbringing and the role that played in their leadership style. She also looks at how each man responded to extreme hardship during the bleakest moments of their lives—three of the four emerged from catastrophic turns of fortune with an enlarged capacity for leadership. Each president demonstrated their own unique capacity for transformational, crisis, turnaround, and visionary leadership. Goodwin structures the book in an accessible way that proves to be a great jumping-off point to explore both the lives and the leadership principles that helped guide a few of our best presidents.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Formative Years:
“Privilege can stunt ambition, just as the lack of privilege can fire ambition.” DKG

“Temperament is the great separator.” Richard Neustadt

Lincoln: 
Incredible motivation and willpower to develop every talent to the fullest.

Lincoln’s hallmark: the philosophical and poetic depths of his mind.

Honed a clear and inquisitive mind through hard work. He would rewrite passages that stuck him and keep them in a scrapbook. “I am slow to learn and slow to forget what I have learned.” Lincoln

“While his mind was neither quick nor facile, young Lincoln possessed singular powers of reasoning and comprehension, unflagging curiosity, and a fierce, almost irresistible, compulsion to understand the meaning of what he heard, read, or was taught.” DKG

Formal education ended at the age of nine, after that he had to educate himself. He was voracious reader, scoured the countryside to borrow books and read every volume. 

Of the four presidents in this book, “Only Abraham Lincoln, who had actually endured physical danger and the bitter hardships of wilderness life, never romanticized his family’s past.” DKG

Teddy Roosevelt: 
“His ability to concentrate was such that the house might fall about his head and we would not be diverted.”

Teddy’s hallmark: his scintillating breadth of intelligence. 

Franklin Roosevelt: 
Optimistic spirit and expectation that things would turn out for the best were a testament to the self-confidence he developed during the peacefulness and regularity of his childhood days.

FDR’s hallmark: “An uncommon intuitive capacity and interpersonal intelligence allowed him as a child to read the intentions and desires of his parents, to react appropriately to shifting household moods—gifts that he would nurture and develop in the years ahead. While he did not learn as a felling academic often does—by mastering vast reading material and applying analytical skills—he possessed an incredibly shrewd, complicated, problem-solving intelligence.” DKG

His ability in later years to adapt to changing circumstances also proved vital to his leadership success. Adaptability was forced upon him at the age of eight when his father suffered a heart attack. “The need to navigate the altered dynamic of Springwood required new measures of secrecy, duplicity, and manipulation—qualities that would later prove troubling but were at this juncture benign, designed only to protect a loved one from harm.”

After his father’s heart attack, FDR spent more time in the house (rather than sledding, horseback riding, fishing, which he and his father did daily in his early years). Here he began to build collections of stamps, maps, model ships, etc.

Collecting is a way of ordering a disordered world. It holds a special meaning for children, offering a small corner of the world where the child is in charge, experiencing the “thrill of acquisition.” (Summarizing Walter Benjamin)

Test and learn: “He would fling things agains the wall, seeing if they would stick; if they didn’t, he would acknowledge his mistake and try something else.” DKG

Hobbies and Meditative Space:

• Lincoln was able to relax with poetry and theater.

• Teddy was interested in birds, exploration, and the latest novels.

• FDR spent hours away sailing, playing with stamps, enjoying poker and social chatter.

• LBJ, in contrast, could never unwind and let go for a few hours.

“Roosevelt’s childhood hobbies (mainly sorting and arranging his stamp collection) would serve in later years as invaluable tools in nourishing his leadership—providing a meditative state, a space which he could turn things over in his mind, the means by which he could relax and replenish his energy.” DKG

Adversity and Growth:
Growth in the face of frustration and extracting wisdom from experience: “Some people lose their bearings; their lives are forever stunted. Others resume their normal behaviors after a period of time. Still others, through reflection and adaptive capacity, are able to transcend their ordeal, armed with a greater resolve and purpose.” DKG

“Each of these three men (Lincoln, Teddy, FDR) emerged from a catastrophic turn of fortune with an enlarged capacity for leadership.” DKG

Lincoln: 
Alive time vs. dead time (see Robert Greene): The half-decade after Lincoln’s unhappy tenure in Congress was anything but a passive time. “It was, on the contrary, and intense period of personal, intellectual, moral and professional growth, for during these years he learned to position himself as a lawyer and leader able to cope with the tremors that were beginning to rack the country.” 

“What fired in Lincoln in this furious and fertile time of self-improvement? The answer lay in his readiness to gaze in the mirror and soberly scrutinize himself.” DKG

“Leave nothing for tomorrow that can be done today.” Lincoln

One of the key’s to Lincoln’s success was his ability to break complex problems into their simplest elements.

Teddy Roosevelt: 
After his wife and mother died just hours apart in 1884, Teddy set off for the North Dakota where he would remain for two years, working on a cattle ranch and learning how heal, grow, and move past the trauma. He’d later regard this as “the most important educational asset” of his entire life. He built grit and cultivated his new identity as “a hybrid of the cultivated easterner and the hard-bitten westerner.” 

Franklin Roosevelt: 
Trial and error was fundamental to his leadership style. “In the Navy Department, he had flung ideas against the wall to see which ones might stick; during the New Deal he would experiment with one program after another, swiftly changing course if the present one proved ineffective.” DKG

Lessons in Leadership:

Lincoln: 
Team of rivals: Unlike James Buchanan who had chosen a cabinet of like-minded men who wouldn’t question his authority, Lincoln actively sought the opposite. “Lincoln created a team of independent, strong-minded men, all of whom were more experienced in public life, better educated, and more celebrated than he. In the top three positions, at the State Department, the Treasury, and the Justice Department, he placed his three chief rivals—William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates—each of whom thought he should be president instead of the prairie lawyer from Illinois.” Lincoln did this because he knew the country was in peril and these were the strongest men he knew. 

“Lincoln possessed a deep-rooted integrity and humility combined with an ever-growing confidence in his capacity to lead. Most of all, he brought a mind tempered by failure, a mind able to fashion the appalling suffering ahead into a narrative that would give direction, purpose, and lasting inspiration.” DKG

Control anger: When angry at a colleague, Lincoln would write out a letter with all his frustrations and gripes, then put the letter aside until he calmed down and could review what he had written. The act of talking through his frustrations with himself was always enough and he never sent the vast majority of these. 

Other key transformational leadership lessons from Lincoln:

• Gather firsthand information, ask questions.

• Find time and space in which to think.

• Assume full responsibility for a pivotal decision.

• Understand the emotional needs of each member of the team.

• Refuse to let past resentments fester; transcend personal vendettas.

• Shield colleagues from blame and don’t allow subordinates to take the blame.

Lincoln was a master of combining transactional and transformational leadership. He knew how to combine an appeal to self-interest to influence behavior of others while layering on an inspiring vision so people could also identify with something larger than themselves. 

Franklin Roosevelt: 
Make yourself appear confident in order to become more confident: “The remarkable thing about him (FDR) was his readiness to assume responsibility and his taking that responsibility with a smile.” FDR

Fireside chats: Communicated challenges facing the country by translating stories in a way that could be better understood by himself and the average citizen, rather than in highly specialized language of the legal and banking worlds. Used simple, direct communication and identified the questions people asked themselves so he could answer them. 

“Roosevelt’s gift of communication prove the vital instrument of his success in developing a common mission, clarifying problems, mobilizing action, and earning people’s trust.” DKG

Be open to experiment: “Roosevelt stressed the improvisational, experimental nature of the New Deal.” He was adaptable, willing to shift ground, revise, and accommodate changing circumstances, due to the entirely new problems the country faced.

Bias for action: “Do the very best you can in making up your mind, but once your mind is made up go ahead.” FDR

In victory know when to stop:
Theodore Roosevelt announced he would not run for a third term and instead backed William Howard Taft and set sail for a year-long safari. But when he returned he decided he wanted to challenge Taft for the nomination after all and lost. Later Roosevelt decided to run as a third party candidate and allowed Woodrow Wilson to win the election, hurting the progressive cause he stood for. 

The Practicing Stoic – Ward Farnsworth

The Practicing Stoic – by Ward Farnsworth
Date read: 4/11/20. Recommendation: 9/10.

One of the best modern overviews of Stoicism that I’ve read. Farnsworth sets out to organize the ideas of the Stoic philosophers in a logical manner with foundational principles first, followed by their practical applications. He synthesizes the most important points made by different Stoics about each subject. One thing that makes this book particularly unique and resonated with me was the fact that he sprinkles in parallel ideas from other contemporary thinkers and philosophers, like Montaigne, Samuel Johnson, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Judgment:
“We react to our judgments and opinions—to our thoughts about things, not to things themselves.” WF

Event > judgment/opinion > reaction. Your job is to begin recognizing the middle step. 

“Men are disturbed not by the things that happen but by their opinions about those things” Epictetus

“It is not what things are objective and in themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the reverse.” Schopenhauer

“We can choose to have no opinion about a thing and not to be trouble by it; for things themselves have no power of their own to affect our judgments.” Marcus Aurelius

“It takes greatness of mind to judge great matters; otherwise they will seem to have defects that in truth belong to us. In the same way, certain objects that are perfectly straight will, when sunk in the water, appear to the onlooker as bent or broken off. It is not so much what you see but how you see it that matters. When it comes to perceiving reality, our minds are in a fog.” Seneca

“The work of philosophy is to take responsibility for our own thinking, and in doing so to liberate ourselves from the attachments and misjudgments that otherwise dictate our experience.” WF

Externals:
“There is only one road to happiness—let this rule be at hand morning, noon, and night: stay detached from things that are not up to you.” Epictetus

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them.” Montaigne

Make sure your center of gravity stays within, that way the foundation of your happiness never gets destroyed through loss or disappointment due to things beyond your control. (summarizing Schopenhauer)

Perspective:
“The long view is good for morale. If it is an affront to the ego, it is also an antidote to vanity, ambition, and greed.” WF

“Imagine the vast abyss of time, and think of the entire universe; then compare what we call a human lifetime to that immensity. You will see how tiny a thing it is that we wish for and seek to prolong.” Seneca

“We believe these affairs of ours are greater because we are small.” Seneca

Death:
For the Stoics, meditation on death is a tool to promote humility, fearlessness, moderation, and other virtues.

“Only fools are attached to their bodies by a fear of death rather than a love of life.” Montaigne

“You are mistaken if you think that only on an ocean voyage is there a very slight space between life and death. No, the distance between is just as narrow everywhere.” Seneca

“We must make it our aim to have already lived long enough.” Seneca

Desire:
“You will learn the truth by experience: the things that people value highly and try hardest to get do them no good once they have them.” Epictetus

“We go panting after things unknown and things to come, because the things that are present are never enough. It is not, in my view, that they lack what it takes to satisfy us, but rather that we hold them in an unhealthy and immoderate grip.” Montaigne

“The measure of what is necessary is what is useful.” Seneca

“Natural desires are finite; those born of false opinion have no place to stop.” Seneca

“The desires that have limits come from Nature. The ones that run away from us and never have an end are our own. Poverty in material things is easy to cure; poverty of the soul, impossible.” Montaigne

“Do you not realize that all things lose their force because of familiarity?” Seneca

“We value nothing more highly than a benefit when we are seeking it, and nothing less highly once we obtain it.” Seneca

“That man will never be happy whom the sight of a happier man will torment.” Seneca

“When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.” Samuel Johnson

Wealth and pleasure:
“Lack of moderation is the plague of pleasure. Moderation is not the scourge of pleasure, but the seasoning of it.” Montaigne

“What it has made necessary for man, nature has not made difficult. But he desires clothing of purple steeped in rich dye, embroidered in gold, and decorated with a variety of colors and designs: it is not nature’s fault but his own that he is poor.” Seneca

“On hearing of the interesting events which have happened in the course of a man’s experience, many people will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too, completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he describes them.” Schopenhauer

What others think:
“Who does not willingly exchange health, tranquility, and life itself for reputation and glory—the most useless, worthless, and counterfeit coin that circulates among us?” Montaigne

“In all we do, almost the first thing we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half of the trouble and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score.” Schopenhauer

“Soon you will have forgotten everything; soon everything will have forgotten you.” Marcus Aurelius

“The success of the insult depends on the sensitivity and indignation of the victim.” Seneca

“Remember that you are insulted not by the person who strikes or abuses you but by your opinion that these things are insulting.” Seneca

“No one becomes a laughingstock who laughs at himself.” Seneca

“Do I deserve these things that happen to me? If I deserve them, there is no insult; it is justice. If I don’t deserve them, let the one who does the injustice blush.” Seneca

Valuation:
“This why I lost my lamp: because a thief was better than I am at staying awake. But he bought the lamp at a high price. In return he became a thief, he become untrustworthy…” Epictetus

Self-esteem is the price you pay for unethical acts.

“If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else.” Seneca

Emotion:
“We suffer more in conjecture than in reality…We magnify our sorrow, or we imagine it, or we get ahead of it.” Seneca

Adversity:
“It is not hardships that are desirable, but the courage by which to endure them.” Seneca

“It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay blame on himself; and one whose instruction is complete to blame neither another nor himself.” Epictetus

“My formula for greatness in a man is amor fati: the fact that a man wishes nothing to be different, either in front of him or behind him, or for all eternity.” Nietzsche 

“Those who are without skill and sense as to how they should live, like sick people whose bodies can endure neither heat not cold, are elated by good fortune and depressed by adversity; and they are greatly disturbed by both.” Plutarch

“Fire tests gold, adversity brave men.” Seneca

“I judge you unfortunate because you have never been unfortunate: You have passed through life without an antagonist; no one will ever know what you can do, not even you yourself.” Seneca

“Pain is neither unbearable nor eternal if you consider its limits, and don’t add to it in your imagination.” Marcus Aurelius

“Pain takes up only as much space as we allow to it.” Montaigne

Virtue:
“Let nothing be done in your life that will cause you fear if it is discovered by your neighbor.” Epicurus

“It is a rare life that maintains its good order even in private. Everyone can play his role and act the honest man on the stage…” Montaigne

“Kindness is invincible, if it is genuine and not insincere or put on as an act.” Marcus Aurelius

Learning:
“No one can live happily or even tolerably without the study of wisdom. Wisdom, when achieved, produced a happy life.” Seneca

“Do you want to know why your running away doesn’t help? You take yourself along. Your mental burden must be put down before any place will satisfy you.” Seneca

“Associate with those who will improve you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for people learn while they teach.” Seneca

“The mind is not like a bucket that requires filling, it is like wood that needs igniting—nothing more—to produce an impulse to discovery and a longing for the truth.” Plutarch

“The last occupation of the preoccupied man is living—and there is nothing that is harder to learn.” Seneca

Stillness Is the Key – Ryan Holiday

Stillness Is the Key – by Ryan Holiday
Date read: 4/3/20. Recommendation: 9/10.

Holiday has his formula down and he nails it each time. Short, succinct chapters with relevant stories pulled throughout history to illustrate his main ideas. Busyness is a distraction we use to avoid putting in the real work that we must do in order to achieve a sense of stillness. Otherwise, we’ll always be running from something and never learn to be content with ourselves or appreciate the present moment. The ability to pause, reflect, and come back to the now is one skill that great leaders, thinkers, artists, and athletes all have in common. We could all benefit from creating more room for stillness—to limit our inputs, better appreciate the moment we’re living in right now, focus on our own character, and keep things in perspective.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Being present:
“You have plenty on your plate right now. Focus on that, no matter how small or insignificant it is. Do the very best you can right now. Don’t think about what detractors may say. Don’t dwell or needlessly complicate. Be here. Be all of you.” RH

“There is no stillness for the person who cannot appreciate things as they are, particularly when that person has objectively done so much.” RH

You already matter. You don’t need to prove anything else. 

Limiting your inputs:
Success isn’t about catching everything before it falls through the cracks, it’s about knowing what to let fall through. 

“Knowing what not to think about. What to ignore and not to do. It’s your first and most important job.” RH

To reach a relaxed state of concentration where you can do your best, don’t overanalyze, just do the work: Chop wood, carry water. 

Journaling for reflection:
Journaling = spiritual windshield wipers (Julia Cameron). Demands and creates stillness. 

In victory learn when to stop:
“Eventually one has to say the e-word, enough. Or the world says it for you.” RH

Joseph Heller (Catch 22) in conversation with Kurt Vonnegut at the fancy party in New York City at some billionaire’s second home: “I’ve got something he can never have. The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” Lao Tzu

“More does nothing for the one who feels less than, who cannot see the wealth that was given to them at birth, that they have accumulated in their relationships and experiences.” RH

“If a man can reduce his needs to zero, he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.” John Boyd

The path to stillness:
Develop a strong moral compass.
Street clear of envy and jealousy and harmful desires.
Come to terms with the painful wounds of your childhood
Practice gratitude and appreciation for the world around you.
Cultivate relationships and love in your lives.
Place belief and control in the hands of something larger than themselves.

“Give more.
Give what you didn’t get.
Love more. 
Drop the old story.” RH

Character:
“We develop good character, strong epithets for ourselves, so that when it counts, we will not flinch.” RH

“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” Nixon

Perspective:
“In the face of the Sublime, we feel a shiver…something too large for our minds to encompass. And for a moment, it shakes us out of our smugness and releases us from the deathlike grip of habit and banality.” Robert Greene

“The moon you’re looking at tonight is the same moon you looked at as a scared young boy or girl, it’s the same you’ll look at when you’re older—in moments of joy and in pain—and it’s the same that your children will look at in their own moments and their own lives.” RH

“When you step back from the enormity of your own immediate experience—whatever it is—you are able to see the experience of others and connect with them or lessen the intensity of your own pain.” RH

“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The Conquest of Happiness – Bertrand Russell

The Conquest of Happiness – by Bertrand Russell
Date read: 2/23/20. Recommendation: 8/10.

An accessible introduction to the work and philosophy of Bertrand Russell. In many ways, The Conquest of Happiness is a predecessor to the self-improvement genre that exists today. The book is broken down into two main sections, causes of unhappiness and causes of happiness. I got the most out of the second section as he discusses finding in harmony the stream of life and developing a zest for life. As Russell suggests, “The secret to happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the thing and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.”

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Teach and be taught, rather than judge and be judged mindset:
“The secret to happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the thing and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.”

Expand your interests:
“The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he call fall back upon another.”

Alex note: Every year that passes, life should be more enjoyable. You discover more of the things you love and are able to recognize more things that you don’t. 

Alex note: With age, there’s a diminishing preoccupation with yourself. Take yourself less seriously, get out of your own head, avoid tricking yourself into believing that you are the center of the universe, and you will be happier. 

“But the monk will not be happy until the routine of the monastery has made him forget his soul.”

Zest:
“The man who has the zest for life has the advantage over the man who has none. Even unpleasant experiences have their uses to him.”

The adventurous enjoy even the unpleasant experiences…”It gives them pleasure to have their knowledge of the world increased by this new item.”

The Stream of Life:
“To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.” 

“The happy man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joys that it affords, untroubled by the thought of death because he feels himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found.” 

Alex note: Life is motion. The goal is to remain in harmony with that motion as best you’re able to.

“Success can only be one ingredient in happiness, and is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.”

Work:
“Even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness.”

“We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom.”

Unhappiness:
“I believe this unhappiness to be very largely due to mistaken views of the world, mistaken ethics, mistaken habits of life, leading to destruction of that natural zest and appetite for possible things upon which all happiness, whether of men or animals, ultimately depends.” 

Legacy – James Kerr

Legacy – by James Kerr
Date read: 2/1/19. Recommendation: 7/10.

A detailed look at the principles and strategies of history’s most successful rugby team, New Zealand’s All Blacks. There are some great quotes in this book and at its core, it’s all about leadership. Kerr examines the things that set apart the All Blacks, including: discipline, self-awareness, culture, adaptation, storytelling, and purpose. It’s an insightful read that will provide immediate takeaways which you can use to become a better person and a better leader.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Personal Discipline:

• Post-game the All Blacks debrief and everyone is given a chance to speak. Once they break, something unexpected happens, two players grab a broom and begin sweeping the sheds, cleaning up after themselves. 

• No one looks after the All Blacks, they look after themselves. They don’t expect someone else to do their job or things to be handed to them.

• Strong personal discipline translates to discipline on the field.

Self-knowledge:

• “Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader.” Vince Lombardi

• Self-knowledge helps develop character and integrity. Character and integrity help develop leadership.

• “What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?” Buckminster Fuller

Culture:

• Force multiplier: Any lasting organization has a fundamental set of principles…a values-based, purpose-driven culture. Challenge is to bring that to life and into the lives of those on your team.

• “My army won because they knew what they were fighting for and loved what they knew.” Oliver Cromwell

• Establish a higher culture than your opposition and you’ll win.

• “It’s better to have a thousand enemies outside the tent than one inside the tent.” Arab proverb

• Multiculturalism - ever-changing sense of what it means to be a New Zealander or an All Black: “Successful cultures are organic and adaptive, they change and flow, yet always just under the surface is a bedrock of values, smoothed by the current above, but unyielding.” See Shane Parrish interview with Shopify founder Tobi Lütke.

Adaptation:

• Sigmoid Curve: Learning, growth, decline.

• Outwitting inevitability and hijacking the curve: “The key, of course, is when we’re on top of our game, to change our game; to exit relationships, recruit new talent, alter tactics, reassess strategy.” JK

• Growth comes from allowing yourself, your skills and your sense of authenticity to evolve. Tiger Woods changing his golf swing. Bob Dylan altering his sound. 

Leadership:

• Leaders create leaders.

• “Move rapidly into a commanding position, assess your unfolding options quickly and clearly, attack with absolute and ruthless commitment – assess, adjust and repeat.” JK

• Empower your people: “The competitive advantage is nullified when you try to run decisions up and down the chain of command…Once the commander’s intent is understood, decisions must be devolved to the lowest possible level to allow these front line soldiers to exploit the opportunities that develop.” General Gordon R. Sullivan

• “Leaders are teachers – our job is to lead people through uncertainty and confusion into self-knowledge and self-possession.” JK

Power of Storytelling:

• “Using vivid storytelling techniques, including themes, symbols, imagery, rituals, mantras and metaphor, and bringing them to life with imagination and flair, leaders create a sense of inclusion, connectedness, and unity.” JK

• “We learn best – and change – from hearing stories that strike a chord with us…Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies or themselves.” John Kotter

• “Metaphors are where we recognize ourselves in stories.” JK

• “The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance.” Aristotle

Authenticity + Integrity:

• “Authenticity allows us to author our own lives; to make our own original imprint and to write our own story in a voice that is true to our values.” JK

• Integrity means being able to count on yourself (and others being able to count on you) to deliver. It’s about honoring your word. 

Pressure:

• Red head: tight, inhibited, results-oriented, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate.

• Blue head: loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, relaxed concentration, clear, accurate, on task.

• “In the heat of battle, the difference between the inhibitions of the Red and the freedom of Blue is the manner in which we control our attention.” JK

• To get out of your own head, shift your attention to something external. 

Impact:

• Whakapapa - Maori term for genealogy, our place in the ascending order of all living things. Sun slowly moves down this chain of people, signifying life. When the sun is on us we inherit the tribe’s stories, values, transitions. We help advance that, then pass it on to the next person in the chain.

• Whakapapa is similar to the Stoic term sympatheia (interconnected whole). 

• “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Sean Fitzpatrick

• “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never see.” Greek Proverb

• “Character is also the mark left on you by life, and the mark we leave on life.” JK

• “If we value life, life values us.” JK

Atomic Habits – James Clear

Atomic Habits – by James Clear
Date read: 11/4/18. Recommendation: 8/10.

The idea behind Atomic Habits is that by stacking tiny habits over time you can achieve compounding, remarkable results. Your outcomes, as Clear suggests, are the lagging measure of your habits. He offers great insight into nonlinear growth (breakthrough moments), identity, discipline, and environmental design, as it relates to behavior change. The models used throughout the book help make each concept relatable and are something I will come back to for years to come. The importance of playing the long game and building better systems is hard to undervalue. There’s room for everyone to improve in this capacity, and if nothing else it’s a refreshing reminder: “Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?"

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

“To write a great book, you must first become the book.” Naval Ravikant

Automatic Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery

Self-improvement:

• 1% better each day for one year = 37x better

• “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement."

• Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Knowledge is lagging measure of your learning habits. 

Nonlinearity:

• Ice cube example warming from 26 degrees, one degree at a time, to 32 when it finally begins to melt. But no visible progress from 26-31.

• Breakthrough moments = culmination of actions leading up to that point. 

• Habits need to persist long enough to break through plateau where you don’t see tangible results or “success” as you’ve envisioned it. 

• Sorites Paradox: Can one coin make someone rich? No, but as you keep adding/stacking coins (habits), at a certain point one coin makes the difference.

Goals vs. Systems:

• Goals are good for setting direction, systems best for making progress.

• “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.” Refinement, improvement and commitment to the process.

• Goal is not to read a book, it’s to become a reader. Not to learn an instrument, it’s to become a musician.

Identity and behavior change:

• Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want? If it’s a person who could write a book, that means consistent, reliable, etc.

• Decide the type of person you want to be and prove it to yourself with small wins.

• “Does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my desired identity?"

• At a certain point, the identity itself becomes the reinforcer. Behavior becomes automatic because it’s who you are. 

Keep your identity small:

• Tighter you cling to an identity, harder it is to grow beyond it and less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.

• “When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.”

• Redefine yourself so you keep important aspects of your identity even when your role changes. Instead of “I’m the CEO,” “I’m the type of person who builds and creates things."

• Identity should work with changing circumstances, rather than against them. 

Discipline:

• “It is only by making the fundamentals in life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity."

• “‘Disciplined’ people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations."

• Create a disciplined environment —> easier to practice self-restraint when you don’t have to use it often.

• Environmental design: Remove friction, make doing the right thing as easy as possible. Inversion: add friction to make bad behaviors more difficult.

Clarity:

• Don’t mistake lack of clarity for lack of motivation, make it obvious.

• Be specific about what you want and how you will achieve it. When you’re vague about your dreams it’s easy to ignore the specifics you need to do to succeed.

Imitation:

• Proximity has powerful effect on our behavior (both physical and social environments). Running against the grain requires extra effort.

• Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself.

• “When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe, change is very attractive."

Motion vs. Action:

• Motion = planning, strategizing, learning. Important, but don’t produce a result. Allows you to feel like you’re making progress without risk of failure. Ex) Making a list of 20 articles to write.

• Action = behavior that will deliver an outcome. Ex) Actually sitting down to write an article.

• Start with repetition, not perfection. Habits form based on frequency, not time.

Time inconsistency (hyperbolic discounting):

• The way the brain evaluates rewards is inconsistent across time. From an evolutionary perspective, you naturally value present more than future

• Costs of good habits are felt today. Costs of bad habits are felt in the future.

• “Most people will spend all day chasing hits of quick satisfaction. The road less traveled is the road of delayed gratification. If you’re willing to wait for the rewards, you’ll face less competition and often get a bigger payoff. As the saying goes, the last mile is always the least crowded."

Consistency:

• Always show up, even on your bad days. Lost days hurt you more than successful days help you.

• $100 grows 50% to $150. Only takes a 33% loss to take you back to $100. Avoiding 33% loss just as valuable at 50% gain. 

Don’t enter games you’re not willing to play:

• Maximize your odds by choosing right field of competition. 

• Think about where you achieve greater returns than the average person and the type of work that hurts you less than it hurts others. 

• Flow = 4% beyond your current ability.

Checking progress/reflection:

• Annual review, EOY: 1) What went well this year? 2) What didn’t go so well this year? 3) What did I learn? https://jamesclear.com/annual-review

• Integrity report, mid-year: 1) What are the core values that are driving my life and work? How am I living and working with integrity right now? How can I set a higher standard for the future?