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Humans have a tendency to overweight surface-level benefits.
Everybody
wants to be more productive. Everybody wants to learn the hard skills
that will make them more successful. Everybody wants to know how they
can build smarter habits and cultivate better routines.
These
skills have a visible reward that’s very apparent once they’re
mastered, and as a result, they get a lot of attention and resources
dedicated to them.
If
you learn how to manage your time better, you’ll be more equipped to do
something useful with it. If you learn to code or to write, you may
have a career ahead of you that you can pursue beyond an office. If you
build better habits, you can make a lot of difficult tasks easier.
These
rewards are clearly valuable. That said, they’re ultimately not the
highest leverage skills that you can nurture in yourself. In fact, the
skill that is perhaps the most potent of all is also the most neglected.
It’s
one that we all already engage with, but it’s also one that very few us
of have truly mastered. It’s both easy and difficult at the same time.
The most important skill in your life is knowing how to think.
The Fundamental Meta-Skill
Much of western philosophy can be traced back to the mind of Socrates.
The
only problem is that Socrates never wrote anything. The only record we
have of the man comes from other writers and philosophers who knew him
and engaged with him, most notably Plato.
In
Plato’s work, much of the writing is presented in the form of dialogue,
and a good portion of the dialogues are of Socrates engaged in
conversation with others, which generally end with him out-reasoning
them.
He is known to modern society for his Socratic method, which is essentially just a process of asking “Why?” over
and over again until you have broken the argument down to its core. In a
way, this simple method helps us get to the core promise made by
philosophy.
The
promise being that it will teach you more than just how to live well.
It will teach you how to think, a skill perhaps even more important.
Unfortunately,
however, this skill while responsible for everything from how you make
decisions to how you face challenges is becoming increasingly
disconnected from the institutions that are supposed to teach it to you.
Although
the internet has helped by democratizing knowledge, there are few
places that provide you with processes for making sense of it.
More
than ever, it’s on us to hone this ability. Fortunately, there are ways
you can do that. Here are three methods to improve your mental
processing.
1. De-Habituate Yourself From Instinct
Most of the responses that we give to our surroundings are habitual.
We
sense a cue in our environment, this cue is associated with something
in our memory, and whatever is in our memory produces an automatic
response.
Although
this is efficient when it comes to tasks that don’t require a thought
out response, it can be detrimental when applied to other situations.
Psychologists
often differentiate between fast thinking and slow thinking, and fast
thinking, while convenient, isn’t always completely optimal.
Whether
it’s trying to control your anger or it’s making a deliberate effort to
better evaluate an important decision at work, it’s worth reminding
yourself to look at things like you’re seeing them for the first time.
A
beginners mind, coupled with detached experience, produces a far better
result than just an instinctual reaction to an event. It forces you to
slow down and ask questions before proceeding to a final solution.
This
not only works as a way to second-guess an otherwise rushed reaction,
but looking at things like a beginner also helps you see and think about
different outcomes from a unique and, sometimes, better angle.
2. Take Time to Think About Thinking
What
is the core mental representation that you have of the world? How do
your thinking patterns connect and interact with each other? What’s the
process you go through when you make a decision?
These
are important questions, and very few people take time to actually
think about them. It’s worth creating some space to do that.
The
relationship between the different mental models you have in your mind
and how they interact with the world shapes everything else that occurs
in your life. It’s the lens through which you make sense of reality.
It’s not something that should be happening in the background of your mind.
It’s
something you should actively take time to understand and connect. It’s
something you should deliberately manipulate by reading things of value
and learning from people who are smarter than you.
As Warren Buffett says, “I
insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and
think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think, and
make less impulse decisions than most people in business.”
You should know how your brain works so you can better influence it.
3. Routinely Reflect on Your Decisions
Your day to day decisions are ultimately the core product of your thinking.
You
can judge the quality of someone’s mind by the track record of their
decisions over an extended period of time. If the record is consistent,
then their mind is likely sharp. If it’s inconsistent, they have work to
do.
Naturally,
context matters, and so does their perception of the world, but
generally speaking, your decisions tell you a lot of about yourself.
This
doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to record every single choice
you make, but you should routinely take moments to reflect on how the
big things in your life turned out relative to your intention.
If
things went well, you should trace back to see why they did so and how
you can replicate that in the future. If they went poorly, the
dissection of that decision will teach you about a blind-spot that you
can avoid in the future.
It creates a feedback loop which, if approached well, self-corrects over time.
The
best thing about the past is the wisdom it gives you to improve
yourself for the future. That said, for it to do so, you have to
actually seek it out.
Why Is It So Important?
While
things like productivity and habit building can take you pretty far in
life, alone by themselves, there is a limit to what they can do for you.
No matter how you spin it, everything in your life begins in your mind.
The personal outlook you have is shaped by how you think about the situations that you’re engaged with on a daily basis.
The choices you make are influenced by the thinking patterns that guide your attention when you’re deeply lost in thought.
The skills you learn are influenced at their core by what you currently understand about the world and how you reason with it.
In the words of Einstein,
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Every
idea, ambition, and possibility in your life is directly connected to
your ability to adequately make sense of your interactions with reality.
There
is no set place that’s going to teach you how to think, and it’s not
just something that’s restricted to a particular time period in your
life. It’s a skill that demands ongoing effort and commitment.
The
amount of bad writing advice out there is astounding. People who have
never published anything selling courses on how to make a career as a
writer. Terribly written Medium articles telling you how to improve your
prose. Marketing books from writers who not only haven’t sold many
books — but their own marketing books don’t sell. All this bad advice
adds up and makes a harder thing — an already difficult industry to
navigate — even harder.
Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the best writers on the planet for WritingRoutines.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times
best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists and
expert communicators about how they practice their craft. I got valuable
lessons from each one. I’ve collected a few of the best below,
alongside some of the insights — or hacks as we call them today to get
more people to click — from writers I wish were still alive to interview
or ones I wish to interview someday if the opportunity presents itself.
I hope you learn as much from them as I did. Enjoy!
***
Devote Yourself to Someone Greater First
“If
I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his
mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first
to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him. If you
are a beginner there is more security in such self-sacrifice than in
your own creativity and nothing you ever do with all your heart is done
in vain.”
— Stefan Zweig, author of The World of Yesterday and in the 1920’s and 1930’s was one of the most popular authors in the world
Wake Up Early And Read, Read, Read
“I
wake up around 5am. I have 2–3 cups of coffee. I read and read and read
for two hours. I read high quality literary fiction to be inspired,
high quality non-fiction about a topic I am fascinated by in order to
learn, I read inspirational or spiritual writing to feel that special
something inside, and often I will spend some time studying a game. Then
I might read the literary fiction some more. At some point, I get the
urge or the itch to put the books away. I go to my computer and start to
write.”
“It
was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. ‘I have a
perfectly marvellous house for you to write in,’ they’d say. Of course
no one needs marvellous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All
you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”
— Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront
Edit Ten Times
“I
repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it,
until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a
process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to
date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend
this is efficient.”
— Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications
Nobody Gets Talker’s Block
“No
one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers
he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the
muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his
life has died down.”
— Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of Purple Cow and more than 20 other books
Do the Three Passes of Editing
“[My
editing] rests on three passes. The first pass is when you write the
best chapter you can. The second pass comes later once the whole book
(or whole part of the book containing the chapter) is done. During this
pass, I come back to the chapter on my computer and cut and tighten. The
final pass is when I read through a printed version of the chapter on
paper. Reading on paper is necessary if you’re going to root out odd
constructions or minor errors.”
“The
way out of this mess is through. A friend of mine who used to do
long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a
writer. “What do you do about the cramps?” I asked. I was noticing they
hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he’d
have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I
assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. ‘Cramps?
What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run through
the cramps.’ What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the
block.”
“I’m
an “absolute quiet” kind of person. If I’m writing at home, and there’s
any noise at all, such as my wonderful hubby puttering around and
coincidentally clearing his throat, I wear my Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector Earmuffs.
I’m so used to them that when I need to concentrate, I put them on even
when there isn’t any noise. Earmuffs are like a signal to my
brain — Okay, focus! On planes, I often wear noise canceling
headphones.”
“It
really depends on the genre of work I’m doing–I always try to keep
models in mind, though the model will change depending on what I’m
working on. For the book on Cato the Younger, Jimmy Soni and I were constantly referring to Tom Holland’s book on the Roman Republic, Rubicon; for our book on Claude Shannon, to James Gleick’s The Information and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind.For my academic work, people like Danielle Allen are great models.”
“Don’t
lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t
have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true
blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your
bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”
“Writer’s
block is miserable and part of it can be just being in a really bad
place. Sometimes if you’re just in a bad mental place, it doesn’t matter
what work you put in. You have to fix bigger things than your writing.”
— Hari Kondabolu, the comic who the New York Times called “one of the most necessary political comedians working today.”
Get a Giant Sketchpad
“Notebooks
have always been big for me, both in the early stages of a new project
and as a way to get myself unstuck if I’m struggling. But I have giant,
chicken-scratch handwriting, and would always end up jotting down
thoughts over half a dozen pages and then never really looking at them
again. I have probably fifty illegible notebooks sitting in desk
drawers, and I would easily have filled fifty more had I not been
introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley
Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been
my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and
large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page.
Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”
— Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”
It’s All Material
“I’m
never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am
thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’” [By the way, this advice echoes a phrase I’ve learned from author Robert Greene,
“It’s all material.” Meaning everything bad that happens, everything
frustrating or delayed or disappointing — all of it can be fuel for a
book. It can teach you something that helps you improve your business,
it can become a story you pass along to a friend.]
— Jerry Seinfeld, creator of Seinfeld and named by Comedy Central the “12th Greatest Stand-up Comedian of All Time.”
Understand How the Pieces Fit Together
“To
write a clean and fluent piece of any kind, you have to understand how
its various parts fit together — how a change here will affect something
over there. With a short piece, you never lose sight of the whole
because you can read and reread it many times as you work. That’s what I
do. I make a change and then I read the whole piece to see how it
works. But I can’t do that with a book, so I have to find other ways to
stay oriented. I reread or skim sections of the book that I know relate
to the part I’m working on, I keep notes about the larger structure, and
I use Word’s phrase-search function to move around and check up on
things. I also make a huge effort to commit as much of the book as I can
to memory. It’s exhausting and it seems psychologically damaging in
some way, but it helps me to understand when jokes need to be repeated,
how much space needs to intervene between similar kinds of scenes, how
ideas should be patterned, etc.”
— Aaron Thier, author of Mr. Eternity and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
Run to Keep Yourself Sane
“The
twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane
and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.” [This is
not unlike many other writers — including Murakami and Malcolm
Gladwell — who use running as a coping mechanism.]
— Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 40 novels, including Them, winner of the National Book Award
Before You Write, Crystallize Your Thinking
“If
I’m just starting, I never consider the page blank. I’ve been writing
in my head long before I sit down at the keyboard. In fact, I sometimes
start inadvertently, by describing to someone what I’m doing.
Conversation often crystallizes my own thinking far more effectively
than solitary reflection. When I put the first words down, I know
they’re likely to change, which I find liberating — no need to get it
perfect the first time. But I want the first sentence to set a tone or
indicate a theme for that chapter, so I have to start with a clear sense
of the meaning of the events that follow, and how I want the reader to
feel.”
“Don’t
start writing the play at once, but get a little notebook and put down
everything you think about your play in the notebook, just as the ideas
come to you without rhyme or reason especially. Let the play accumulate,
as I call it; let it percolate and stew in your mind; and write down
any ideas, bits of dialogue, descriptions, words — anything you think
you might be able to use. Many of these things will come to you
unconsciously while you are walking home from school, bathing, mowing
the lawn; be sure to get them all into your notebook.”
— E.P. Conkle, professor emeritus of drama whose plays have been produced on Broadway
Take the Necessary Medicine
“I
tend to edit heavily and repeatedly as I go along, so I don’t make the
distinction, at least by myself. For the books that I’ve written for a
larger public, however, I’ve had the help of an immensely gifted editor
(Alane Mason, at Norton), so there I do separate out the tasks: in
effect my own writing/editing; and then a further editing after
receiving her suggestions. I tend to hate the latter experience, though I
recognize that it is almost invariably good — a bit like swallowing
disagreeable but essential medicine.”
“When
I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I
have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing.
That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my
thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”
“What
am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom
will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”
Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more
shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’”
“Writers
are usually encouraged to write a “vomit draft” and just get something
out, however terrible it is, in order to overcome The Fear, get some
momentum, and move to more of an editing mindset, where’s it’s less
scary to make progress. I don’t do that. I think that’s just a trick to
try and lower the stakes so you can overcome procrastination and The
Fear. And while it’s good for that, I think it’s bad in the long haul
because you’re producing a lot of junk and that’s going to be hard to
fully clean up. I treat writing a lot more like architecture. You
wouldn’t work without a blueprint, construct a crappy building, then
knock it down and build a better one. That would be ridiculous. You’d
put together a really tight blueprint, then construct the building once,
the right way, and if it needs tweaks, they’re relatively small. As the
old saying goes: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’”
“Never
stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but
turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.”
— Jeanette Winterson, a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author best known forOranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was adapted into a BBC drama
You Don’t Need to be Kissed by a Muse
When
asked if writing comes easy: “Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse.
For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.”
“I’ve
got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or
painters — and which of them you are depends on whether you write for
the ear or the eye. As a former musician and former speechwriter, I
definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for
inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the sound track for
writing different books. They serve as snapshots in time. So, I’ve got
one for Wingnuts — lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead
and Randy Newman — and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more
classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar
Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”
“I
try to imagine comments, questions, and criticisms that the book will
generate. Then I try to rehearse the reply or answer. My friends are
great critics of my writing and I always make sure they have read the
drafts and galleys and been brutally frank with me about their
reactions. They know I can take it.”
“I
remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of
the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts
writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little
package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t
want to waste it. He works for an hour or two and then goes to brush his
teeth. I have a very similar approach. Only I brush my teeth before I
start. I guess that’s my pre-writing ritual.”
— Cal Fussman, best known for the “What I’ve Learned”Esquire column and a master interviewer who has talked to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Richard Branson
100/100 people can achieve greatness. Here’s why most won’t.
Anyone can achieve greatness. Anyone.
Greatness
is relative, yes. The results might look different; for some, simply
quitting an addiction means greatness. For others, creating a Fortune
500 company means greatness.
Anyone can do this. But most people won’t.
I’m
not talking about simple averages and logistics, where “obviously
everyone can’t be in the top 5%.” That’s bull. If you take a class of
100 students, 100 students could achieve greatness.
This
is because we all have a choice, every moment of every day. As author
Rebecca Eanes once wrote, “In between every action and reaction, there
is a space.” In this moment, you choose how you will react.
This moment is very small, sometimes small enough we don’t believe it’s there. This is where phrases like “I had no choice” or “I couldn’t help it” come from. Yes, you could. You just chose not to. Stop lying to yourself.
More
and more people are hiding behind the excuse that their behaviors,
actions, and choices are out of their control. They claim the economy,
Donald Trump, their boss, their landlord, the cops, societal norms, and a
hundred other things control their life.
It’s time to unlearn this prison of a belief. Not dissect it, or analyze it, or debate it.
Just completely unlearn it.
Why Is So Much of the World Mediocre?
“Good
is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have
so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally
because we have good schools. We don’t have great government,
principally because we have good government. Few people attain great
lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good
life.” -Jim Collins
You may wonder: if 100 out of 100 people could achieve greatness, why do so few ever do?
It’s not even that they tried and failed, either; most people never even try at all. They spend their lives without even as much as an attempt to create their masterpiece.
Why do so few people ever achieve greatness (even when they could)?
It’s a good question. The answer is simple:
Because it’s easier to let someone else call the shots.
And as long as someone else is calling the shots, greatness isn’t attainable.
It’s
scary to be the CEO of your life. It’s an enormous responsibility. It
means you can’t blame other people for your problems anymore — every
failure, every missed opportunity, and every failed attempt is on you.
Most
people don’t want this heavy responsibility. So they begin stacking
excuses like bricks, sealing themselves inside a box of explanations and
rationalizations.
To this, author David Schwartz once quipped:
“The fellow who has gone nowhere and has no plans for getting anywhere always has a bookful of reasons to explain why.”
For most people, it’s just easier to blame unchangeable external factors for their lack of success.
It becomes extremely difficult to help people get out of this limiting mindset, too. In his book, Choose Yourself, James Altucher wrote:“If
someone insists they need to be in prison even though the door is
unlocked, then I am not going to argue. They are free to stay in
prison.”
Why is so much of the world mediocre?
Because they choose to be.
Anyone
can achieve greatness. And anyone who claims they can’t is simply
trying to explain why they can’t leave their cell — even though the door
is unlocked.
“The
moment you accept total responsibility for EVERYTHING in your life is
the day you claim the power the change ANYTHING in your life.” -Hal
Elrod
Increase Your Clarity to Avoid Settling For Second-Best
“We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” Robert Brault
No one wakes up, brushes their teeth, and puffs out their chest with a confident smile and yells, “Today, I am going to SUCK!”
I mean, maybe some people do.
No — most people would claim they want to live exciting, extraordinary lives. They might even appear to work very hard at it. But they never really make any progress.
These
people make up what author Hal Elrod once labeled the “Mediocre
Majority.” These are people that, despite their good intentions, still
end up settling for second-best.
Their
problem isn’t that they willingly and intentionally dive face-first
into a brick wall of mediocrity. Their problem is that the path to
mediocrity is simply more clear than the path to greatness.
You follow the path that is most clear.
And since most people have marked the path to mediocrity pretty well, that’s the one most people follow. It’s what they know.
If you want to live an extraordinary life, you need to develop clarity on exactly how to do that.
Extremely
successful people have high levels of clarity on everything that is
most important. These top-tier individuals know if you don’t know where
you’re headed, there’s no telling where you’ll end up.
In the famous words of Bilbo Baggins:
“It’s
a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the
road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you
might be swept off to.”
Finding
clarity isn’t always easy. In the past 5 years, I’ve had at least a
dozen different ideas for my I wanted to do with my life — a Navy SEAL, a
novelist, a career coach, even a chef at a 5-star restaurant. “Clarity”
was rarely available.
Yet clarity is exactly what you need if you want to end up settling for the mediocrity most people slowly slip into. (This 20-minute exercise was incredibly helpful for me).
How to Achieve Greatness, Starting Today
“If
you want to live an exceptional and extraordinary life, you have to
give up many of the things that are part of a normal one.” -Srinivas Rao
Achieving greatness is simply a matter of consistently going from point A to point B, every single day.
In the words of Tim Grover, personal trainer to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant:
“People
are always asking me about the secrets and tricks I use to get results.
Sorry if this disappoints you: there are no secrets. There are no
tricks. It’s simple. Ask yourself where you are now, and where you want
to be instead. Ask yourself what you’re willing to do to get there. Then
make a plan to get there. Act on it.”
This isn’t sexy advice. There are no shortcuts or “hacks.” It’s not easy.
What does “greatness” mean to you? No one else can define that for you.
Once you determine what that means, what can you do today to get a little closer there?
By
the way, we’ve stumbled upon the very formula that is responsible for
the greatest accomplishments by the most successful the world has ever
witnessed:
Moving one step closer, every day.
That’s it.
Hundreds
other the world’s most prolific creators, rulers, humanitarians, and
leaders have been saying this in different ways for thousands of years.
Their advice is just as refreshingly relevant today as it was then. It
will be in the year 3000, too.
In Conclusion
“Greatness
is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a
matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” -Jim Collins
Greatness doesn’t happen by chance.
Settling for mediocrity doesn’t, either.
They’re
both choices. Both require work. Sometimes, it takes just as much
work — maybe more — to remain in mediocrity. Sitting with the mental
stress and disappointment of mediocrity is an enormous daily drain.
If you’re reading this, you have a choice today — to move from point A to point B; to take a step closer to personal evolution.
Most people won’t ever achieve greatness.
But you can. And all you need to do is take one step today.
The most productive, wealthy and highly efficient people devote at least 30 minutes a day to reading. If it works for them, it could work for you. You can make 2018 your best year yet.
These
are the books many people will read to get better, smarter, improve how
they think or change how they work. They are books I am most excited
about. This year, make a better resolution: Read more books.
From
high-profile names to lesser-known authors whose books are worthwhile
reads, the list below is a roundup of 18 titles coming in the first half
of the year to consider adding to your bookshelf.
“The Origins of Happiness
is a wonderful book. It presents a new look at what causes human
well-being, and carefully analyzes the policies and programs that can
enhance it.” — Ed Diener, coauthor of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth
“The most significant contribution of The Origins of Happiness
lies in its integrated approach to life satisfaction over the life
cycle. The authors combine cohort studies, longitudinal panels, and
cross-section surveys to provide fuller perspectives. No one else has
done this in such a systematic way.”— John F. Helliwell, University of British Columbia
Poker
champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get
comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result.
By
shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of
accurately assessing what you know and what you don’t, you’ll be less
vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive
habits in your decision making. You’ll become more confident, calm,
compassionate and successful in the long run.
The
heart of the book features stories about successful entrepreneurs,
CEOs, organizational leaders, and forward-looking thinkers from a
variety of professions. They describe the factors and conditions that
ignited their lives and helped them become achievers.
“Add this book to your library! Firestarters
gives you a smart new way to achieve positive behavioral change that
will improve your life and the world around you.” — Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times–bestselling author of Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
“Your Best Year Ever is
full of compelling, real-life stories of average people who have
achieved extraordinary results. Please take my advice and only buy this
book if you want to be able to look back in twelve months and say, ‘Now
that was my best year ever!’” — John C. Maxwell, author, speaker, and leadership expert
“Generous
goals work (if you write them down) and powerful books work (if you
read them). Michael Hyatt has created a fun, fast way to find your
dreams and then turn them into reality.” — Seth Godin, author, Linchpin
Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.
“Pink
should change many people’s understanding of timing with this book,
which provides insights from little-known scientific studies in an
accessible way… By the book’s end, readers will be thinking much more
carefully about how they divide up theirs days and organize their
routines.” — Publishers Weekly
In his most provocative and practical book yet,one
of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to
understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and
just society, detect nonsense, and influence others.
“The
most prophetic voice of all . . . [Taleb is] a genuinely significant
philosopher . . . someone who is able to change the way we view the
structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of
his ideas alone.”— John Gray, GQ
“I have to recommend Michelle Dean’s Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion,
a delicious cultural history that comes out in April. It brings
together some of the most influential social critics of the 20th
century, including Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Susan
Sontag and Joan Didion, and shows how these glamorous iconoclasts forged
their singular careers. Dean makes the convincing argument that women’s
voices―if not necessarily feminist ones―did far more to define the last
century’s intellectual life than we realize.”―Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
“In this groundbreaking book, Morten Hansen delivers on the genius of “and:” rigorous and relevant, research-driven and well-written, empirical and empowering, timeless and practical, full of big concepts and
useful tips. Hansen’s work is truly distinctive in the genre of
professional effectiveness, and a tremendous contribution. This is a
book I will read more than once, and reference forever.” — Jim Collins,
author of Good to Great, co-author of Built to Last and Great by Choice
Haden
shows us how to reframe our thinking about the relationship of
motivation to success. He meets us at our level — at the beginning of
any big goal we have for our lives, a little anxious and unsure about
our way forward, a little burned by self help books and strategies that
have failed us in the past — and offers practical advice that anyone can
use to stop stalling and start working on those dreams.
Casey
and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and
not-so-trusted) institutions on which we’ve relied for centuries with a
radical model that bypasses them. The Truth Machine
reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give
way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job
losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion
that will accompany this shift.
The #1 bestselling author of The Future of the Mind
traverses the frontiers of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and
technology to offer a stunning vision of man’s future in space, from
settling Mars to traveling to distant galaxies.
Formerly
the domain of fiction, moving human civilization to the stars is
increasingly becoming a scientific possibility — and a necessity.
Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of
finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic
cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day
need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species.
Based
on the authors’ experience and new research with 1,500 organizations,
the book reveals how companies are using the new rules of AI to leap
ahead on innovation and profitability, as well as what you can do to
achieve similar results.
It
describes six entirely new types of hybrid human + machine roles that
every company must develop, and it includes a “leader’s guide” with the
five crucial principles required to become an AI-fueled business. Human + Machine provides the missing and much-needed management playbook for success in our new age of AI.
Drawing
on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the
boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner
Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao’s high-profile gender discrimination
lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they “won’t
lower their standards” just to hire women.
“If
you want to get more done, don’t worry about willpower — focus on
motivation. Challenging the dominant view of self-control as a muscle,
Benjamin Hardy reveals that productivity is really about clarity and
commitment.”―Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take
“In an age when few people think deeply about life, Benjamin Hardy is the exception. Read this book if you want to be better.”―Jeff Goins, bestselling author of The Art of Work
“Transcendental Meditation is the single most important reason for any success I have had in my life. Bob Roth’s Strength in Stillness masterfully distills the essence of this technique so that anyone can understand how it works — and why they should learn it.” — Ray Dalio
“My
wife and I love Bob. He’s really helped us and our son, Oscar, who was a
stressed, anxious kid. Now I see him blossoming and owning the things
that make him unique. In many ways, Bob saved him during a difficult
time.” — Hugh Jackman
“Mike
has long been a sought after mentor and revered manager, and for
obvious reason: his practical, inspirational, no-nonsense advice works.
This is the book that I will give to all of the motivated professionals
that come through my door with questions about how to achieve their
career, and life, aspirations.” — Jesse Haines, Director of Marketing, Google
In his highly anticipated follow-up to The Happiness Advantage,
Achor reveals a better approach. Drawing on his work in 50 countries,
he shows that success and happiness are not competitive sports. Rather,
they depend almost entirely on how well we connect with, relate to, and
learn from each other.
Just
as happiness is contagious, every dimension of human
potential — performance, intelligence, creativity, leadership ability
and health — is influenced by those around us.
“Read The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business to
learn strategies you can start using now to build a high-revenue
business that gives you the freedom to lead the life you want. Pofeldt
will convince you that you have more power to do so than you
think!” — Stew Friedman, author of Total Leadership and Leading the Life You Want, practice professor of management at Wharton, and director of Wharton Work/Life Integration Project
“In
an era when freelancing, small office/home office, and one-person
businesses are exploding, Elaine Pofeldt has written a definitive
guidebook for any would-be entrepreneur who is looking to brainstorm,
grow, sell, and succeed.” — Gene Marks, CPA at the Marks Group PC
