reading

Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Street, Swim, Stir, and Send Your Stuff Out



Winter has been good to my poems, with one little baby out in the world in Stirring, and another out in SWWIM, and two out in Street Light Press. But aside from the fact that all these journals begin with the letter “S,” is some other similarity playing a quiet tune here?
When I get a piece published somewhere, I read the entire issue of the journal. Inevitably, I’ll come across a poet whose work sings to my existing tastes or whose work surprises me. (Check out Carolee’s poem in Stirring, for example!) This, in turn, will often push me to read more work by those poets, in other journals, which, in turn, gives me ideas for new places to send my work.
Submitting work to journals and contests and publishers (lions and tigers and bears) is one big pain in the ass. First, you have to locate journals that are a good match for your work. My go-to spot for that is Trish Hopkinson’s blog, A Selfish Poet.
Then come the tasks like record-keeping and filling out online forms, not to mention opening yourself up to rejections. If you’re like me, and you get lots of rejections, you need to know about lots of journals.
What makes submitting easier? Two things come to mind: a system and some sisters.
Some writers use Duotrope to keep track of their submissions. Others use their own record-keeping systems.
New online communities for writers seem to pop up daily. I’m drawn to those that are
created by and for women, like Women Who Submit on Twitter, which offers info on open submissions and “submission parties,” both F2F and virtual.
Where do you go for information and strategies on sending out your work? Help us out here, so we can get back to the fun part — the w
riting.

Monday, January 15, 2018

Forget Goals, Be Present



We tend to think of life in terms of accomplishments, rather than experiences. But life is meant to be live with the “goal” of being present in the moment.
This is how to live a meaningful life. Not by having goals and doing things merely to reach those goals, but to live in awareness.
For the most part, society is distracted from this principle. Society tries to derive meaning through status, material wealth, and arbitrary goals.
Take the pressure off. Forget about your goals and plans and just be in the moment. Let each moment guide you.
This isn’t about being undisciplined. That’s a different type of letting go. This is about not trying to control everything. It’s about allowing inner wisdom to guide you.
Goals and plans are often disrupted by reality anyway. Having a general direction makes sense, but details written in stone don’t.
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Thursday, January 11, 2018

Get it right, or try again and again.



Following my thoughts from problem to solution, including the steps along the way, and the problems with each of them.

Or: How to login as a user from the Admin panel.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
Yesterday I got a phone call from a client, whom I built a Time Tracking system for calculating the salaries of his ~800 employees.
Joe: Hi Shuki.
Me: Hi Joe.
Joe: Remember the app you built me the other day?
Me: Of course.
Joe: Can you build me an option to login as any user from my Admin panel?
Me: Hmm. May I ask why?
Joe: For QA testing, anyways there is no sensitive data.
Me: I dunno.
Joe: Common, you’ll find a way.
Me: I’ll try.
In the following post, I will follow my path to a solution, with the ideas that came to my mind, and the problems with each of them, and in the end I will share the final solution I came up with.

If Stories & pictures aren’t your thing, you can jump to the solution.


Photo by Agence Producteurs Locaux Damien Kühn on Unsplash
My first thought was that on the users page in the Admin panel, clicking any username will open a new window, and login as that user.

The problem:

My site uses cookies to keep the user logged in, so if the Admin logs in as a user, his cookies will be replaced, and he will have to re-login as an Admin.

Photo by Mike Kotsch on Unsplash
Building on my first thought, I can add a link back from the user window, to return to the Admin panel.

The problem:

If any of our users find this link, they will have free access to login as an Admin, that surely is not something we can afford happening.

Photo by Raul Petri on Unsplash
So we need a new window, and we can’t override the cookies, Lets open the user in incognito mode.

The problem:

According to this stack-overflow answer it is impossible to do this via code, And I don’t have the patience to teach him how to do it manually.

Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash
If incognito mode is not an option, we can add parameters to our site like: mysite.com/?user=john&pass=123, and auto login when the page loads.

The problem:

Usernames and passwords in the browser history, doesn’t seem to me like a plan, and if someone overlooks his shoulder…

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
Now that I knew what I needed, I texted the DevHelps whatsapp group, where I got a quick and efficient solution.
If you want to save parameters on the window, and can’t use cookies because you want each window to have it’s own parameters, just use window.name — Bnaya Peretz.

So My final Solution Has the following steps.

  1. On page loading check for a token saved in the window.name object,
    if it exists, auto-login. Otherwise continue to login page.
  2. After successful login, save the token to window.name for reloading.
  3. When the admin, clicks on a username, open a new window named with that user’s token, which will auto login as the user.
  4. In the Admin panel display a popup to reload the page, and since window.name has the Admin’s token reloading will auto login as Admin.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Want To Be The Best Writer On The Planet? Do These 27 Things Immediately




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.”
James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself!, which the USA Today’s called one of “Best Business Books of All Time.”

Do Not Chase Exotic Locations 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.”
Cal Newport, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deep Work

The Only Way Out is Through

“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.”
Jeff Goins, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real Artists Don’t Starve

Sometimes You Just Need Some Good Earmuffs

“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.”
Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

“What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script’…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”
Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life and award-winning actor and banjo player

Keep the Best in Mind

“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.”

Quit Your Bitching

“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.”
Cheryl Strayed, author of the number #1 New York Times bestseller Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fix The Important Things

“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.”

Let the Play Accumulate

“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.”
Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve, a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award winner

To Beat Writer’s Block, Double Down on Research

“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.”
— MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Always Ask These Questions

“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?’”
George Orwell, famous author of 1984 and Animal Farm

You Don’t Need a Vomit Draft

“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.’”
Eric Barker, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up The Wrong Tree and creator of the popular blog of the same name

Keep the Momentum

“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 for Oranges 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.”
Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, which won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Write for the Ear

“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.”
John Avlon, author of Washington’s Farewell and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast

Learn How to Take Brutally Frank Criticism

“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.”
Richard Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State who has served under three different Presidents in different roles and author of Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes

Wake Up and Get After 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

Ready to create a writing routine of your own?

Sign up now and receive our free guide “12 Essential Writing Routines To Help You To Craft Your Own.”

Monday, January 8, 2018

Relentlessly Improving Is the Only Way to Survive



These are the 3 areas to focus on in order to ensure your company’s success #ShortcutYourStartup
One of the greatest feelings an entrepreneur can experience is when his or her product or service finally gains traction and begins to gain product market fit. It takes an immense amount of effort and time to get to this stage, and you may be tempted to pause, reflect, and enjoy the moment.
Don’t.
This is the time when you should be putting your foot on the gas and trying to relentlessly improve. This is one of the things we learned running our company and something we talk a lot about in Shortcut Your Startup.
While the marginal improvements may seem smaller at this stage compared to the ones you faced when you were initially starting your company, the magnitude of their effects will now be greater.
To make this more palatable, consider the analogy on the power of compound interest, or what Albert Einstein (may or may not have) called “the eighth wonder of the world.” It’s well known that incrementally adding to your retirement account when you’re just entering the workforce in your 20s has huge ramifications on your savings when you retire 40–50 years later.
This same logic applies to the incremental decisions you make at your company — seemingly small improvements (and mistakes, too!) have huge effects down the road.
From our perspective as both the founders of VEEV and investors in companies like Pinterest, Lyft, Bonobos, and Warby Parker, we realize how crucial the small, 1 percent improvements can be to a company’s success.
We realize that these changes can be difficult to identify, so we have outlined 3 key areas to keep your eyes on:
  • Your Team
  • Your Product
  • Yourself

Your team is your company’s most important asset. Always think how it can be improved.

It’s worth reiterating that your team is something that should always be focused on building a culture of improvement. Specifically, we cannot overstate the importance of hiring team members possessing an ownership-building mindset, which means that they have a vested interest in the company’s success and don’t solely focus on performing their daily tasks.

Next, consistently test your product. Adopt the mind of a customer: what could be improved to make your life easier?

Testing your product, your landing page, or your cart checkout page is often easier said than done. We recommend dividing the responsibilities into three parts. Assign somebody to own and oversee the test, another party to design the test, and a third one to analyze the results of the test.
Why? Clearly dividing responsibilities engages more of your team and sets the stage for your company to review its product more objectively and critically. Iterations are a necessary part of any business, and your team must have a systematic decision to implement and make sense of these tests. While these processes will help keep track of your business, we also must stress the importance of keeping track of yourself.

Finally, continuously focus on improving yourself.

If two of your goals are to improve your business and your team, it’s only natural that you pay attention to improving yourself. This is something that is always ongoing but is extremely worthwhile to pay attention to.
Know your strengths and weaknesses. Beyond that, realize how your strengths and weaknesses can affect your company. Part of your hiring strategy should revolve around hiring team members that complement your skillset. In addition to your strengths and weaknesses, seek to expand your network. While connections in your industry are important, consider how you can learn from others in a completely unrelated field, as invaluable lessons aren’t solely constrained to your industry.
In the end, launching your product, receiving favorable press, or reaching a financial milestone is no reason to let up on the gas — in fact, it is the time to keep pushing. This desire to constantly improve is a shared trait of successful companies.
If you focus on your product, your team, and yourself, your odds of success will increase dramatically! We talk more about this in our book, Shortcut Your Startup. Join the conversation!

Sunday, January 7, 2018

18 Books Everyone Will Be Reading in 2018



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.

1. The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course by Andrew E. Clark,‎ Sarah Flèche,‎ Richard Layard,‎ Nattavudh Powdthavee,‎ and George Ward

“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

2. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

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.

3. Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life by Raoul Davis Jr,‎ Kathy Palokoff (Author),‎ and Paul Eder

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

4. Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt

“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

5. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by
Daniel H. Pink

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

6. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

7. Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean

“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

8. Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More by Morten Hansen

“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

9. The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden

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.

10. The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything
by Paul Vigna,‎ and Michael J. Casey

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.

11. The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku

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.

12. Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI
by Paul R. Daugherty,‎ and H. James Wilson

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.

13. Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don’t Be Evil! Connect the World!) — and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.
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.

14. Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success by Benjamin Hardy

“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

15. Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation by Bob Roth

“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

16. The Career Manifesto: Discover Your Calling and Create an Extraordinary Life by Mike Steib

“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

17. Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being by Shawn Achor

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.

18. The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work the Way You Like. Have the Life You Want by Elaine Pofeldt

“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