The Myth of the Strong Leader

By Archie Brown

This book focus on the government leadership of different countries-- prime ministers and presidents. Not on industry. you can still learn a lot from it.

The conclusion is that the strongest leaders build conciseness & bring everyone forward. They are not dictatorial, individualist, strong leaders.

We live in an economy, a market of problems & difficulty. No individual can see everything, but we can collaborate to push our way forward through them. To make the world a better place.

Brain Food: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power

By Lisa Mosconi PHD.

Long ago someone I learnt that what's good for the heart is good for the brain. This book supports that. 

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

By Betty Edwards.

This is not a book to borrow from the library. This is a book to own.

Betty Edwards walks you down the path to being good at drawing. The path takes work and time. You need to set aside the time.

So, I've ordered the book. 

Leaders Eat Last

By Simon Sinek

"Empathy is a second by second, minute by minute service that we owe to everyone if we call ourselves a leader"

"Leadership is not a license to do less; It is a responsibility to do more. And that's the trouble. Leadership takes work. It takes time and energy. The effects are not always easily measured and they are not always immediate. Leadership is always a commitment to human beings."

I'm going to take copious notes from this book as it has much to remember.

There are places where Sinek has a tendency to rant. He has much criticism against the Boomers and their "Me first" stereo types and the damage this has done to government and industry

We need to feel safe at work. If we don't feel safe at work, then we spend too much of our time and energy defending ourselves against our coworkers. We need to focus our energy on our true competition.

Endorphin masks physical pain-- runners high. Laughing releases Endorphin. It's hard to laugh and be afraid at the same time.
Dopamine is a reward in anticipation of hitting a goal.
Serotonin is the feeling of pride. It makes us feel strong and confident. It is the feeling we get when we perceive that others like or respect us.
Oxytocin is the feeling we get when we do something nice for someone.

Our goals must be tangible

Lesson 1, As the culture goes, so goes the company.
Lesson 2, As the leader goes, so goes the culture.
Lesson 3, Integrity Matters.
Lesson 4, Friends Matter.
Lesson 5, Lead the People, no the numbers.

"Social media is a really easy way to feel excluded. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat make me hyper-aware of the activities I wasn't invited to partake in and less involved in the activities that are actually in front of me."

"We must all be leaders. "Let us all be the leaders we wish we had."

1. Keep meetings free of cell phones
2. Encourage Notetaking on Paper instead of Computers.
3. Teach Leadership
4. Teach How to give and receive feedback.
5. Lead by Example
6. Talk about your failures.
7. Give your team opportunity to fall
8. Offer more opportunities to develop people skills
9 Help the love them selves.
10. Take a chance on them.
11. Your employees are the leaders of the future. 

Pitch Anything

By Oren Klaff

This book shares a common stream of thought with "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow." That we have two parts to our brain. First, we have a croc brain that thinks fast and emotionally. It worries about threats, social status and saving calories. It will hijack the deep thinking part of our brain at a moments notice. The croc brain is lazy, fights hard to let the deep thinking part of our brain do work.

We fail to pitch ideas because we present information, ignoring the croc brain. People only pay attention, when they are curious. You can only sustain interest for about 20 minutes, no matter how interesting the topic.

The croc brains reaction to a pitch is...
1. Ignore if possible.
2. Only focus on the big picture. It needs high-contrast and well differentiated options to choose between.
3. Emotional. Most of the time that emotion is fear.
4. Focused on the here and now with short attention span that craves novelty.
5. in need of concrete facts. It look for verified evidence and doesn't like abstract concepts.

There is a large section in the book about frame control-- controlling conversations.

In most business conversations there are three frames...
1. Power Frame
2. Time Frame
3. Analyst Frame

Recognize these themes and deploy
1. The power-busting frame.
2. Time constraining frame
3. Intrigue Frame.
4. Prize Frame

Discussions about Beta-traps. The little things that pop up in conversation that demonstrate your are inferior to someone else. That you are not the alpha.

For example, if a decision maker is late to a meeting, you can wait. This demonstrates that you are inferior to the decision maker. Or, you can reschedule, which says your time is valuable and you have other options.

If someone says "Be brief. I only have fifteen minutes." Respond. "That's OK. I inly have 10."

Persistence is important, but constantly trying to close the deal shows that you are desperate.

Pitches have to be short. 20 minutes or less.
1. Introduce yourself and the big idea: 5 minutes
2. Explain the budget and the secret sauce: 10 minutes
3. Offer the deal: 2 minutes
4. Stack the frames for hot cognition: 3 minutes.

Mindset

By Carol S. Dweck Ph.D.

We can learn and grow throughout or life. It's an endless task. We have to keep learning and growing, forgiving, forgetting, taking one step forward each day. We do not have to be who we are today if we put constant effort into learning.

When you make a mistake, or want to learn something, don't just vow to do better next time. Come up with a vivid, concrete plan.

Not "I am going to stay away from Facebook." but "When I am on my phone, I will do X, Y or Z. I will put timers on social medial to limit their use." or "When I get up, I will have a cup of coffee and then I will sit at my laptop, open up Word and start working on such and such."

In relationships, we have to get out of the trap of treating each other like they are stuck. We have to push our selves to constantly grow.

Keep your internal monologue away from judging yourself or others. Think about how you could improve things. Go for it. Make it happen. Develop your skills. Pursue your dream. Put in extra effort. 

My Morning Routine

By Benjamin Spall.

Morning routines are very personal. Everyone needs to accomplish something different. Some ideas...

Don't check email and social media first thing in the morning. Save that time for deep work, reading and thinking about your most important problems and decisions.

Make important decisions in the morning to avoid decision fatigue.

Make a todo list the night before. Or maybe, make the todo list in the early evening the day before. Ensure every incomplete task, goal or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either you have a plan you trust for its completion, or it's captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right.

Shut down in the evening. 

Try to stretch/exercise/madidate in the morning. If you have the discipline, you can do this later in the day. Most of us do not. Consider meditating on your morning commute.

Dare to Lead

By Brene Brown.

This book is a very 'soft' book. Focusing on getting the ego out of the way.

Quotes...

If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I’m not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you’re criticizing from a place where you’re not also putting yourself on the line, I’m not interested in what you have to say.

Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.

The Dance of Connection

By Harriet Lerner

There is a lot here for me to think about. I came across this book while reading "Dare to Lead." The book has an observation that when under stress, people have two responses. They can over function and try to take over. They can underfunction-- disengage, go quiet.

I am an underfunctioner and I need to address that. It won't be easy. It will take a lot of work.

For example, the book examines "The evil stepmother" trope. Evil stepmothers happen when the father underfunctions or disengages dumping all mother duties on the step mother. It's not the stepmothers problem than she has to be the mother with children that she has no relationship with. The problem is that the father has disengaged.

The Trouble with Gravity-- Solving The Mystery Beneath Our Feet

By Richard Panek.

I'm a little frustrated with the book. Panek never really try's to answer what Gravity is. He pushes the question off, going over the history of not-explaining what gravity is.

Physicist Kip Thorne has said that asking "What is Gravity?" is a meaningless question, kind of like asking "What is north of the north pole?"

Even that is a punt. "What is north of the north pole?" is only meaningless once you realize that the Earth is a globe and its geometry non-euclidean. For the non-physicist, what concepts am are needed to know "What is gravity?" a meaningless question?

The history of not explaining gravity is very interesting. It marks a philosophical transition from explaining things from first principal, to explaining things using the scientific method.

Before Newton, we tried to explain the world from the Bible, from Aristotle. Newton came up with a theory better at making testable predictions about the effects of gravity. His theory didn't depend on the Bible. It depended on observations that anyone could make. This was new. It removed the Church from being an authority.

Newton never produced a theory explaining what gravity was, only that it could make very accurate predictions. At the time there was a lot of controversy around this. If you can't explain why, only what, then how can you trust the theory?

By observing more deeply. By making testable predictions.

And this is where much of physics is now. It can make very accurate predictions about very extreme conditions. It struggles to say why that should be so.

The Subtle Knife

By Phillip Pullman

A good follow up to The Golden Compas.

The story branches out a lot. The GC only followed Lyra and her adventures. The Subtle Knife follows Lyra, the witch Serafina Pecola and the aeronaut Lee Scoresby.

The plot is a little heavy handed at times with the alethiomieter dropping very pointed hints to Lyra as to what she do next. The scene were Will meets his father is also very forced. I'm not even sure it was necessary.

Lee Scoresby's death was a good twist on a trope. Scoresby was carrying a magic flower that when he used it in a time of need, it would summon Serafina. Scoresby uses it too late and dies anyways. In the progress he lures Serafina into a trap.

The Doomsday Calculation:How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe

By William Poundstone

Some scientists have long predicted the end of the world. By nuclear war, or environmental disaster, or rouge AI, or...

This book goes into these calculations, their history and the substance behind them.

They are usually based on "Self Sampling" statistics augmented by a Bayesian math. The anthropic principal is a great example-- all laws of physics must support the creation of a universe that allows for observers (like humans) to exist, otherwise the observers wouldn't be around. For example, if the universe was 2 dimensional, or 4 dimensional, then gravity would behave very differently and we wouldn't exist.

Then there is also the Lindy effect-- when you randomly meet an object (or person, or process) on average you will have met that object half way through it's lifetime. If you know how long the object has existed so far, then you can predict the full life time of the object.

But garbage in, garbage out. Sometimes this math can be used to justify bull shit. Maybe your analysis is wrong. Maybe you are missing something.

So much of this is subject to opinion. Like "What is the probability of a rouge AI taking over the earth? ala Terminator."

You never really know until its too late. 

The Mother Tongue- English And How It Got That Way

By Bill Bryson

English is a very messy language. It regularly absorbs words and idioms from other language. It's still growing, evolving. No one standardizes it.

Unfortunately, this makes for a messy history. There are so many adhoc influences, that that there is no overarching narrative that that helps your reason through it.

Maybe that's the conclusion-- English is messy and will continue to be messy.

Some things from the book that I want to remember...

Older class systems sometimes pop up in English. Consider that in England farmers and chefs were different classes. You can see what foods the upper class ate, because they used different words than the lower class....

Cows become beef and veal.
Pigs become pork and bacon.
Sheep become lamb and mutton.
Goose and ducks become fowl.
Deer becomes venison
Chicken stays chicken.

Yes, chicken was not ate by the upper classes.

"Set it up"
"Set it down"

To someone learning English, these two phrases would appear to be opposites, yet that is not true.  English is almost malicious to foreign learners in its ability to come up with these problems.

What is the difference between these two sentences?
"My suffering is terrible."
"I am suffering terribly."

Or these three?
"It's time for lunch."
"It's the time for our lunch."
"It's our time for a lunch."

While there are lots of rules to English grammar. They are at best a descriptive interpretation by people who care. Fundamentally, most English is spoken by feel. Grammar rules are there to try and help you find sentence structures that will probably make the English feel right. 

The Disaster Artist.

By Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell. 

The book is very entertaining. It's the story of Tommy Wiseau and his quest to make "The Room." A movie that is possibly one of the worst movies ever made-- and it's exactly like Wiseau wanted.

I'm not sure what to take from this book. If anything it makes me question the sanity of those who have the drive and passion to get out of their comfort zone and do big things.

What If This Were Enough?"

By Heather Havrilesky

I've been reading Havrilesky since she was a columnist for Suck.com. While I was looking over her official website, it appears her suck.com work has been dropped from her resume. 

Havrilesky is great at discussing and poking fun of at challenges of first world problems. For example, Havrilesky wonders what would happen if someone asserted to Rosa Parks or MLK... "I believe in local, sustainable, organic food!" Some causes, even if they are noble, are a first world privilege embrace.

I hope that at some point in the future Havrilesky will write about modern, feminist stoicism. The essays  in "What If This Were Enough?" suggest that she is heading in that direction.

The Name of the Rose

By Umberto Eco

This a nice murder mystery set in 1327, in a monetary. At the end of the book there is an essay by Eco of how he write the book. The depth of his thinking is impressive.

For example, the novel is narrated by an old man, Adso, who is recalling the events which happened while he was young. This gives Eco multiple ways to inject back story and facts without popping out of the story. Old Adso knows that fate of certain characters, or the meaning of certain objects. Young Adso does not. So old Adso can add smart color and commentary to the story without having the novel go off too much on a tangent.

Eco also thought through the buildings of monastery so that the monks could have short private conversations as they walk between buildings, but public conversations in groups in the buildings. This allowed the author to naturally begin and end private or public conversations.

A Walk in the Woods

By Bill Bryson

Bryson walked 800 miles of the Appalachian trail. The full trail is over 2000 miles. At one point in the book, he muses over the contrast-- 800 miles is a amazing amount of hiking, yet he is a failure at hiking the whole trail.

Part travelog, and part history, the book is a good read.

Symmetry and the Monster: One of the greatest quests of mathematics

By Mark Ronan.

I took a lot of Group & Ring theory in University. What I like about the book Symmetry and the Monster is that it discusses much of the history behind Group theory. I got a better sense of the people who were involved and the problems they were trying to solve.

Said another way, in school I learnt many mathematical theories that could be used to do various things, or solve various problems. SATM tells the story of these people, and the problems they were trying to solve.

My one complaint is that the author sometimes uses easy to remember phrases instead of technical terms. While it makes things a little easier to read, it also makes it more difficult for me to branch out from the book, to the actual mathematics being discussed.

Through two doors at once

By Anil Ananthaswamy

This is a good history of the double slit experiment in physics.

Amongst other things, the book describes a variation of the double slit experiment that took place on the canary islands. This experiement confirms that QM & Nature really doesn't want you to know the position and velocity of a partical, even if it means going back into the past to erase the evidence.

1. Start out with the normal double slit experiement. This shows that a partical can be a wave.

2. Put filters in front of the two slits such that horizontal polarized photons only pass through one slit and vertical polarized photons pass through the other. The double slit experiement still works. If you know the polarization of the photon, then the interference goes away.

3. Create a stream of engtangled photons. Send on half of the engtagled pair to the slits. Send the other away.

4. If you put a polarizer in front fo the photos that were fired away from the experiment, then the interference pattern goes away when you use the polarizer to filter out H or V photons. Filtering entangled photons still causes interference patterns to happen, or go away, as appropriate.

5. Move the filter added in step #4 miles away from the experiment. Randomly choose the polarization position after the entangled particle has hit the screen. The interference pattern will still appear (or dissappear) even if you choose to look at the entangled-away-photon long after the entangled-slit-photon has hit the screen.

His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass

A fun fantasy novel. I can see why it was controversial as the Christian Church in this fantasy novel is not a good Christian Church. It's hard for me to read it as a critique of Christianity however.

Siddhartha

By Hermann Hesse

I'm not sure what to take from this novel. It's very deep.

Maybe it's that wisdom must be gained from experience. It can't be taught in lessons. Or perhaps that even if you follow the right path, life will though you curve balls.

 

The Hound Of the Baskervilles

"Reader Come Back" has inspired me to read fiction, just for the heck of it. I've downloaded a bunch of old classics, including Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

I'm surprised how much I enjoyed the book. The English, while dated, is very easy to follow. The plot is fun.

 

Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition

By Umberto Eco.

I aborted reading this. Much of it is an update to a text book Eco wrote years ago. Perhaps I should go to that text book first.

“I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure.”

Less

By Andrew Sean Greer.

Arthur Less is a gay man turning 50. He is survives at his career, but is not super successful. He has lovers, but no great love. He is sort of mediocre at many things. When a former lover decides to get married, rather than attend the wedding, Less arranges a working vacation, traveling around the world. In the process...

This is great book. Perhaps I liked it because I can identify so strongly with Arthur.

Quotes...

"Why did he always assume Mexico City would be like Phoenix on a smoggy day? Why did no one tell him it would be Madrid?"

"Just for the record: happiness is not bullshit."

"Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects."

Reader, Come Home

By Maryanne Wolf

 

This book covers how are brain is changing as our world becomes digital. We are loosing our reflective, deep reading & deep focus skills. We are learning to skim everything. To let our attention float.

 

Much of this book covers the research behind the above idea. It outlines a plan to let childing develop bi-model reading skills. Skills that allow them to focus & read deeply on digital devices.

 

We read different on digital devices. Perhaps because the screen primes us to skim and to hunt for notifications.

 

There is something deeply good for us to take time away from digital devices, to tak time away from endless entertainment, and to spend your time focusing, reflecting and reading a good book.

Three Ingredient Cocktails

By Robert Simonson

I enjoy Simonson's writing. In this book he brings in a bit of each cocktails history or backstory in along with the recipe.

Some drinks are a just specialty drinks created for clubs that have long since gone away. He records them in the book because he likes them, and hopes they will come back.

Others have more of a story. Why is the martini so iconic yet the Rob Roy an after thought?

Simonson is by no means a purist. If you like your martini with a lemon twist instead of an olive, then have it that way.

But not vodka. Vodka martini's are technically called Kangaroos.

There is not a lot of room for vodka in Three Ingredient Cocktails. It doesn't bring any flavor to the party.

I bought Campari after seeing it pop up in many of the recipes of this book. I was hoping to broaden my cocktail experience. To add some sophistication to my pallet. I now know that I don't like Campari. Too bitter.

The Old Man and the Sea

By Hemmingway

 

I'm trying to get over my apathy towards great literature. The Old Man and the Sea is a good way to dip my toe into that ocean as it's really a novella.

 

It is a very clear and well written novel. I'm not sure what made it so great though. I must keep pushing myself to learn what great literature is.

 

Foucault’s Pendulum

A conspiricy theory thriller. A group of coworkers make up an interesting and well researched conspiracy theory. When word of this theory gets around, some unstable elements embrace it (Think Pizza Gate) and the theory gains a dangerous life.

Part of this is depressing and timely in that even back in the 80's, the author anticpated the crazy way that conspircay theories propagate.

At times the book was tedious, in that the author went to great pains to flesh out the real histrory backing up the fake theory.

An interesting slice of the book covers why some people believe in these theories. The book doesn't really have ideas on how to talk these people back from the ledge. At most it suggests "Don't engage."