Carol S. Dweck · ★★★★☆ · 276 pages · 2006
A great book that teaches that there are two mindsets in life. The fixed mindset which limits us to our innate ability, or the growth mindset which states that you can grow and improve the weak parts over time with effort. It is the growth mindset that creates world class people.
Brandon Webb · ★★★★☆ · 221 pages · 2018
Decision
Phil Knight · ★★★★☆ · 402 pages · 2016
I really like the year by year break up of this book and the notion of a company as a search for something more meaningful. I mean it took a lot of guts to build a company on such a low margin business and make it so big. Unfortunately, I don’t know how many actionable things you can get out of this book. Hire great people and don’t tell them how to do something seems to be the main one. Also, spend more time with family as a subtext.
Josh Kaufman · ★★★★☆ · 288 pages · 2013
Great book that covers how to learn different kinds of things and get to a level of proficiency quickly.
John Doerr · ★★★★☆ · 320 pages · 2017
It is a solid book on organizing the output of people to align with companies but I think it could have largely been condensed into a much smaller book and or examples of OKRs from different companies and how they aligned different teams.
Jocko Willink · ★★★★★ · 326 pages · 2015
Great book with very concrete guidelines for leadership.
Dan Harris · ★★★☆☆ · 258 pages · 2014
Got insight into how cable news is run and also how to apply mindfulness when you are ambitious. One of the problems I faced when I was using Buddhism meditation was I'd somewhat lost my drive as I thought the idea was to be zen and nice. Feel like Harris went through the same cycle and found out that you can use Buddhist mindfulness and still be ambitious my favorite example being the Buddha building the sanga. He was proud of it. Overall a light read.
Cal Newport · ★★★★★ · 296 pages · 2016
Everyone needs to read this book especially since most of us are knowledge workers but have no idea how to carve out time for doing deep meaningful tasks and always putting time into the short useless ones.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · ★★★☆☆ · 480 pages · 2007
Not as good as Antifragile as the writing seems to be a bit all over but the concept of the Black Swan event and how to think about life through the power law versus the Gaussian was insightful.
Marie Kondō · ★★★★☆ · 298 pages · 2012
Following up on her previous book this one covers how to go about with the tidying process and how to approach it for all the aspects of your home. Not as insightful as the first one but more practical once you decide to follow her on the path she sets up in the first book.
Daniel J. Levitin · ★★★☆☆ · 525 pages · 2014
Joshua Foer · ★★★★☆ · 307 pages · 2011
Insight into memory and how to train memory while the author is doing the memory olympics. I like the first half of the book where there is more practical usage whereas the latter half is historical and more general history of memory.
Marie Kondō · ★★★★★ · 226 pages · 2010
No one really ever teaches you to clean. About what things to keep and get rid of. However, having fewer and more intimate things does make life better whether clothes or books or etc. The author takes a spiritual lens to cleaning and being tidy about really only keeping things you love and find joy in. Some of the specifics were quite useful like how to organize clothes and what books to actually keep. How to remove more so your mental energy is freer. I guess she hit in the paradox of choice as it pertains to what we keep around us at home. Overall a quick and useful read especially for people with some hoarder like tendencies.
Mark Manson · ★★★★☆ · 212 pages · 2016
Book that covers Stocism and Buddhism and the things to value and not value. It was a light read as the author kept it conversational and how the different aspects he talks about were gained from experiences in his own life. In a way it makes it more meaningful. Lots of things he talks about I have done for a long time as well such as constantly thinking about death so I can value my life and time, saying no to things and being more blunt, putting value into fewer things and putting value into growing oneself with relationships with others and my wife.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · ★★★★☆ · 269 pages · 2018
This books seems a bit everywhere but it comes down to be a doer not a thinker. That you can intellectualize everything but the main point seems to be at the end. Survive first and philosophize later. By doing you understand the probabilistic risks and adjust accordingly whereas if you are a thinking you aren’t really putting anything into practice and it all seems like a good idea but you aren’t sure if it is.
Chris Voss · ★★★★★ · 274 pages · 2016
Even just using 10% of what was in this book has been super helpful. Definitely, one of those books you may have to read and reread and apply each chapter by itself.
Jeb Blount · ★★★★★ · 297 pages · 2015
Probably one of the better book on the painful part of sales finding and bringing in people to actually all to. This book is pretty good for a b2b business where the sales are more one on one as opposed to b2c.
Jill Konrath · ★★★★☆ · 320 pages · 2010
One of the better books on sales. Ideas that I learned:
W. Chan Kim · ★★★☆☆ · 336 pages · 2017
Blue Ocean Shift is a continuation of the Blue Ocean Strategy. While the first book covered the what and why of the strategy namely creating a blue ocean where competition doesn’t exist and creating a product or service that serves the blue ocean instead of competing to the bottom with a red ocean. Blue Can Shift applied the how of creating, analyzing and making a blue ocean. What need to be done and how you go about making it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson · ★★★★★ · 223 pages · 2017
Tyson really covers most things in Astrophysics from our place in it to the principles of dark energy, dark matter and what happened in the first billion years of the formation of the universe. Highly recommend it for an overview of astrophysics though Tyson does lose me in a few places. Overall one of the better science books for a layman.