Books I've Read
Not a comprehesive list, but one I try to keep as a record of my personal development
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Thoughts about life and being a stoic
Marcus Aurelius
date: 2022-12-12
Mostly listened to this casually while I exercised. It provided some thoughts about how life is to be lived.
Crime and Punishment
How a criminal mind justifies its actions
Fyodor Dostoevsky
date: 2022-12-12
Started, but only half way through. Need to circle back and read.
Cues
Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication
Vanessa Van Edwards
date: 2022-11-12
How your voice and behavior give off messages and how to read the cues of others. It covers voice inflections, your hands, eyes, eye brows, and more.
12 Rules for Life
Common sense rules to guide your life and rise above the chaos.
Jordan B. Peterson
date: 2022-10-10
- Stand up straight with your shoulders straight
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- Befriend people who want the best for you
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not the useless person you are today
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
- Set your house in order before you criticise the world
- Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient
- Tell the truth. Or at least don’t lie
- Assume the person you are listening to knows something you don’t
- Be precise in your speech
- Do not bother children while they are skateboarding
- Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street
The 5am Club
Own your morning, elevate your life
Robin Sharma
date: 2022-09-10
Wake up every morning at 5am.
- Spend 20 Minutes Exercising
- Spend 20 Minutes Meditating
- Spend 20 Minutes Learning
Outliers
Premise: At first glance, it looks like hard work is the result of success, but if you look deeper there are more ingredients to account for.
Malcolm Gladwell
date: 2022-01-15
What I learned
In the last 20 years, there was a lot of effort to improve the communication between pilots and co-pilots. This has resulted in almost zero plane crashes. Most crashes were a result of a number of things gong wrong, but miscommunication was the major factor.
David and Goliath
Premise: the perceived weakness could be a hidden Strength
Malcom Gladwell
date: 2021-12-15
What I learned
In WW2, England was fearing the eventual bombings that would come to London. They thought if the city was bombed by Germany, it would result in mass hysteria.
To the contrary, it created three types of groups.
- The dead: If a bomb fell on your neighbor’s house, they would likely die. The thing to keep in mind, the dead don’t talk and have no influence on the living.
- The Near Miss: If a bomb fell on your neighbor’s house, you might get hurt, but you would have survived. Having survived, you are now more emboldened, thinking that you can survive anything.
- The Remote: If a bomb fell on the house down the street, it wouldn’t really affect you at all.
They found that people started to almost ignore the sirens. Kids playing in the streets didn’t stop because the bombers were coming. The exact opposite of what they feared.
Leonardo da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
date: 2021-04-10
Never Split The Difference
Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
Chris Voss
date: 2021-04-01
Mastery
The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
George Leonard
date: 2021-03-20
Man’s Search For Meaning
Viktor Frankl
date: 2021-03-15
The Richest Man in Babylon
George S. Clason
date: 2021-03-10
The “Like” Switch
An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over
Jack Schafer
date: 2021-02-10
Some notes
The Friendship Formula
- Proximity: In the same geographical space as the person you want to get to know.
- Frequency: How often you are in the same space.
- Duration: How long you are in the same space together.
- Intensity: The level of subjects you discuss.
Proximity:
Observations
When you first meet someone, lightly touching them on the arm often times builds a positive view of the person you met of yourself. I said arm, NOT the hand. Hands are intimate and will not be taken positive.
Benjamin Franklin
An American Life
Walter Isaacson
date: 2021-01-01
Blink
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
date: 2020-11-15
Talking to Strangers
What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
Malcolm Gladwell
date: 2020-11-01
Sphere
Michael Crichton
date: 2020-10-15
Radical Candor
Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity Kim Malone Scott
date: 2020-09-20
Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely
Humans are funny creatures, some things can manipulate our descision process
A Manual for Living
Epictetus
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
The worst title for one of the best books out there. The title makes it sound like “How to manipulate people”, but this couldn’t be further from the book. The premise is how to get your mind off your self for two minutes and take a general interest in people.
To let people know you like them:
- Smile
- Remember their name
- Ask them about their experiences
- Don’t argue
- Don’t complain
Reading Smart
The best book I’ve found on the techniques of reading
- Learn about eye saccades
- Learn to not use your finger
- Learn to adjust reading to content