Let's start a book list... if you read a book that you like, leave a comment to this post about it. If you liked a book that someone else read, upvote it. Then we'll have a top books list...
The War of Art
The first two sections of this book were excellent... I've fallen out of the habit of highlighting books, but I highlighted tons from this one. Great motivation and framework for dealing with procrastination and resistance to accomplishing big things.
The third section of the book was horrible. I didn't highlight a single thing in it and found myself disliking the author. My suggestion is to read the book and stop when you get to the page that says "Part 3"
I read Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall a while ago and liked it. His thinking is clear and easy to read.
Now I've been reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand but some of the silly parts of the story keeps putting me off. I like her philosophy though.
Next I'll read Seneca.
I liked it too. I read it after reading Tynan's latest post recommending the book and his blog. Reading Ikigai made me decide to consciously read more books which is why I'm here, to scout for more books.
Is there any point to reading Ikigai if I've read most of his blog? Like... is it original material or just blog posts?
I love and highly recommend Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I do think it helps to read his background before beginning, because it will make you respect his choices and thought process so much more. It's one thing for some self help guru to say something, it's another for an impossibly powerful roman emperor to try and live it.
Gregory Hays does by far the best translation (I've looked at 3/4)
Paperback
(no affiliate):
http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/0812968255/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335463174&sr=1-1
Kindle
(Paperback link to Kindle is incorrect)
http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Modern-Library-ebook/dp/B000FC1JAI/ref=sr_1_2_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335463250&sr=1-2
I think the crowd here would really like Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. I think he has a lot of the same I play by my own rules values, plus their fun short stories.
A favorite of mine as well. This one reminds us that there is joy in finding things out for yourself, in the discovery process. In the age of Google and instant information we often forget to recognize this joy.
I've started reading George RR Martin's series "A Song of Ice and Fire. " I've gotten through "A Game of Thrones" and I'm 3/4 of the way through "A Clash of Kings" I'm really enjoying them and they have really grabbed me. I've never been so emotionally invested in a group of characters like this before and the HBO series bringing it to life makes it that much better, even if it isn't as true to the books as I would like. Every time I put down the books I can't wait to see whats gonna happen next and I just can't stay away from them.
I just read the first 20 pages of the first one and couldn't get into it. I think I'd enjoy it if it was just set in medieval times, but once there are supernatural elements involved, I lose interest.
You should give it another try. The whole book is not AT ALL like the first chapter. The supernatural elements throughout the series are in total maybe like... 5%. They are so rare, that 99,9% of the people in the book dont know about them (not the common people, not the rulers, etc.). I have never read any other fiction book than this one. Its great.
Tynan, you have to give it another try. The whole series is definitely worth the time. The supernatural elements aren't that bad.
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Fan of: software engineering, Buddhism & meditation, psychoanalytic therapy, intelligent risk-taking, living a life of joy.
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Conversation here at Bungie back a couple months ago:
Person 1: "I finally finished the entire next George RR Martin book on my list."
Person 2: "Oh. Did anything happen?"
LULZ.
Tim Ferriss - The 4-Hour Workweek
It has been one of the most influential books I've ever read. This, combined w/ Tynan's Life Nomadic, is an awesome combo!
http://amzn.to/4HWorkweek
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Fan of: software engineering, Buddhism & meditation, psychoanalytic therapy, intelligent risk-taking, living a life of joy.
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I'm reading Olivia Fox Cabane's "The Charisma Myth" and without rambling too much, I'll just say it's one of the best "professional self-improvement" books, if I can call that a genre, I've ever read. And I've read a lot of them because a ton of that was reading research for a talk I just gave a few months ago. Most in that genre are useless platitudes or fluff or common sense dressed up in 150 pages.
The book says: charisma is a skill, and here's what it is, and here's how you practice it. Olivia breaks it down analytically in terms of behavior, but then also focuses hard on visualization. I think this book will really change the direction of my leadership & management work because I always used to regard visualizations as kind of new-age hippie stuff where I did it myself but felt uncomfortable doing it with others.
She makes two points that I think really changed my mind: athletes use visualization all the time. All the time. And then there's method acting. Before method acting, actors would try to deliberately control their behavior to act, but now to us it looks ridiculous and histrionic. Method acting was about "getting into the character", which is really just elaborate visualization writ large.
That really sold me. I'm pushing visualization like crazy now. I don't care if it makes me seem like a crazy hippie. All I have to say is, athletes have known this forever, and, number two, method acting. The end.
She weaves a lot of stuff together, from very general Buddhist meditation to detailed analysis of the proper way to shake someone's hand, but I have to say, I'm probably the most jaded and skeptical person I know when it comes to these kinds of books but this one is golden. Absolutely worth the read.
I recommend the book "Early Retirement Extreme" by Jacob Lund Fisker for people who like books that will cause a paradigm shift in your thinking. I'd put it up there with some of my favourite lifestyle enhancement books like 4HWW and Life Nomadic. The guy has a forum, wiki, and blog by the same name, but the book is best. It is not written for the average person's reading ability--it reads more like he's aimed at the college freshman level of writing, but the writing level is entirely appropriate for the topic he presents. http://earlyretirementextreme.com/
Coincidentally, he was living in an RV in San Francisco for the last few years until he moved to Chicago very recently.
For anyone with acne, I recommend The Dietary Cure for Acne by Loren Cordain, PhD, which was the only thing that cured acne permanently for me after many dermatologists, expensive drugs, etc. The book looks to be about $55.00 now. http://www.amazon.com/Dietary-Cure-Ph-D-Loren-Cordain/dp/0978510917 That is dramatically less than what you spend on products for your skin over a year. However, if you want to, just buy any book on the Paleo diet and follow those recommendations. You won't know the *why* of how your acne is going away, but you will be eating the same diet and it will go away starting after 30 days (which is the time it takes the basal keratinocytes to reach the surface). I also used the principles in the book to cure the acne in people close to me who suffered from it and were willing to modify their diet.
Favorite non-business book I read in 2011: Brain Rules. If you're at all fascinated about how we think, how we learn, and generally how our brains work you will likely enjoy this.
- Freakonomics: Of course, the "fun facts" for parties are cool, but even more important it teaches you a lot about incentives and the reasons why people behave the way they do- The 7 habits of highly effective people: Of course, his writing style is completely annoying and he comes of as a bit of a guru sometimes*, but the essence of what he is writing is a fenomenal guide to personal change and being a better person.
* guru's are a bad thing because, IMHO, they often tend to deal in absolute thruths. As "the thruth" most often does not exist, I dislike their lack of nuance. That of course does not mean one cannot learn from a guru, but always keep looking around for other perspectives or options
We grow up being told what to do and what not to do and can't wait until we're adults and can do whatever we want. When we finally get there, there are new people like bosses, cool people on TV, and the government who try to tell us what to do again.
I don't mind getting into a little trouble here and there, so I tend to push the envelope a bit. However, even if you want to stay on the right side of the law, here are a few things that you probably THINK you have to do, but don't really.
Have any more to add? Put them in the comments and I'll add good ones here!
My post before this was a kind of therapy / Buddhism / personal growth kind of deal, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about how to run effective teams and to be a responsible, thoughtful manager of people. It is my work: I am a lead engineer at Bungie, an independent video game developer of about 300 employees (though not for long, we're growing.) There are some unique aspects to making videogames, and I'll use game development terminology here as I refer to, say, texture artists or sound designers or programmers, but when I talk to friends in different creative industries - film, industrial design, other software development - I find these themes are pretty universal.
If you're going to manage people, you're going to have a lot of conversations about employee performance. It's just bound to happen. Sometimes, like during reviews, it might seem excessive. You might wonder if's worth all the time it takes. It is. It's OK that you spend a bunch of time on this. As a manager, that is your job. It's your job to have well-formed opinions about how you evaluate people and how you work with them to help them grow. If you aren't spending time on that, then you may be succeeding as a leader, but probably not as a manager. Apples and oranges.
It is, however, important to spend this time well. During conversations about performance, everything you talk about should boil down to one thing: the value they contribute to the team. What is their value, and how can they become more valuable?
I find a lot of review conversations tend to focus on strengths, weaknesses, and specific work results. These seem like reasonable topics, and there's value there, but I also find this often leads to a review that looks like this:
