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 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.

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.

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

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.