Marlies

Why did I pick this book?
Recommended as a staple book to read in the category self-development. Was a short read and available in my library.

The book
It's a very short read. Made even shorter by pictures filling entire pages and short chapters.
The book itself is divided into three parts; starting with a story setting the scene; a group of friends meeting at a high school reunion and reflecting on being afraid of changes. Then the actual story of ‘Who moved my cheese' is about; mice and men that need to navigate a maze to find cheese. Each of the four characters has a different approach to address this challenge and the story expertly highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
The last chapter is again from the focus of the high school friends that reflect on how the story's few on change can help them.

My recommendation
A very nicely crafted story. I like how they included especially the last chapter to also reflect on how this story could help people in their day-to-day life. It gives an example of how to interpret the story and an example of how to address someones resistance to change in a positive way.

The story itself is nicely written, easy to digest, and it's neither too dreamy/fuzzy nor too straight-cut as an example story. Due to the translation to mice/cheese and a maze, I think it's easier for a reader to distance themselves from the hard-lessons to learn and easier to jokingly agree that they might resemble one of the characters (as is done in the last chapter).

Definitely recommend for everyone.
Would recommend to follow up with ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' to give direction to your search for ‘new cheese'.

The experiences Kay talks about feel altogether realistic, strengthened by the lack of sleep from not being able to put the book down.

Hilarious, captivating, realistic

Oh wow! I was searching for a book on ecological land use and the price of agriculture on our land and for the environment and boy did I find it!

A book I certainly would recommend everyone to read, though, I do give permission to skip over some of the passages. Pollan deftly deeps into the details of the Industrial, Organic and Pastoral food chains, with “fun” facts about each system that almost had me underlining a passage each page.
One example; corn has become such a cheap commodity, we are putting it in everything, most importantly in animal feed. But did you know that cows are not made to eat corn, and that their rumen (the organ which turns the cow's food into protein/gains) will become slimy, causing bloat and the suffocation of the cow, as well as turning it acidic, which makes the E. Coli bacteria (that are present in 80% of cows), resistant to acidic environments so that our digestive system is no longer acidic enough to get rid of these bacteria?

Pollan interweaves his personal story in between these facts, going to visit feed lots, pastoral farmers and going on a hunting&gathering mission. At the beginning of the book I enjoyed these in between passages, to take a break from information overload. However the entire last chapter is on the ethical dilemma of killing & eating animals and the experience of eating food and was a bit to dreamy/spiritual for my liking. So, I really encourage everyone to at least read the first part, I really enjoyed the Pastoral part, but only read the last part if you're more focused on the spiritual/ethical dilemma.

Entertaining.
Finished in one evening though.

Did not finish.

Why did I pick this book
This book was recommended by so many articles/people. Especially in the theme of Mental Models, personal development, etc.
It was a new addition to my local library, so I picked it up when it was available.

The book
The book is by famed investor Ray Dalio. In it he describes in short his personal history and the lessons he learned during his lifetime. Dalio has been very systematic in noting down these lessons and creating a set of principles which he uses to guide his everyday decisions.

It is divided in two sections; life principles and work principles. As the name implies, life lessons focuses on lessons which can be used in life in general, and work principles focuses more on principles you can apply at work.
The text is presented as a long argumentation of how certain principles came to be and what smaller sub-principles are contained within. This is really just a case of different header stylings with short bits of text in between.

What I thought
I was not able to finish this book.
The way the book is formatted it feels like just one long blurb of text and story-telling, with different header styles applied to random sentences throughout. Say you were reading through a long text -say the Bible- and you applied a Header 1 to every 100 sentences, Header 2 to every 80th sentence, etc.
With all these little sub-sub-sub-headers I lost track of the main points and these sub-sub-sub-headers are so general that they did not feel like eye-opening-must-remember-at-all-costs leasons to learn.

I stopped at the Work principles, because they also mostly apply to managers/directors and the higher-ups of a company (the ones making hiring decisions etc).

My recommendations
To get a start at self-development with really actionable steps I would recommend The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
To get a more fun-to-read, actionable, self improvement read my other recommendation would be An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.