Mehdi
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
This is a wonderful book, which elaborates priceless technics and principles about Crucial Conversations.
Crucial Conversations have described as dialogs with three characteristics. First is high emotion, second is high steak and third is opposing opinion. Any conversation with mentioned characteristics, are marked as crucial conversations. As human being we have a propensity to use our worst and rustiest tool to deal with crucial conversation which is fight or flight; the tool that our ancestors were using as a survival strategy. This book illustrates several cases how we are fall pray of serval fallacies and new tools and technic, and how we could tackle them.
Principles, methods, strategies provided within this book are amazingly useful. One can learn a lot about what is going on when we lose control and get to a direction, that we least want when dealing with crucial conversations. Organizations, families as well as individuals could learn a lot from principles and strategies provided within the book and they could improve immensely if they could master all these skills. I would argue this book could be hard to digest without extremely helpful examples provided for each scenario.
There are plenty of good examples provided within this book, so one could comprehend how technics discussed could be leveraged to our advantage. I might not be so impressed if I read the book, however the audio book is quite something. Examples are performed by multiple people with enough tension to get the listener on board. I highly recommend this book and I believe all the technics will be applicable forever.
John Median is a brilliant writer. Within “Brain Rules” book he manage to convert so many scientific and social study to story to hook the reader. He nicely describe how bring works. The author also illustrated how these finding could boost one's productivity at work, home and school. John also open up and talk about his childhood, love life and parenthood to make connection with reader and have himself and incidents which he have been through as example.
John divide the brain rules to 12 as follow:
Rule #1: EXERCISE: Exercise boosts brain power.
Rule #2: SURVIVAL: The human brain evolved, too.
Rule #3:WIRING: Every brain is wired differently.
Rule #4: ATTENTION: We don't pay attention to boring things.
Rule #5: MEMORY (SHORT-TERM): Repeat to remember.
Rule #6: MEMORY (LONG-TERM): Remember to repeat.
Rule #7: SLEEP: Sleep well, think well.
Rule #8: STRESS: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
Rule #9: SENSORY INTEGRATION: Stimulate more of the senses.
Rule #10: VISION: Vision trumps all other senses.
Rule #11: GENDER: Male and female brains are different.
Rule #12: EXPLORATION: We are powerful and natural explorers.
Brain functionality have been discussed within this book in a way that a person with no prior knowledge could follow as well. The analogies provided within the book are nice and easy to apprehend. In addition results of many experiments on human and animal shared to back the rules provided in each section. Also it have been demonstrated how brain injuries patients contributed immensely to brain study and learn nitty-gritty of brain.
John Medina also described how these findings could be leveraged to boost productivity within school, work and personal life. John describe how and when brain could be more prepared to learn and digest materials as well as could perform well and retrieve data accordingly. Nice example of school, work and personal life have been provided to support all these findings.
Furthermore John talk openly about his childhood, love life as well as hid parenthood. This openness hook the reader and attract their attention. He have nice parables of his childhood as well as devastating ones. He directly and indirectly correlate all this stories to one of the topics within the book and illustrate their effects within his personal life.
I find this book interesting it is one of a kind for me so it gave me a lot learn. Being aware of what's possibly going on in once mind could be come handy to survive and thrive.
It is pretty interesting book for HSPs as well as non-HSPs to get to know HSPs and know how to deal with them. Elaine N.Aron within The Highly Sensitive Person book categorized about 20% of people as HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and elaborates their characteristics as well as all their strengths and weaknesses. By going through this book HSPs could know themselves better and be able to cope with their difficulties way better. As a non HSP you could come to know about HSPs and how they are different in characteristics and behaviors, which could come handy if your loved ones are HSPs or you are managing people which some might be HSPs. Identifying HSPs and do the resource allocation accordingly is something that an organization could benefit immensely.
From another point of view, one might argue anyone could fit themselves to HSP category in a way or another. Not only because sensitivity is one of the characteristics of home sapiens, but one could easily fall pray of medical student syndrome and find himself or herself as a HSP. Human beings are vulnerable and could be sensitive or highly sensitive time to time. However it doesn't change the fact that this book pictured several vulnerabilities especially when it comes to sensitivity and provide valuable recommendation to overcome them.
In short I am big fan of this book and it has expanded my horizons. So I strongly recommend this book.
Gary Keller devote the majority of the content of this book on focusing on single task in hand and avoid multi tasking and he provide plenty of evidence and study results on the matter. He strongly believes multi taking doomed to mediocre results and one of the most important factor for success is focusing on task in hand.
Identifying the tasks that matter the most and turning it in to habit is another aspect which have been covered within the book. Gary believes discipline is not matter as much as conventional wisdom suggests, but keep repeating the most important task regularly till they become habit is a great deal. Being able to make anything to habit can have halo effect and can making habit development easier and easier on long run.
In addition will power described as another key ingredient to be able to focus the most important tasks. He demonstrate a full study result done with small kids and the kids destiny in hindsight. Gray clarify that will power is finite and need to be managed efficiently, otherwise we ran out of will power on non important tasks.
Time boxing, success list rather than to do list, saying no to non important things and lots of other good advise are provided within the book. In my eyes if you have been through few other self improvement books you might find almost all the points within this book repetitive.
Ben Horowitz within “The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers” talk about the challenges to build and manage organization especially on fast paste technologies. At the beginning of the book Ben clarifies this is not recipe book and every situation needed to be dealt with differently.
Ben divide the CEOs to two groups; peace time and war time CEOs. Then he mainly focus on war time CEO's style and challenges, for one thing he believes majority of management books in the market have their content mainly on peace time CEOs or their experiences/styles during peace time. He strongly believes company need to be managed by war time CEOs during the war and behave totally differently in compare with peace time.
Horowitz illustrates his struggle on several crises he have been through and explained how he survived when the survival was against the odds. There are valuable stuff within the book ranging from what is good organization and what is bad organization, what is good manager/executive and what is bad manager/executive, value of feedback, how to layoff, how to hire and tones of other things that can come handy for entrepreneur or high level executives.
This book tell you loud and clear; be careful what you wish for if you are planning to be CEO or start your own venture. I have been through the audio book multiple times and gain a lot of insight from this book.
Splendid memoir of Ed Catmull about Pixar, its culture and nice journey about how things solidified to an enterprise and well-known company from an startup. This book is full of invaluable lessens about leadership, management and nurturing creativity yet there it comes with such an smooth story type that one never get bored. Ed Catmull within Creativity, Inc walk the audience through his point of view in hindsight as well as main players within this venture.
The values of the company and it's people, and how they got evolved by time is astonishing. He articulates even though luck and randomness are huge factors in which could not be avoided, how culture, mindset, leadership and stewardship are playing invaluable role to build sustaining creativity and success within the organization in large.
Ed also discuss about nitty gritty of merger with Disney. How things could go sideways and how big players react to avoid the meltdown is also astonishing. This part demonstrates the fact that skill, passion and leadership could play important role to bring the merger to another level so called synergy rather than hold each other back. Learning from each other and sharing their successes as well as failures are mind blowing. Candor have been identified as one of the major factor on success of both organizations.
Ed Catmull also talk about Steve Jobs plenty of times since he was one of the major elements in which bringing Pixar to picture and make it the best in its industry. It's amusing the way he describes his first acquaintance with Steve Jobs as well as the way they deal along the way. I found it interesting how he describes Steve Jobs and why other people/employees could not digest him initially. He also illustrated so called the spiritual awakening of Steve Jobs during last stage of his life.
I have been through the audio book more than once and enjoy the book immensely.
Simon Sinek within “Start with Why” talk about you gotta know where you are heading as individual or organization in order to be successful. He analyze several companies as well as individuals to illustrate his point. I've been through the audio book read by the author and learned some from his insights.
Phil Knight within his memoir take the audience for an adventures trip on 1960s. He describe the world the way that it was during that era. He also share his dream or so called crazy idea and walk you through how he make it happen.
I call this book as a classic for business and entrepreneurship book. He describe up and downs within his journey, his management style and transformation from nothing to enterprise organization. Phil Knight also share his personal life within his memoir as well as his relationship with his dad, mom, sisters, wife and his sons. He describe his life into the details when he used to live paycheck to paycheck, till he became millionaire.
All in all it is wonderful, educational and entertaining book which I had the chance to go though the audio book .
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Dramatized by Mike Walker and Marcy Kahan, Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan and Janet Whitaker, BBC Radio 4 Program is very nice audio program with fantastic performance and enjoyable sound effects which I went through.
This novel have a lot to say and it is not gonna be easy to write review for. Drama is all over the story, war, peace, family, love, loyalty, betrayal and a lot more have been placed beautifully within the novel. The novel do not let you get board by staying too long in a seen neither get lost by moving so fast. I love the pace to the novel.
Another aspect of the novel I loved were philosophical and educational parts which appears every now and then and bring the novel to educational level while it is entertaining at the same time.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy read by Stephen Fry is unique master piece emerged from works of two capable artist. Douglas Adams have pretty unique sense of humor which I had the pleasure to be acquainted with for the first time. I had no expectation what so ever from this book since I had not a pleasant experience from science fiction books in this nature. However I found the audio book performed by Stephen Fry quite amusing and entertaining.
Stephen Fry is a fantastic actor which illustrates his skills and arts within this book. Imaging the science fiction seens are way easier and enjoyable the way Stephen Fry read or better to say play the book. I have listen to plenty of audio books, this book is among the most enjoyable ones (another was The Alchemist read by Jeremy Irons).
Douglas Adams style within the Hitchhiker's Guild to the Galaxy caught me by surprise. He decorated his science fiction novel with hilarious circumstances, conversations, and pretty ridiculous and funny analogies especially when you least expecting them. (e.g.: .... He had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again. )
This audio book experience suggests good readers make the book interesting and exciting. I am not sure I would like the book as much if read by any other author.
I came across Culture series within Elon Musk's favorite books and I decided to give it a try and stated to go through the audio books. Iain M. Banks lost me within outer space among unknown creatures, drouns, artificial supper brains and things in that nature within the first 5 books. I had nothing to say but admitting I'm lost, confused, etc.
Iain M. Banks caught me by surprise on the 6th book; Inversions. There was no sign of technology, aliens and smart drouns. I found Inversion as a nice and smooth story which decorated by a bit philosophy. The main story is about a female doctor and the story narrated by his assistance. Despite the fact that it is unorthodox for king having foreign female person as his doctor it happens to be within this fable that she is the king's physician.
There are up and downs within this novel, Iain M. Bank take you through wars, love, intelligence debates and lots of more within this parable. There is a lot to learn and experience within this book and I am going to give it another shot in future.
Yet it is a mystery for me what happen that out of sudden this series diverted. What is the relationship between this book and the fist 5 books. And where Iain M. Banks going to take me within next books in the series.
Big chunk of this book is famous quotes and well-known parables. I have been through books within this category and style and I found this book superior to it's kind.
Neil Pasricha have categories all the quotes and parables nice way, he also share some personal stories and lessen learned form them. Sure he could find a way to improve his life and mind and he did a nice job to put together whatever helped him to reach where he is.
If you are looking for a book to illustrate what is the potential of Bockchain in future and how it can impact our life you just find your book. Buckle up and get ready for fast journey to the future could be introduced by Blockchain. Tapscotts did pretty good job to elaborate what is Blockchain and how it can effect our surroundings. The book starts with what is the Blockchain, how it have been started and what kind of problem it can tackle. As an example Tapscotts bring up the data breach problem and show even well known organizations are not immune, chief among them Ebay 145 millions user's data compromised and Sony 77 million users data compromised; which caused by centralizing data and make it vulnerable. Problem and roadblocks caused by current technology are discussed with proper example, afterward it clarified how Blockchain could be pretty good candidate to resolve those issues with dissent examples.
This book is go beyond reality and illustrated what could be possible with Blockchain technology. Some might call it too imaginary or unrealistic, however I enjoyed the book and got some idea. I could picture what could be the outcome of this revolutionizing technology. As a person with IT background and have good understanding about the technology in use within Bloackchain and the impediment we have in current infrastructure, I might take some explanation for granted and get along better than people with no IT background.
Problems and challenges that might be introduced by Blockchain technology have been discussed toward the end of the book. It predicated some issues are inevitable and recommend decision makers should not blame the technology for it's misuse.
Some changes predicted within the book had happened in a way or another and look like Blockchain have pass it's embryonic stage and it becoming self fulfilling prophecy.
Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden is among the best books I have ever been through. Nathaniel Branden describes in this book what is Self-Esteem and what is NOT. He illustrate Living Consciously, Self Acceptance, Self Responsibility, Self Assertiveness, Living purposefully and Personal integrity as Six-Pillars of Self-Esteem with clear definition and examples.
The author elaborate how Sell-Esteem and it's six pillars are essential for nurturing a child and how parents, teachers as well as leaders could be blessed the family, schools, organizations and society in large and how harmful lack of self-esteem could be for all of the above.
I've been through the audio book read by the author, more than once and I claim no matter how many times you go through this book is not enough. This is a book that almost all sentences are quotable and have plenty of insight backed in to them.
Not my cup of tea. Why... For starter, it's a well known fact that I ain't good with names and only god knows how many names this novel includes. I hardly could repeat after the names, let alone remember or distinguish whether the characters are male or female. There were different characters with same name which make it way more confusing for me... Yea yea I took a look at family tree... couldn't read the names either :D
Aside naming which is quite important element within this novel, I find the pace of story pretty fast, I fell behind several times, could get sync back for a while and fall behind again and again. The very advance literature of the book was another factor to make it harder to comprehend. The story was so fast by the time I was about to grasp the idea what is going on it took me to whole new world.
No Thank you!!! I'm not going to try this again...
This book was recommend by a friend of mine and I'm not big fan of Stephen King. I have watched The Shining movie and I decided to give On Writing audio book a try.
Stephen King's memoir starts with author deep connection of personal life, childhood, carrier, as well as his works. There are good advice lay around this book for those that would like to start writing their novel. The author illustrate his points by example from his own works as well as other famous works.
This book meant for Stephen King's fan, and folks with novel writing interest. You still some about writing in general and enjoy the professional writing if you are not in the above category.
Carmine Gallo have studies the best TED presenters and analyzed them to see what made their talk so attractive. This books give you another eye about presentation and public speaking. You might think brilliant presentation come naturally to people with skills and talents however within this book illustrate the fact that successful speaker rehearse their talk hundreds of times. Pretty helpful aspects, secrets, tips and tricks have been covered by author about public speaking and variety of techniques that worked in real life by remarkable people.
Selling your idea and communicating effectively within working environment as well as day to day life are other aspect that have been addressed in this book.
Elon Musk is one of a kind and his achievements are very impressive. His dogged determination to follow his believes despite the fact they are against conventional wisdom is inspiring. Elon Musk achievements within aerospace and auto industry are revolutionary and within this book shows non of this accomplishments shows up by luck... Elon fight hard to get where he is and within this book there are people such as his ex-wife narrating; how not only Elon could tolerate dramatic crises he could stay focuse on job in hand at the same time.
Elon believes adversities in his life made him who he is now, he also raised his concerned about lack of adversity within new generation in particular his kids.
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past”. Gorge Orwell wrote 1984 at 1948. He is among the deep thinkers at his time. Within 1984 Gorge Orwell picture a restricted society in which people have been watched and brain washed so government could have full control. There is a minister of truth in charge of amending the past so people do not have the truth and knowledge about the past. People been trained to believe “ignorance is strength war is peace freedom is slavery”.
Winston is the main character of the book. The author shows how the intuition is screwed within this society so Winston intuition is telling him Julia is an agent and member of the party however it turns out Julia is just in love with him. Winston thinks O'brien is a member of the brotherhood and it turn's out he is an agent working directly with the party.
Winston got access to Goldstein book and he thought this book is wrote by freedom fighter or brotherhood. This book contains some facts and conspiracies, however it turns out it wrote by party members so they can find and detect people that looking for truth and brain wash them. Thoughtcrime is the most unforgivable crime in this society and though police watching people all the time.
Gorge Orwell illustrate in his book how corrupted government or so called big brother control and rule the nation by killing the freedom, peace and knowledge. Big brother is at top of the pyramid and comes after it the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles.
This book is not an easy read, I was lucky I watched the Movie first and been through the audio book twice until I could be able to connect the dots and enjoy the book.
This book would elaborate about optimism and pessimism as the title suggests and explain which one comes handy in different circumstances. Examples provided in the book is very interesting to illustrate the point.
Within this book author shows how can one change his thoughts/believes for better outcome and results when it's required. ABCDE(Adversity, Beliefs, Consequence, Dispute, Energy ) technique introduced within this book, is an interesting approach to deal with adversities in your life. Mentioned technique helps to have better awareness of our so called inner voice, analyzed them better and distract or dispute according to the type of adversity. Furthermore I like the part explained about the disputing negative thinking by analyzing Evidence, Alternatives, Implications, and Usefulness.
(I've been through only the audio part of the program.)
Pretty interesting book with rich literature. This book walking you though basic personal financial management by several simple though exciting parable. Teaching the value of hard work and how to make your job your friend rather than enemy. Sharing successes and failures to give the reader realistic idea how one can succeed and avoid failure . I have been through the audio book more than once and I enjoy the tails every time.