Mitch Olson

A guy builds an audience. Someone suggests he writes a book to extract the most money possible from that asset. He looks for an angle to write that book from. This is it. More exploration than authentic or educational. Give it a wide berth. Feels exploitative.

Not sure who the audience for this book is as it goes into more detail about genes than I'm guessing most people care to know. Anyway it turns out than "cleaning" your genes is just the basics of good sleep, exercise & nutrition.

Not an ounce of inspiration or insight.

not a very satisfying read. Would have been a better book if told in half the words

I love his ideas but he plays too much the victim of what he doesn't agree with. And boy is he verbose.

I found much more interesting than the fare from your average "science writer". The self referential nature of cognition is something that is still not directly acknowledged by materialistic science but in the meantime we have the cognitive biases that behavioural economists speak to & this book about about expectation shapes our perception of reality. Worth a read

”Cutting people down” is what a samurai does apparently. That & a social code that is mired in social etiquette. I had hoped for some inspiration on living an honourable and disciplined life but there’s not much of that in here. Somewhat interesting as an account of the values of a particular people at a particular time.

Boring and directionless. Nothing to do with scarcity, just the habit loop dressed up to look different.

OMG! As dry as a bone. Having read & enjoyed the Expectation effect I was hoping for something useful but this book takes away the will to live, let alone connect.

Slow & therefore not very engaging.

Meh. He’s got a great storytelling voice but the stories themselves are generally not particularly special.

A simple idea in a simple story that is simultaneously profound. It speaks to me to the invisible boundaries that our language distinctions impose on our way of thinking and relating to the world around us, and thereby on who we are and what is both actual and potential.

I read this book because I wanted to understand more about the best ways of helping people to learn. Well, actually I am more interested in how to help them transform themselves in terms of their potential, but “learning” is a good place to start. And I think the author did a pretty good job. Just well executed. Engaging, entertaining and educational. Recommend.

Surprisingly interesting & accessible book. Boy oh boy the immune system is amazing.

I doubt this book has made any difference in the life of anyone who has read it.

I found much more interesting than the fare from your average “science writer”. The self referential nature of cognition is something that is still not directly acknowledged by materialistic science but in the meantime we have the cognitive biases that behavioural economists speak to & this book about about expectation shapes our perception of reality. Worth a read

A fluff piece; Its hard to imagine a less indepth exploration of ritual. He doesn't even bother to exert the mental effort to deconstruct what a ritual is, or to bring a useful categorisation to them. Or to share a formula for how to build one. And he's a Harvard professor! Feather light entertainment.

My rating reflects the fact that I'm not a therapist so I couldn't extract the value that I'm confident is in there for the intended audience.

This could have been a much better book if the author had a different audience in mind when writing it instead of his frat-boy mates.

“An egosphere is a space, such as an apartment, that is associated to the discursive category of the individual (as a modern secular theological dogma).”

Just one example of way too many which is full of “insider” languaging. Seriously? Too much technical wank-speak & not at all necessary. I get it you're smart, but I think you let your ego get the better of you by not writing it in a more accessible way.

And in spite of this it is an important book, but not enough people will be able to grok that. (Also the behavioural psychology stuff on Skinner & Eyal was psych 101 level & would have been better left out).

Recommend

I was disappointed in this book. I was expecting to find out more of the underlying mechanisms of the interaction of plant-ecosystem dynamics but instead I got a kind of biography

Not nearly as good as Obviously Awesome. Would have been a better book if she brought more consideration of to the architecture of a pitch like she did with positioning. Much more down in the weeds & also implictly targeted at large Enterprise sales teams.

To me this book is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that buying books written by general writers & journalists (vs domain experts) is worth the time & money. Its boring & uninsightful & poorly constructed & I'm 99% sure I'll never remember anything I read in this book.

From the fantasy school of causation where just thinking makes it so.

fluff