Book Notes

The secret to better decision-making is learning things that won’t change. Mastering a small number of versatile concepts with broad applicability enables you to rapidly grasp new areas, identify patterns, and understand how the world works. Don’t waste your time on knowledge with an expiry date – focus on the fundamentals.

Managing people is difficult wherever you work. But in the tech industry, where management is also a technical discipline, the learning curve can be brutal—especially when there are few tools, texts, and frameworks to help you. In this practical guide, author Camille Fournier (tech lead turned CTO) takes you through each stage in the journey from engineer to technical manager.

It’s not really about hard work. You can work in a restaurant eighty hours a week, and you’re…

What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with…

Schedule two hours each day (i.e., put an event in your calendar) to work on your top goal…

Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is a book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath published by Random House on January 2, 2007. The book continues the idea of “stickiness” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, seeking to explain what makes an idea or concept memorable or interesting.

Do the Work is a 2011 non-fiction book written by American author Steven Pressfield. It is the follow up book to his previous work The War of Art. In it he again presents his theory of the enemy of creative works, Resistance, that stops individuals from achieving their desired objectives.

Marginal meetings are unavoidable, and identifying them ahead of time gives me a chance to figure out an…

Good thinking deals with causes and effects and leads to logical, constructive planning; bad thinking frequently leads to…

Kim called the people on her team who got exceptional results of the war on a more gradual…

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems–the rational mind and the emotional mind–that compete for control.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be able to completely clear your mind and experience a deep sense of calm whenever you want? What about the power to switch into a state of intense concentration, but at the same time be completely relaxed?

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living is a daily devotional book of stoic philosophy co-authored by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. It is Holiday’s fifth book and Hanselman’s debut as an author.

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is a book by Eckhart Tolle. The book is intended to be a guide for day-to-day living and stresses the importance of living in the present moment and transcending thoughts of the past or future.