Reading Archives - TOM READS

December 16, 2017January 3, 2018 tomreads All Posts, Books

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport Read: 2017-12-16, Rating: 8/10. The Four Rules: Don't Follow Your Passion - Passion Is Rare. Importance of Skill - Most any work can become the foundation for a compelling career. Importance of Control - Enthusiasm alone is not rare and valuable and is therefore not worth much in terms of career capital. Importance of Mission - A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough—it’s an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field. Rule #1 Don't Follow Your Passion Steve Martin quote, “so good that they can’t ignore you.” The “Passion” of Steve Jobs The Passion Hypothesis The key to occupational happiness is…

December 3, 2017January 3, 2018 tomreads All Posts, Books

Born to Win

Find Your Success Code by Zig Ziglar Read: 2017-11-27, Rating: 7/10. Three Repeated Sentences: You are born to win, but to be the winner you were born to be, you have to plan to win and prepare to win; then and only then can you expect to win. You can change who you are, and what you are, by changing what goes into your mind. You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want. My Notes: Winning doesnt come without work, but focusing on the proven steps and processes to winning will allow the journey to be faster and a ton more fun. Two works and a phrase Identity and…

October 15, 2017October 21, 2017 tomreads All Posts, Books

Made to Stick

Made to Stick Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath Read: 2017-10-15, Rating: 6/10. Urban Legends are: Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories My Notes: The Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. SIMPLE What we mean by “simple” is finding the core of the idea. We know that sentences are better than paragraphs. Two bullet points are better than five. Easy words are better than hard words. It’s a bandwidth issue: The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be. Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Finding the core and expressing it…

July 10, 2017July 17, 2017 tomreads All Posts, Books, Trump

Trump: The Art of the Deal

Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz Read: 2017-07-10, Rating: 6/10. My Notes: Listen to your gut, no matter how somethings sounds on paper You're generally better off sticking with what you know Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make Trump Cards: The Elements of the Deal Think Big Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself Maximize your options Know your market Use your leverage Enhance your location Get the word out Fight back Deliver the goods Contain the costs Have fun Much more often than you think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure Good publicity is preferable to bad. But from a bottom line…

May 16, 2017January 3, 2018 tomreads All Posts, Books

Finding Flow

Finding Flow The Psychology Of Engagement With Everyday Life by Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly Read: 2017-05-16, Rating: 9/10. Three Sentences from Finding Flow It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. The happiness that follows flow is our own making and it leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness. The first step in improving the quality of life, consists of engineering daily activities so that one gets the most rewarding experiences from them. (This sounds simple but...) My Notes What makes a life serene, useful and worth living? The only path to finding out what life is about is a patient, slow attempt, to make sense of the reality of the past and the possibilities of…

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017 tomreads All Posts, Books

The Obstacle is the Way

The Obstacle is the Way The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph by Ryan Holiday Read: 2017-04-26, Rating: 8/10. My Notes Obstacles are not only to be expected but embraced. Our actions may be impeded... but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle of our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of? Most of us are paralyzed. Whatever our individual goals, most of us sit frozen before the many…

April 2, 2017April 17, 2017 tomreads All Posts, Books

The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green Read: 2017-04-02, Rating: 9/10. My Favourite Quotes Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) There will come a time, when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does. Hamartia - a fatal flaw Without pain, how could we know joy? This is an old argument in…

February 21, 2017February 3, 2018 tomreads All Posts, Books

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson Read: 2017-02-21, Rating: 10/10. Three Sentence Summary This book will help you think a little bit more clearly in what you're choosing to find important and what you're choosing to find unimportant. It's OK for things to suck sometimes. The idea of not giving a fuck is a simple way of reorienting our expectations for life and choosing what is important. Practical enlightenment as becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable, that not matter what you do, life is comprised of failures, loss, regrets and even death. My Notes Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive…

February 19, 2017May 6, 2017 tomreads All Posts, Books

The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project a novel by Graeme Simsion Read: 2017-02-19, Rating: 10/10. Can You Be Too Logical? The Rosie Project takes you on a first-person ride inside the overly logical mind of a genetics professor. In one weekend, I finished reading this thought-provoking, humorous and touching novel. Below are my personal notes from the first half of the book. I highly recommend you read The Rosie Project! My Notes Naturally, the books and research papers described the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, and I formed a provisional conclusion that most of these were simply variations in brain function that had been inappropriately medicalised because they did not fit social norms - constructed social norms - that reflected the most common human configurations rather…

February 15, 2017April 26, 2017 tomreads All Posts, Books

Ego Is the Enemy

Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday Read: 2017-02-15, Rating: 8/10. Everyone should read this book because, for everything that comes next, Ego Is the Enemy. A really quick read full of anecdotes from Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, John DeLorean, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Marcus Aurelius, Richard Nixon and Genghis Khan. My Takeaways Stay Humble Stay a Student Don't Tell Yourself a Story My Notes An unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centred ambition. "Not me," you think. For people with ambitions, talents, drives, and potential to fulfill, ego comes with the territory. Precisely what makes us so promising as thinkers, doers, creatives, and entrepreneurs, what drives us to the top of those fields, makes us vulnerable to…