Content tagged with “self-help”

“I didn’t write a review for this when I first read it, sometime in 2024. It was recommended by a friend, and I first listened to it on audiobook on a drive to Minneapolis. I knew that I was going to need to re-read it at some point, because there was too much to absorb and – for me – an audiobook…”

“It’s ironic that I haven’t written a review for this book yet (I’m writing these words fully six months after I read the book). This book might have affected my life more than any other. I have recommended it to thousands of people via social media, and dozens of people in multiple countries have…”

“I bought this because I want to get better at explaining things. It was…okay? What’s sad, is that finished it a couple weeks ago, and I honestly can’t remember anything about it worth writing. I do remember it being quite basic. It has a lot of examples as well, which I was nice. But, seriously,…”

“I struggled with this book. I didn’t finish it, but I tried. I even tried to go back and read it in pieces. In fact, I kept it on my reading table for a week, picking it up over and over and try and make some sense of it. (The date on this review is simply the date when I gave up…) Here’s a problem…”

“This is a book about behavioral economics – why humans make the choices they do, and how they can be persuaded to make other choices. Well, not ‘persuaded’ so much, but rather – wait for it – nudged . A ‘nudge’ is a change to how a choice is framed or presented that causes people to pick an option…”

“I feel like an idiot for this one, I really do. I’m very curious. I look up stuff all the time, and I even keep track of it all. So, the title of this book made me thinking it was about…I don’t know what? Research? Learning? Satisfying your curiosity? It’s not. This is a mainstream self-help book….”

“This is an interesting look about all the ways we think and process information other than the neurons and synapses in our brains. To be fair, we don’t really think outside the brain, but external stimuli help us process information in ways we don’t often realize. Each chapter covers a way think:…”

“The basic idea behind the book is that innovation is incremental, not revolutionary. You make ‘little bets’ that change the status quo slightly, and then iterate on those, rather than wiping the slate clean and starting over. This is not an uncommon theme. I’ve seen idea this in business,…”

“I very much regret not getting the audiobook. It would have been spectacular to listen to the author read this. This is a memoir. It was made out to be more than that because (1) the cover is funky, and (2) it has a lot of pictures of artifacts (?) of McConaughey’s life, but make no mistake – this…”

“A book which makes a wonderful claim: not everything has to be perfect. We spend our lives thinking we need to get everything organized, but this book argues that often, we just…don’t. An early and establishing example from the book – Two people are asked to find a specific playing card from a…”

“I like David Brooks. I like how he writes. It flows nicely. And this is good, because this book doesn’t really go in a straight line. It meanders. It wanders around a point, completely unfocused. ‘The First Mountain’ we climb is superficial success – money, job, romance. ‘The Second Mountain’ is a…”

“This was a good book, though not quite what I expected. I guess I didn’t expect anything, but the introduction didn’t quite set the book up for what it was. The intro discusses a radio show replay the author heard. It was an episode of ‘Command Performance’ that happened right after V-J day back in…”

“A solid primer on product management – how to figure out what features you should built into your product. The gist is that you need to concentrate on outcomes, not features. You don’t add features to your product, you really try to achieve outcomes for your company. The running example in the book…”

“This book is kind of pointless, but I’m still giving it four stars because it’s fun to read. It’s about Hollywood, and stars, and Ron Howard, etc. etc. The author’s point is that he’s been really curious his whole life. He has conversations with famous people, just out of curiosity, which I…”

“This both a history of Koch Industries and the details of a management philosophy that Charles Koch calls ‘market based management’ (MBM). The book is at its best when he’s explaining some of the history of the company and demonstrating principles via specific examples. Two drawbacks: (1) Koch…”

“An absolutely lovely little book detailing 131 interesting and sometimes absurd ways to notice more things. Exercises like coming up with a script for random video footage you’re watching, interviewing an inanimate object, calculating the exact halfway point between you and a friend and meeting…”

“ A pleasant book about overcoming negative self-talk through Christian faith. There’s a lot of evangelism in here, and some of it is repetitive. The book is at its best when it offers a few ‘lifehack-ish’ things you can do to re-direct your thoughts when they turn dark. ”

“I don’t disagree with the author’s advice (the 12 rules themselves are just good common sense), but his writing style did not fit with me. He meanders, and tells stories that are way, way removed from the point he’s trying to make. There were multiple moments when I had to stop and try to figure…”

“A book I will remember for the edict that to completely own a category, you need to create it. Salesforce owns cloud CRM because it created cloud CRM. It is the ‘category king.’ And once you create a category, you ‘mine’ it for value. The book is a little over-the-top and breathless in places. Also…”

“This might be the perfect self-help book, because it doesn’t really introduce anything new. I mean, think about it, when it comes to habit formation, is there anything new to know? I think behavioral science has got a pretty good handle on why we make and break habits. But, what this book does is…”

“A solid introduction to the net promoter score methodology of performance reporting that falls into a common trap: it could be a blog post, or a 30-page ebook. To get this thing published, the authors had to pad it out to book length, and it’s just way, way, way long. It talks about the same…”

“This book should have been called, ‘How to Make Decisions,’ as this is basically what it is – a series of frameworks for making decisions. The first chapter has some business fiction – a company is arguing about whether or not to purchase a new delivery truck. I normally hate business fiction, and…”

“Sometimes I buy books out of pedagogical curiosity – I’m just curious how they might explain their topic. This is one of those books. I’m not rating it, because I could really relate to it because I feel like I can talk to anyone about anything at any time. But it did a good job explaining what it…”

“A very mainstream self-help book, with the ‘hook’ that it digs deep into the hormonal science of the brain. It discusses happiness in terms of four chemicals – endorphin, serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine – why they make us happy, and what we can do to maximize their levels. It’s…okay. The book is…”

“ This is the ‘business’ version of Klein’s more academic ‘sources of power.’ A good book, but a lot to absorb. The key takeaway: map potential decision points, and role-play and practice scenarios. ”

“A book about applying military principles to business. It’s not a bad book, but the hook is clearly the Navy SEAL angle. Every chapter starts with a novel-esque recounting of some warfare scenario in Ramadi, Iraq, then segues into how that applies to business. It’s all very gung ho and ‘MURICA!…”

“The core point of this book is fantastic and wonderful: we are creatures of growth, and if we approach our lives with the mindset that we can change and are not fixed, then it will have a huge impact on our development and potential. That’s it – you could have written that in a blog post. But the…”

“My wife bought me this at the Global Leadership Summit. It was one of the top three selling books there (which is her criteria for buying me books for my birthday). The book is…awful? I almost don’t want to call it that, because I don’t think I was the target audience. I think the target audience…”

“A collection of stories about 20% and ‘skunkworks’ projects and what makes them tick. The stories were interesting – the first ones were slanted toward tech, and the later stories branched out – but I was having trouble drawing any common principles out of it. This was remedied somewhat in the…”

“I listened to this on audiobook. It was the long tale about Ben Horowitz and his adventures with Loudcloud, Opsware, and now the Andressen-Horowitz VC fund. It was so full of information that I found it frustrating. You almost needed to read this in a group and discuss it to absorb everything. The…”

“This is a great book…but there’s no trick. If you pick up this book and think there’s some magic trick, you’re going to be disappointed. This book is about being a better person. Having integrity, thinking of others, becoming a mentor, etc. It makes a pretty good case that’s there’s no shortcut to…”

“I abandoned this book, but not by choice – truth is, I lost it about 2/3s of the way through (it’s a physically small book, and thus easy to lose). The book was…okay. True to the tag line, it presents a series of thought models with which to evaluate decisions. Some I had heard of (Pareto, SWOT,…”

“I think I loved the idea of this book more than the reality of it. She presents a really intriguing concept – consider your entire professional history together as your ‘body of work’ rather than individual jobs. However, the result is scattered. There are flashes of brilliance toward her topic,…”