Category: books

Today I attended a conference from the author of this book. I haven’t read so didnt have much background and didn’t pay full attention to the invitation too…

Some notes:

Change is the norm! Not the exception.

Change is just change (sometimes is good, sometimes is bad. Accept it)

The idea is to move to a mindset of “order -> change -> reorder” instead of trying to get things as they were before.

4 steps about Change: Accept, Embrace, Take proactive action, Move forwards to somewhere new.

The idea is to be “rugged and flexible” in three aspects

• 1) Mindset:
• – Develop a “being” instead of “having”: ie I am a good engineer vs I have a job.
• – Set expectations + update accordingly
• – accept the indeniability of change

• 2) Identity:
• – Diversity of sense of self: a.k.a Have a diverse portfolio of your personality. I liked the example of Nils Van der Poel. Before the Olympics he wasnt performing and and reason was he was scared…. He was only Nils the skater. He decided to have a live during the weekends… (not just the skater) and then at the Olympics, he smashed. He created different selfs so there wasnt just one. So it is easier to get scared if shit happens. Or it is like having a house with just one room, if something happens your are out. You need to look after those rooms though.
• – Figure out your rugged boundaries: Your core values. Those should be:
• — 3 or 5
• — well-defined
• — concrete them daily

• 3) Action: 4 Ps: Pause (breath, label feelings), Process, Plan, Proceed. Action created motivation, not the other way around. So dont wait for the motivation, just do. Be patient. Compassion about self. And resilience = Social support + routine.

When change happens, you core values will keep you floating.

Good talk.

I re-read this book during holidays without remembering that I completed it over 1 year ago, and for the life of me, I didnt notice it. So doesnt leave me or my memory in a good place 🙂 Still I enjoyed (again) and it is something I wanted to do, re-read some good books.

And following the trend, I re-read this one (ebook) as I think I needed it. Again, really good read, it grounds me and put me in my place. And another reason was I tried to read an ebook from Kant and Seneca, and couldnt understand anything… It is annoying that I read a lot of references for them but then you go to the source, and I can’t digest them. Too overcomplicated language. Anyway, I will try other “classics” just in case.

This is another ebook I read during holidays. I reminded me to “Calling Bullshit” as it is about finding the “truth” among the noise.

The autor leads a radio program “More or less” in BBC. Unfortunately, I dont find time for listening radio or podcast.

The start was very interesting about how an expert of a famous Dutch painter failed to spot a fake picture because he was obsessed with one details from the painter. And how the fake painter exploited that weakness (and from the whole Netherlands….)

To be honest, I didnt take notes so I am not going to remember many things.

I liked a lot the personal details about John Maynard Keynes life that I didnt know (I tried to read one of his books in the past and I failed miserably):

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir? (JMK)

The ten rules from the book:

1- Search your feelings (Johannes Vermeer fake paint and Nazis)

2- Ponder your personal experience (London trains are not busy….)

3- Avoid premature enumeration

4- Step back and enjoy the view

5- Get the back story

6- Ask who is missing:

The power to NOT collect data is one of the most important and little-understood sources of power that governments have… By refusing to amass knowledge in the first pace, decision-makers exert power over the rest of us. (Anna Powell-Smith)

7- Demand transparency when the computes says no: Google’s quest to find flu outbreaks via searches.

8- Don’t take statistical bedrock for granted: The need of an independent Statistics body for the country to help the governments with decisions. Examples in USA (Wilbur Mills, then Congressional Budget Office aka CBO), UK (Office for Budget Responsibility – OBR) and Greece (Andreas Gerogiou troubles)/Argentina (Graciela Bevacqua troubles).

9- Remember that misinformation can be beautiful too (Florence Nightingale)

10- Keep an open mind (John Maynard Keynes)

Summary:

Be curious.

This is the first ebook I finished while on holidays. I have read recommendations about Naval before but I didnt know what to expect. In general I liked it, many things resonate with me and i would like to read it again at some point. It is something I need to do, be able to re-read books and drop books that are not “worth” it. That’s something Naval does/says.

The books is about wealth (and not just money) in all senses. But at the end of the day, I wonder if this is for everybody. Can everybody have equity? be its own boss? But again, there are many nice things you can take from the book. I would like to have in paper so could take more notes. So this is kind of the thinks I noted:

• Equity

• Do things for its own sake

• You are never going to get rich renting out your time

• Leverage: min input, max output

• Deathbed: the hard things you did

• Ego

• Time To Think!

• Relaxation is who you are

• Fuck yeah or default no (Need to learn this)

• Short term pain, long term gain

• Calm mind, fit body, house full of love. It is earned, not bought. (amen)

• Economy basics: Adam Smith

• Fundamental delusion: there is something out there that will make me happy (I feel this…)

• Desire is a contract with yourself to be unhappy until you get it…

• Jealousy (I feel this…)

• Death: Enjoy the moment

• Take responsibility

• Physical health, diet, sugar. Vegs and a bit of meat

• Mental health, meditation, breathing, cold shower.

• Most of our suffering comes from avoidance.

• Meditate in bed. Noting. GRATEFUL!

• Drugs, addictions, thrills, etc: People trying to get away from the voice of their minds -> overdeveloped sense of self

• Habits

• Books recommendations: Very good list. Need to take account from it.

• Reading habits: Re-read good books, dont need to read full books and be able to drop a book it is not good.

I finished this book last night. It was a recommendation from a friend and I downloaded it some time ago into my kindle. I dont read very often in kindle as i prefer the paper touch but I didnt have anything else at hand so I gave it a go.

I didnt have a clue what was all about, I didnt know the person. And I only checked his history this morning.

In summary, the book is interesting, I liked to read about his personality and treats. Every person is different and it was good to read about his weakness, errors, fears, etc. As he says several times, you have to “bleed” in your writing.

Something that is repeated in the book is the daily practice and his four bodies theory:

• Physical
• Emotional: get rid of negative influences, surround yourself with positive ones
• Mental: write ideas
• Spiritual: be grateful for what you have, focus on the present, surrender.

He talks about everything and anything. From dating, something important to me, he is clear that there is no magic bullet, you have to go meet people (he insists in tango and cooking classes :), and use all tools available. So there is no short cut.

He talks about being an idea-generating machine. And that takes practice. Write ten ideas, tomorrow another ten, etc. Analyze them, cross them, redefine them, etc.

He is very clear that working for enterprise in the corporate America is the worse you can do, he pushes to be en entrepreneur. And he recommends these books about economics.

• The Rational Optimist
• The Science of getting rich

I should have taken more notes though. Interesting read, although checking his blog, he hasnt written for a couple of years but he does youtube now.

Anyway, I think it was worth reading it.

I finished this book last Sunday. I have heard about some interesting achievements like getting a full MIT degree in one year so I wanted to know more about how was that achieved and what I could learn and apply to myself (if possible). I liked the challenge of learning a language each months… with a total exposure and not able to talk English. Honestly, I want to learn German and I want to do it quickly but properly so I want to take some pieces of advice from the book and apply to my case.

I think this can ge a good technique to master specific subjects. But at the end of day, in my opinion, it is all about focus. And that’s my problem, I want to do too many things.

So in summary, the ultralearning process is based on the following principles:

1- Metalearning: It is the research part. You need to know what you want to learn and how to do it.

2- Focus: It is about getting into flow and efficiency. If you dont have the luxury of dedicating 10h a day to your projects. Make the most of your time. And if you have issues, build the habit and strength bit by bit. You want to learn something challenging and difficult, keep it in mind. I liked the example about Mary Somerville. She was a housewife and mother. Still managed to be a top Mathematician!

3- Directness: Currently in schools, university, etc, most of the things we learn dont have a direct application to the practical world. This is knowledge transference. So it you want to learn python, well, use python. So go direct to want you want to learn. If you want to move your career to the AI/ML network infrastructure, you will have to find the technologies (infiniband, GPU, etc) used and learn from them so your CV can be taken into account.

4- Drill: Find your weakness and work on them. Here I learned about the experiences from Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography.

5- Retrieval: trying to recall facts and concepts from memory. The example here is Srinivasa Ramanujan. Free recall tests, in which students need to recall as much as they can remember without a cue, perform better than getting a cue.

6- Feedback: I liked the intro: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Myke Tyson. So testing if we are actually learning, improving it is very important. And how we get that feedback as well.

7- Retention: Another good intro. “Memory is the residue of though” Daniel Willingham. And the example is the World Champion of French Scrabble who didnt speak French, Nigel Richards. So it is about how not forget things. In this kind of challenges, where you are getting a lof of data, it is easy to start forgetting. So the goal is to keep that knowledge, that is with practice (different methods mentioned).

8- Intuition: here the example is mainly Richard Feynman. Main points are: 1) Dont give up on hard problems easily. 2) Prove things to understand them. 3) Start with a concrete example. 3) Be deeply skeptical about your own understanding.

9- Experimentation: It is trying things outside the specific subject you are studying. The example here is how Vincent Van Gogh learnt to paint.

I have read about the Laszlo Polgar experiment about raising his daughters as Chess prodigies but the book gives more details and actually found it even more interesting! I was surprised by the initial “macho” comments from Kasparov… More info about Judit.

In general, nice book, I want/need to put things into practice.

…An antidote to chaos. This book was a gift and last week managed to finish it as I havent had much time lately for reading 🙁

I have seen this author books in airports and book shops, but never managed to take a look to see what was all about as it was a best seller, etc etc.

Something that surprised me was the deep analysis of several parts of the old and new testament to show his rules.

Another interesting topic, it was his strong anticommunist stance, focused on Stalin, Mao and Cambodia. And not sure I understood properly but he thinks that there is far-left in top education positions in USA. I find it hardly to believe that in USA apart from people like Noah Chomsky.

His rules are:

1- Stand-up straight with your shoulders back: Dont be like a defeated lobster.

2- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping: This is based on the fact that people are more willing to look after their pets or other than for example taking their own medicines. Here there was a big strong connection to the Genesis with Adam and Eve being expelled from paradise.

3- Make friends with people who want the best for you: Like it is said in Spanish, “se pega todo menos la hermosura”. So if you have people around that are positive influence, you will move forwards, if it is not that case, you are in a bad place.

4- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today: Typical in the instagram world…. and a source of depression and anxiety. Be the best version of yourself, better than yesterday but worse than tomorrow.

5- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them: This is about kids education by parents. Very interesting as he describes cases based on his own kids and experiences. Not the typical pieces of advice you would fine nowadays.

6- Set your house in perfect order before your criticize the world: Get your shit together before criticizing others.

7- Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedicit): He puts examples from the temptations from Christ in the desert. He shows that Christ could have asked for Gods help and all offers from the Devil were materialistic. And in general, the more materialistic goals we have, the more empty we feel and that makes us miserable and pushing for more stuff.

8- Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie: The basic of a society is trust. Telling lies destroys that fundation. And the same happens on yourself.

9- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you dont: Learn to listen, you can learn stuff from other.

10- Be precise in your speech: Face the problems, think clearly on them and be specific about them. Communicate clearly and dont hide them.

11- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding: This is about children being able to play, take their own risks, learn and grown as humans beings and not be overprotected. There is a big focus in masculinity and how manhood is getting lost in our society. I was bit surprised in this topic as you read very frequently the contrary as we need more feminism in our world. In one side, I get his point, as I feel it myself.

12- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street: This is not really about pets but about pain and suffering. How to cope in those situations and how to enjoy the moment.

In general, the rules look very general but then the author can go very deep and you got lost.

There are many references to Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. I really want to read at some point books from them but I am pretty sure I will struggle with deep philosophical inputs.

This is a book I wanted to read because it is very important subject for me. I want to be more efficient and better at whatever I want to do and to be honest, sometimes I find it difficult to sit down and try to learn something new with my computer. As well, I dont like unnecessary distractions, mainly at work…. As usual, I expected to find the magic pill to get focus. But the book was better than that, it was the author’s journey from not having focus to understand why we are in this situation and the options we have. Spoiler alert: there is no magic pill, and it is not easy (neither impossible). At some points looks quite dramatic, but I see the point.

• Multitasking – This is a lie we tell ourselves. We “can” do several “easy” things at the same time, only. That reminds me a sentence from a person I respect highly: ATP “Make one change at a time”.

• Flow: This chapter was mainly based on the book “Flow” from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Summary to get into “flow” mode you need: Clear goals, meaningful goals and at edge of own ability.

• Sleep: Very important for hour healt and sanity. As well, I liked the concept of less sleep => more consume. And that reminded to something I heard once that the Netflix CEO said the only competitor of Netflix was sleep….

• Wandering mind: Sometimes we think that is bad, but depends on the circunstancies. Meditation is a good things it calms the mind. But the point here, using Poincare example resolving an important problem, for having focus, we need to give space to our mind too.

• Aza Raskin (infinite scroll) and Tristan Harris (Google). They are two important figures from the tech work showing the devils of social media / big tech and how works inside. These companies they want you as much as possible in their platform. And that is not always the best for you! It was interesting to read about “positive reinforcement” that is the main practice to get you hooked to social media. This was developed by BF Skinner. As well, there is a reference that one of the founder of Instagram was in the class of Skinner. As well, I liked the reference to Magic (powa.academy) as it works tricking your focus!

• These companies harvest so much data… that is easy to polarize people. Examples in Brazil (Bolsonaro supporters shouting “Facebook!!” and USA (Trump) elections.

• Nir Eval: I read his book “Indistractable” and I follow several of his pieces of advice. He sais we have to adapt to the new circunstances. We need to find the distraction triggers. And all is about avoidance. I was surprised with the author showed the conflicts between Nir (tech is ok, it is our fault we got distructed) vs Tristan (tech is bad). As well, it was interesting to read Nir’s background in the tech industry. I dont think all tech is evil but I am clear about something. If I dont pay for a service (gmail, youtube, etc) then I am the currency (aka: If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product). So you have to be conscious about what you are using it for.

• How to change things: change business model, instead of getting money from advertisers, you pay for the service (although dont think that would world outside the rich countries), so they will server you! not the advertisers. Government regulation. I liked the concept of “Surveillance Capitalism” that is based on “human (psychology) hacking”

• You get focus when in a safe environment. If not, you are always in a stress mode. I liked the story of Nadine Burke Harris and her work to get kids on track in school from difficult neighbourhoods. There is a point to the “Universal Basic Income” concept that I think it is great.

• Work hours: longer is not better. More focus, more efficiency. Win/win for employer and employees. Again this is something that is not going to work for everybody, just to office workers. Although I fully agree with it. There is too much stupidity in the office culture….

• Food: This is our source of energy, and with the wrong diet, we can get focus. The evil of ultra processed food. There is a mention to Michael Pollan for cook books.

• Pollution: This affects too our capacity of attention.

• ADHD: attention illness in kids. There is a huge diagnosis of ADHD and that means a lof of prescription pills. The book mention that is not always and illness that is most of the time the environment, mainly for kids.

• Play! It is critical for kinds to spend time outside and without supervision to be able to develop personal skill and thought process. The education system and society is getting worse at this. And I agree, I always remember when I was a kid that my best time was when going to my hometown where I could be outside all day. In the big city, this was very difficult, although I was lucky to have a football group and a small park where I spent a lot of time too!

• Intrinsic Values: Social media is mainly based on showing-off. And we lost track of what is really important. Having the “correct values”for their own sake get us off that wheel that doesnt give us anything and always keep us unfulfilled.

• James William (Google) mentions that there are three types of attention: spotlight, startlight and daylight.

• Constant economy growth: we need to consume more because there are no more markets! You need to do more in the same amount of time. Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen. Steady-state economy: different goals. Pushing our mind and nature to the limit. W.H. Auden “We must love one another, or die” WWII.

In general, it is a good book that gives you a lot of information about this problem and show you examples of people of fighting it from all points: from the 4 days work week, freedom to play for kids, etc.

The author says he hasnt solved it but he has learned a lot in this journey.

I finished this book today. And to be honest I have struggled a bit with it from the scientific aspect to the social one.

DNA is our instruction set but we depend on the our environment too for developing those instruction. But that DNA is a random mix from our parents. So we could look like them but we are not them, we are unique. Each person is unique.

It is difficult to accept that whatever I have achieved is based on genes and environment, and luck. Many times I tell myself when looking at the mirror that I am the luckiest person in the world, so I came into terms with that point. As well, that doesn’t mean that we are pre-programmed and there is nothing to do, that there is no “free” will. This is a tough philosophical topic and again, I got a hard time reading about it in the book but the author says there is elbow room between our genes/environment and what we become or do with it. So it was a bit of a relief as your ego is not totally destroyed.

People vary in ability, energy, heath, character, and other socially important traits, and there is good, although not absolutely conclusive, evidence that the variance of all these traits is in part genetically conditioned. Conditioned, mind you, not fixed or predestined”

Theodosius Dobzhansky

So in the book, there is a strong emphases to the fact that the genetic lottery defines much of the inequality in the society we live. We live in the system where educational success, work success, etc follows one standard. The book wants to change the idea that one system fits all is not possible, as we are all different so we need/have different ways to evolve, learn, etc. So for achieving a more fair society we need to provide a different education method to children that can’t learn/develop in the “standard” way. For doing that, we need to have a better understanding of our DNA. And obviously that is a bit scary because it can be misused by companies, governments, etc. That means a change in mentality in social politics. It is kind of being more “socialist” instead of a more cut-through capitalist society. And I think that makes sense, the social improvements we have from the “socialist” politics like free education, free health system, holidays, worker rights, etc has improved our societies compared with the earliest ones from the Industrial Revolution. But at some point, the inequality gap is increasing again. So accepting that genetics is a lottery and we need a new approach to close that gap, is the first step.

These are two pictures that helped me to understand what they book was trying to achieve. Equality is giving to all, the same. Equity is given each one what it needs, and that is win-win situation for all.

The author refers to three types of positions when dealing with social policies:

• eugenic: we are defined by our genetics and we should do nothing to change it.
• genome-blind: ignore genetics difference, waste time/money without really improving the inequality gap (or making it worse)
• anti-eugenic: use genetic data to search for effective processes that improve people’s live and reduce inequality in society.

Something that surprised me is the mention that there are deaf couples that wanted their children deaf as they dont see deafness as defect, and they used genetic help for that. I struggle to accept that is correct.

Still got the feeling that I am not explaining all properly or if I have understood everything properly. I need to take notes, highlight things, etc. How difficult is to have a pencil around when most of the time I am reading at home 🙂