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440. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   David Epstein

Genre:   Nonfiction, Business, Psychology, Self Improvement, Science

352 pages, published May 28, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

In Range, author David Epstein takes on the accepted wisdom that the key to success in most fields involves singular focus from a young age combined with thousands of hours of deliberate practice, i.e. the 10,000 hour rule immortalized in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.  Think Tiger Woods or Mozart.  Epstein takes a contrarian view and explores the view that the most effective path to success is to dabble and/or delay.  He looks at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, and shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. Inventors who cross domains and engage in multiple disciplines have the greatest impact.  Range makes the case that failing is the best way to learn and shows that frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers.

Quotes 

“We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.”

 

“If we treated careers more like dating, nobody would settle down so quickly.”

 

“Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains. Our most fundamental thought processes have changed to accommodate increasing complexity and the need to derive new patterns rather than rely only on familiar ones.  Our conceptual classification schemes provide a scaffolding for connecting knowledge, making it accessible and flexible.”

 

“Whether chemists, physicists, or political scientists, the most successful problem solvers spend mental energy figuring out what type of problem they are facing before matching a strategy to it, rather than jumping in with memorized procedures.”

 

“Like chess masters and firefighters, premodern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else. Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands—conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost. That is not an option for us. The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.”

 

“You have people walking around with all the knowledge of humanity on their phone, but they have no idea how to integrate it. We don’t train people in thinking or reasoning.”

 

“The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization.”

 

“The labs in which scientists had more diverse professional backgrounds were the ones where more and more varied analogies were offered, and where breakthroughs were more reliably produced when the unexpected arose.”

 

“breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before, which is the essence of creativity.”

 

“Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform.”

 

“While it is undoubtedly true that there are areas that require individuals with Tiger’s precocity and clarity of purpose, as complexity increases—as technology spins the world into vaster webs of interconnected systems in which each individual only sees a small part—we also need more Rogers: people who start broad and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives while they progress. People with range.”

 

“First act and then think…We discover the possibilities by doing, by trying new activities, building new networks, finding new role models.” We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.”

 

“A separate, international team analyzed more than a half million research articles, and classified a paper as “novel” if it cited two other journals that had never before appeared together. Just one in ten papers made a new combination, and only one in twenty made multiple new combinations. The group tracked the impact of research papers over time. They saw that papers with new knowledge combinations were more likely to be published in less prestigious journals, and also much more likely to be ignored upon publication. They got off to a slow start in the world, but after three years, the papers with new knowledge combos surpassed the conventional papers, and began accumulating more citations from other scientists. Fifteen years after publication, studies that made multiple new knowledge combinations were way more likely to be in the top 1 percent of most-cited papers. To recap: work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge is less likely to be funded, less likely to appear in famous journals, more likely to be ignored upon publication, and then more likely in the long run to be a smash hit in the library of human knowledge.”

 

My Take

I enjoy reading books that challenge long held assumptions and Range falls squarely into that camp.  I have long believed the conventional wisdom that early focus, repetitive practice and hyper specialization were the road to success.  However, author David Epstein makes a compelling case, backed up with data, that the road to greatness is often a meandering one, with failure, course changes and a broad range of interdisciplinary influences rating as essential elements.  In reading this book, I was reminded of Leonardo da Vinci, the biography of the iconic artist and inventor who drew on a wide range of influences for some of his most creative and groundbreaking work.

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419. Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Scott Adams

Genre:   Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Improvement, Politics

256 pages, published November 5, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Loserthink is famed Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams take on why people make bad decisions, like letting your ego have too much control, thinking with words instead of reasons, failing to imagine alternative explanations, and making too much of coincidences.

Quotes 

“If bad memories are keeping you from being happy, try crowding out the destructive memories with new and interesting thoughts. Stay busy, in mind and body, and time is on your side.”

 

“There are three important things to know about human beings in order to understand why we do the things we do. Humans use pattern recognition to understand their world. Humans are very bad at pattern recognition. And they don’t know it.”

 

“The best solution to a problem is often unrelated to who is at fault. It is loserthink to believe otherwise.”

 

“If you can’t imagine any other explanation for a set of facts, it might be because you are bad at imagining things.”

 

“If all you know is how many times someone hit a target, it is loserthink to judge how accurate they are. You also need to know how many times they missed.”

 

“Never be yourself if you can make yourself into something better through your conscious actions. You are what you do.”

 

“It is helpful to think of your mind as having limited shelf space. If you fill that space with negative thoughts, it will set your mental filters to negativity and poor health, and there will be no space left for healthy, productive, and uplifting thoughts. You can control your mental shelf space—to a degree—by manipulating your physical surroundings. In the case of pharmaceutical commercials, it means changing the channel so you are not bombarded with unhealthy thoughts that can wreck your mind and body over time. I will pause here to note that science is solidly on my side.  So is nearly every self-help guru.”

  

My Take

During my reading quest, I had previously read Scott Adams’ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big:  Kind of the Story of My Life and Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.  I preferred both of these books to Loserthink.  It’s not a bad book and has some interesting ideas.  It’s just not nearly as good as Adams’ previous efforts.

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395. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Valerie Flores

Author:   Lori Gottlieb

Genre:    Nonfiction, Memoir, Psychology, Self Improvement

432 pages, published April 2, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is written by Lori Gottlieb, a therapist in Los Angeles who also writes an advice column for the Atlantic.  Gottlieb takes you inside her practice, writing candidly about her patients and the way in which therapy can help them.  Her patients include a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys.  Gottlieb also reveals her own journey with a therapist following a devastating break up.

Quotes 

“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”

 

“Follow your envy – it shows you what you want.”

 

“We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.”

 

“Above all, I didn’t want to fall into the trap that Buddhists call idiot compassion – an apt phrase, given John’s worldview. In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.”

 

“It’s impossible to get to know people deeply and not come to like them.”

 

“The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking—people imagine that if they say no, they won’t be loved by others. The inability to say yes, however—to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program—is more about lack of trust in oneself. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn’t it safer to stay where I am?”

 

“Happiness (t) = w0+ w1  γt−jCRj+ w2  γt−jEVj+ w3  γt−jRPEj Which all boils down to: Happiness equals reality minus expectations.”

 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

 

“Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope.”

 

“Just because she sends you guilt doesn’t mean you have to accept delivery.”

 

“What most people mean by type is a sense of attraction—a type of physical appearance or a type of personality turns them on. But what underlies a person’s type, in fact, is a sense of familiarity. It’s no coincidence that people who had angry parents often end up choosing angry partners, that those with alcoholic parents are frequently drawn to partners who drink quite a bit, or that those who had withdrawn or critical parents find themselves married to spouses who are withdrawn or critical.”

 

“In the best goodbyes, there’s always the feeling that there’s something more to say.”

 

“What people don’t like to think about is that you can do everything right—in life or in a treatment protocol—and still get the short end of the stick.”

 

“The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, but vitality.”

 

“An interesting paradox of the therapy process: In order to do their job, therapists try to see patients as they really are, which means noticing their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles. Patients, of course, want to be helped, but they also want to be liked and admired. In other words, they want to hide their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles. That’s not to say that therapists don’t look for a patient’s strengths and try to build on those. We do. But while we aim to discover what’s not working, patients try to keep the illusion going to avoid shame—to seem more together than they really are. Both parties have the well-being of the patient in mind but often work at cross-purposes in the service of a mutual goal.”

 

“two hundred years ago, the philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe succinctly summarized this sentiment: “Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”

 

“There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”

 

“But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”

 

“You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn’t one of them.”

 

“But many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.”

 

“With aging comes the potential to accrue many losses: health, family, friends, work, and purpose.”

 

“The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things—leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator—they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves.”

 

“Therapists don’t perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. A patient may become less reactive or critical, more open and able to let people in. In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”

 

“Being silent is like emptying the trash. When you stop tossing junk into the void—words,words,words—something important rises to the surface.”

 

“at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.”

 

“peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”

 

“Ultracrepidarianism: the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge or competence.”

 

“Therapy elicits odd reactions because, in a way, it’s like pornography. Both involve a kind of nudity. Both have the potential to thrill. And both have millions of users, most of whom keep their use private.”

 

“If the queen had balls, she’d be the king.” If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don’t recognize that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” you may deprive yourself of joy.”

 

“Relationships in life don’t really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you’ve been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)–all of them evoke memories, conscious or not.”

 

“Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it’s outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious. But often it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll glimpse submerged feelings you either weren’t aware of or didn’t want to show: fear, helplessness, envy, loneliness, insecurity. And if you can tolerate these deeper feelings long enough to understand them and listen to what they’re telling you, you’ll not only manage your anger in more productive ways, you also won’t be so angry all the time.”

 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.  A former television producer and medical student, Gottlieb is a terrific writer and an excellent therapist.  She takes you inside the lives of her patients (a fascinating journey) and helps you understand how therapy works.  Highly recommended.

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393. Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Mike Brady

Author:   David Goggins

Genre:   Nonfiction, Self Improvement, Psychology, Memoir

366 pages, published December 4, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

After surviving a nightmarish childhood, David Goggins entered his early twenties overweight, unmotivated and depressed.  Deciding that something had to change, Goggins set his sights on being accepted to the elite Navy Seal training program.  To do so, he would have to lose 106 pounds in three months and pass a rigorous written exam.  He did both and then went on to become a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller.  Not satisfied, he entered the world of ultra athletic endurance competitions.   He would go on to set records in numerous endurance events and was named by Outside magazine as “The Fittest (Real) Man in America.”

Quotes 

“Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”

 

“It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself that you somehow deserve it. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn!”

 

“No one is going to come help you. No one’s coming to save you.”

 

“You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”

 

“Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire back in the fifth century BC, had it right when he wrote about men on the battlefield. “Out of every one hundred men,” he wrote, “ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior…”

 

“In the military we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

 

“We live in a world with a lot of insecure, jealous people. Some of them are our best friends. They are blood relatives. Failure terrifies them. So does our success. Because when we transcend what we once thought possible, push our limits, and become more, our light reflects off all the walls they’ve built up around them. Your light enables them to see the contours of their own prison, their own self-limitations. But if they are truly the great people you always believed them to be, their jealousy will evolve, and soon their imagination might hop its fence, and it will be their turn to change for the better.”

 

“I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I’m done”

 

“The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss.”

 

“The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.”

 

“The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated. That’s why I loved PT in BUD/S and why I still love it today. Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.”

 

“From then on, I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it at the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I became tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.”

 

My Take

In Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins shares his inspirational life story and argues that most of us are only using 40% of our capabilities.  One of the more interesting parts of the book is his discussion of the concept of “the Governor,” the part of our brain that tells us to stop when we are pushing our bodies hard or dealing with discomfort.  Goggins overcame his Governor and accomplished some truly amazing physical feats, setting world records for ultra endurance contests and pull-ups.  An inspiring story that will challenge you to up your game.

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364. The New Health Rules: Simple Changes to Achieve Whole-Body Wellness

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Frank Lipman, M.D.

Genre:  Non Fiction, Health, Nutrition, Self Improvement

224 pages, published December 13, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

The New Health Rules contains succinct tips on how to be a healthy person, covering categories from nutrition to exercise to stress reduction.

Quotes 

“Make your default mode one of generosity. It’s a nice way to live, and it’s contagious.”

 

“avocado—score it, spritz with lemon or olive oil, sprinkle with salt and cumin, and eat it like a grapefruit.”

 

“If you have a sweet tooth and you’re making a concerted effort to get yourself off sugar, take a supplement called glutamine when you have a craving (1,000 milligrams every four to six hours as needed).”

 

“Alcohol is liquid sugar. It’s more depleting than restorative. To feel your best, you shouldn’t be having alcohol every day, even red wine.”

 

“Eat grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, greens, nuts, a bit of fruit—and no other carbs—for a month and see how you feel.”

 

“Lunch should be the largest meal—packed with protein, good fats, and vegetables.”

 

“If You Learn Only One Yoga Pose . . . . . . let it be supta baddha konasana.”

 

“Raw sugar and brown sugar have a better public image but are just as problematic as the white stuff. Cut it out.”

 

“If you’re on a statin drug like Lipitor to lower your cholesterol, you may know there’s controversy surrounding these meds. Here’s clarity: Lowering cholesterol does not, it turns out, prevent heart attacks and strokes. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. The big deal about this is that millions of people are on statins unnecessarily, and statins cause diabetes, liver damage, nervous system problems, muscle weakness, and more. Talk to your doctor about possibly getting off statins.” 

My Take

While there is lots of good advice in The New Health Rules, a pithy, informative book, I’ve heard about 90% of it before and I’m not sure about the other 10%.  Worth reading if you don’t keep up on nutrition news and are looking for guidance on how to eat.

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363. The Joy of Doing Just Enough

Rating:  ☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jennifer McCartney

Genre:  Non Fiction, Humor, Self Improvement

144 pages, published April 3, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

As you can tell by the title, The Joy of Doing Just Enough isn’t a motivational, self-improvement book.   Rather, author Jennifer McCartney advocates that doing “just enough” to get by is often good enough.

Quotes  

My Take

While the message of this book isn’t completely counterproductive, my personal guru Gretchen Rubin said it much better, “One of the biggest wastes of time is doing something well that didn’t need to be done at all.”

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331. Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Fumio Sasaki

Genre:  Non Fiction, Self Improvement

288 pages, published April 11, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

In Goodbye, Things, author Fumio Sasaki changed his life by reducing his possessions to the bare minimum.  He describes how right away he repeated remarkable benefits.  Without all his “stuff,” Sasaki finally felt true freedom, peace of mind, and appreciation for the present moment.

Quotes 

“Want to know how to make yourself instantly unhappy? Compare yourself with someone else.”

 

“Why do we own so many things when we don’t need them? What is their purpose? I think the answer is quite clear: We’re desperate to convey our own worth, our own value to others. We use objects to tell people just how valuable we are.”

 

“You can avoid buying more things simply by first asking yourself if it’s something that you actually need.”

 

“If it’s not a “hell, yes!” it’s a “no.”

 

“It’s often said that cleaning your house is like polishing yourself. I think that this is a golden rule. It isn’t just dust and dirt that accumulate in our homes. It’s also the shadows of our past selves that let that dust and dirt continue to build. Cleaning the grime is certainly unpleasant, but more than that, it’s the need to face our own past deeds that makes it so tough. But when we have fewer material possessions and cleaning becomes an easy habit, the shadows we now face will be of our daily accomplishments.”

 

“The glory of acquisition starts to dim with use, eventually changing to boredom as the item no longer elicits even a bit of excitement. This is the pattern of everything in our lives. No matter how much we wish for something, over time it becomes a normal part of our lives, and then a tired old item that bores us, even though we did actually get our wish. And we end up being unhappy.”

 

“When given too many choices, people tend to worry that there’s something better out there than what they decided on.”

 

“If you can’t make up your mind about an item, I suggest you go right ahead and discard it.”

 

“We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves. —FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD”

 

“Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have. —RABBI HYMAN SCHACHTEL”

 

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. —STEVE JOBS”

 

“When you’re aware of all the things that you own, you’re not only certain of where they are, you’re also sure about whether you have them or not.”

 

“Ask yourself which of your items would truly be necessary if you were to start with zero belongings. What if everything you owned was stolen? What if you had to move next week? Which items would you take with you? There are probably a lot of things we have sitting around in our homes for no particular reason. Think about starting from scratch, and it will become clear which items are essential.”

 

“a minimalist is a person who knows what is truly essential for him- or herself,”

 

“My feeling is that minimalists are people who know what’s truly necessary for them versus what they may want for the sake of appearance, and they’re not afraid to cut down on everything in the second category.”

 

“The qualities I look for in the things I buy are (1) the item has a minimalist type of shape, and is easy to clean; (2) its color isn’t too loud; (3) I’ll be able to use it for a long time; (4) it has a simple structure; (5) it’s lightweight and compact; and (6) it has multiple uses.”

 

“We can accumulate as much as we like, but without gratitude we’ll only end up being bored with everything we’ve obtained. Conversely, we can achieve true contentment with few possessions, just so long as we treat them with gratitude.”

 

“I’ve heard it said that the secret to a happy marriage is to simply talk a lot with your partner. One study showed that happily married couples talked with each other five more hours per week than couples that aren’t happy. If people are busy taking care of their possessions, quarreling over them, spending time in separate rooms, or watching a lot of TV, they’re naturally going to have less time for conversations.” 

My Take

In  Goodbye, Things, author Fumio Sasaki makes a strong case for the value of minimalism and provides some practical tips for downsizing your belongings to the things that you really use and value.  Much like Outer Order, Inner Calm by my personal guru Gretchin Rubin, Goodbye, Things has inspired me to continue my decluttering efforts and to be even more ruthless with my discards.

 

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328. Outer Order, Inner Calm: declutter & organize to make more room for happiness

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Gretchen Rubin

Genre:  Non Fiction, Self Improvement

208 pages, published March 5, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Outer Order, Inner Calm is Gretchen Rubin’s take on the idea that maintaining order in your surroundings is an important contributor to your overall happiness.  Rubin argues that getting control of the stuff of life makes us feel more in control of our lives generally.  By getting rid of things we don’t use, don’t need, or don’t love, as well as things that don’t work, don’t fit, or don’t suit, we free our mind (and our shelves) for what we truly value.  The book is organized around helpful ideas and suggestions for achieving order and organization.

Quotes 

“Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started.”

 

“What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while.”

 

“Outer order isn’t a matter of having less or having more; it’s a matter of wanting what we have.”

 

“Getting in control of our possessions makes us feel more in control of our fates. If this is an illusion, it’s a helpful illusion–and it’s a more pleasant way to live.”

 

“When deciding what to buy, remember that some things are easy to buy—but then we have to use them. If they’re not used, they don’t enhance our lives; they just contribute to guilt and clutter.”

 

“One of the biggest wastes of time is doing something well that didn’t need to be done at all.”

 

“Rather than striving for a particular level of possessions—minimal or otherwise—it’s helpful to think about getting rid of what’s superfluous. Even people who prefer to own many possessions enjoy their surroundings more when they’ve purged everything that’s not needed, used, or loved.”

 

“Actually spending ten minutes clearing off one shelf is better than fantasizing about spending a weekend cleaning out the basement.”

 

“It’s easier to keep up than to catch up…”

 

“Just because we’re busy doesn’t mean we’re being productive. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.”

 

“Having less often leads us to use our things more often and with more enjoyment, because we’re not fighting our way through a welter of unwanted stuff.” 

My Take

As my friends well know, I am a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin (Better than Before, The Four Tendencies, The Happiness Project) and consider her as my personal happiness guru.  I have internalized her many of her numerous pearls of wisdom on happiness and truly believe that I am leading a happier life as a result.  Perhaps because I am such a Rubin devotee, I found that most of the ideas presented in Outer Order, Inner Calm are ones that I have seen before.  However, it was still useful to have them collected together in one place and I think Rubin is spot on when advocates for getting rid of the clutter and organizing your physical surroundings.  I AM much happier when I live this way and I love the little jolt of happiness that I get every time I open a drawer or closet that I have recently cleaned out.

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308. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Mark Manson

Genre:  Non Fiction, Self Improvement, Psychology, Happiness

224 pages, published September 13, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

In this original take on a self-help guide, prolific blogger Mark Manson provides the reader with his take on how to truly become a better, happier person.  Manson eschews positivity and affirmations.  Manson argues that because humans are flawed and limited, we should get to know our limitations and accept them.  Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, and start confronting painful truths, then we can find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek and need to be happy.

Quotes 

“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”

 

“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.  Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable.”

 

“Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.”

 

“Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another.”

 

“The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternative values. If I choose to make my marriage the most important part of my life, that means I’m (probably) choosing not to make cocaine-fueled hooker orgies an important part of my life. If I’m choosing to judge myself based on my ability to have open and accepting friendships, that means I’m rejecting trashing my friends behind their backs. These are all healthy decisions, yet they require rejection at every turn. The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X.”

 

“This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes.”

 

“You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked.”

 

“But a true and accurate measurement of one’s self-worth is how people feel about the negative aspects of themselves.”

 

“The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.”

 

“It turns out that adversity and failure are actually useful and even necessary for developing strong-minded and successful adults.”

 

“There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond. Whether we consciously recognize it or not, we are always responsible for our experiences. It’s impossible not to be. Choosing to not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an interpretation of the events of our lives.”

 

“To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action.”

 

“We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change. We have evolved to always live with a certain degree of dissatisfaction and insecurity, because it’s the mildly dissatisfied and insecure creature that’s going to do the most work to innovate and survive.”

 

“Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other—in other words, they’re using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.”

 

“Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.”

 

“If you’re stuck on a problem, don’t sit there and think about it; just start working on it. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, the simple act of working on it will eventually cause the right ideas to show up in your head.”

 

“Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves. This exposure to different cultural values and metrics then forces you to reexamine what seems obvious in your own life and to consider that perhaps it’s not necessarily the best way to live.”

 

“Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.”

 

“Being open with your insecurities paradoxically makes you more confident and charismatic around others. The pain of honest confrontation is what generates the greatest trust and respect in your relationships. Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance.”

 

“Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy.”

 

“Everybody enjoys what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy, and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when they walk into the room. Everybody wants that. It’s easy to want that. A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.”

 

“Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.”

 

“The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations.”

 

“People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good.”

 

“I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the differences in others.”

 

“Commitment gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous. Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your attention and focus, directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy. Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.”

 

“Yet, in a bizarre, backwards way, death is the light by which the shadow of all of life’s meaning is measured. Without death, everything would feel inconsequential, all experience arbitrary, all metrics and values suddenly zero.”

 

“If you think about a young child trying to learn to walk, that child will fall down and hurt itself hundreds of times. But at no point does that child ever stop and think, “Oh, I guess walking just isn’t for me. I’m not good at it.”

 

“Because here’s something that’s weird but true: we don’t actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don’t trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn’t. And that’s not worth much.”

 

“this is what’s so dangerous about a society that coddles itself more and more from the inevitable discomforts of life: we lose the benefits of experiencing healthy doses of pain, a loss that disconnects us from the reality of the world around us.”

 

“We are so materially well off, yet so psychologically tormented in so many low-level and shallow ways. People relinquish all responsibility, demanding that society cater to their feelings and sensibilities. People hold on to arbitrary certainties and try to enforce them on others, often violently, in the name of some made-up righteous cause. People, high on a sense of false superiority, fall into inaction and lethargy for fear of trying something worthwhile and failing at it.”

 

“Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”

 

“My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.

The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible. This often means giving up some grandiose ideas about yourself: that you’re uniquely intelligent, or spectacularly talented, or intimidatingly attractive, or especially victimized in ways other people could never imagine. This means giving up your sense of entitlement and your belief that you’re somehow owed something by this world.”

 

“Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet.”

My Take

While I never use the “f” word and not a big fan of its constant use in this book, I was still very impressed with many of the sentiments and ideas articulated by Mark Manson.  Like 12 Rules for Life:  An Antidote to Chaos and The Happiness Project, this book is chock full of excellent advice on how to live a better life.

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303. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Annie Duke

Genre:  Non Fiction, Psychology, Self Improvement, Science

288 pages, published February 6, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, lays out the case for treating your decisions as bets and how to improve the odds of making a better decision.  Duke conveys her message with a compelling mix of scientific research, interesting anecdotes from the domains of business, sports, politics, poker and her own personal experience.  She counsels that we should avoid “resulting,” i.e. evaluating a decision only on the basis of the result rather than the process that went into making the decision.  Even the best decision doesn’t result in the best outcome every time. There’s always an element of luck that you can’t control and there is always information that is hidden from view.  Her approach is to ask several questions:  How sure am I?  What are the possible ways things could turn out?  What decision has the highest odds of success?  Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time?  Is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making?

Quotes 

“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of “I’m not sure.”

 

“Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about.”

“Improving decision quality is about increasing our chances of good outcomes, not guaranteeing them.”

 

“In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.”

 

“…thinking in bets is not a miracle cure. Thinking in bets won’t make self-serving bias disappear or motivated reasoning vanish into thin air. But it will make those things better. And a little bit better is all we need to transform our lives.”

 

“Certainly, in exchange for losing the fear of taking blame for bad outcomes, you also lose the unadulterated high of claiming good outcomes were 100% skill. That’s a trade you should take. Remember, losing feels about twice as bad as winning feels good; being wrong feels about twice as bad as being right feels good. We are in a better place when we don’t have to live at the edges. Euphoria or misery, with no choices in between, is not a very self-compassionate way to live.”

 

“As Nietzsche points out, regret can do nothing to change what has already happened. We just wallow in remorse about something over which we no longer have any control. But if regret happened before a decision instead of after, the experience of regret might get us to change a choice likely to result in a bad outcome.” 

My Take

Thinking in Bets is a page turner of a book with some valuable content to get you thinking about how you make decisions. Annie Duke has done her homework which is reflected her discussion of the current scientific research.  She is also a strong writer and this book was hard to put down. My biggest takeaway was to try to avoid “resulting,” that is, the tendency to evaluate decisions solely on the basis of the result achieved.  Sometimes we get lucky or unlucky.  We shouldn’t take too much credit with the former and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much with the latter.  Appreciating the role of luck and our ingrained biases help us to make better decisions and live with both the positive and negative results of our decisions with greater equanimity.

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