Summary of Books

The Hour between Dog and Wolf: How Risk

Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind
Book Author: John Coates

John Coates perfectly combined the financial market with our biology. However, I dont think
the financial market is the core focus for what he had pointed out here. By understanding the
insights in The Hour between Dog and Wolf, you will be able to look at your body and brain
differently, and then, navigate yourself in the modern world more effectively.

My Reading Notes
Hormones are chemical messengers carried by the blood from one tissue in the body to
another. We have dozens of them. We have hormones that stimulate hungers and ones that
tell us when we sated; hormones that stimulate thirst and ones that tell us when it stasis,
the maintenance of vital signs, like blood pressure, body temperature, glucose level, etc.,
within the narrow bands needed for our continued comfort and health. Most of the
physiological systems that maintain our internal chemical balance operate preconsciously,
in other words without out being aware of them.

But sometimes we cannot maintain our internal balance through these silent, purely
reactions. Sometimes we need behavior; sometimes we have to engage in some sort of
physical activity in order to reestablish homeostasis.

Hunger, thirst, pain, oxygen debt, sodium hunger and the sensations of heat and cold, for
example, have accordingly been called homeostatic emotions. They are called emotions
because they are signals from the body that convey more than mere information they
also carry a motivation to do something.

Hormones do not cause our behavior. They act more like lobby groups, recommending
and pressuring us into certain types of activity. You can, in other words, choose your
actions, and ultimate you take responsibility for them.

One group of hormone has particularly potent effects on our behavior steroid hormones.
This group includes testosterone, estrogen and cortisol, the main hormone of the stress
response.

Subsequent research by McEwen and others showed that a steroid hormone, because of
its widespread receptors, can alter almost every function of our body (its growth, shape,
 metabolism, immune function) and of our brain (its mood and memory and of our
behavior.

Steroid hormones evolved to coordinate body, brain and behavior during archetypal
situations, such as fighting, fleeing, feeding, hunting, mating and struggling for status. At
important moments like these you need all your tissues cooperating on the task at hand;
you do not want to be multitasking.

During moments of risk taking, competition and triumph, of exuberance, there is one
steroid in particular that makes its presence felt and guides our actions -i f testosterone
seemed a likely candidate for the molecule of irrational exuberance, another steroid
seemed a likely one for the molecule of irrational pessimism cortisol.

Cortisol is the main hormone of the stress response, a bodywide response to injury or
threat.

In the brain, cortisol, like testosterone, initially has the beneficial effects of increasing
arousal and sharpening attention, even promoting a slight thrill from the challenge, but as
levels of the hormone rise and stay elevated, it comes to have opposite effects
promoting feelings of anxiety, a selective recall of disturbing memories and a tendency to
find danger where none exists.

Why have we for so long ignored the fact that we have a body, and that our body affects
the way we think? The most likely reason is that our belief about the mind, the brain and
behavior have been molded by a powerful philosophical idea we inherited from our
culture that of a categorical divide between mind and body.

The Platonic idea of mind-body split lingers in economics, that it has impaired our ability
to understand the financial market. If we want to understand how people make financial
decisions, how traders and investors react to volatile markets, even how markets tend to
overshoot sensible levels, we need to recognize that our bodies have a say in risk taking.

Money may be the last thing about which we can remain cool.

Think mortal thoughts. Aristotle

It is common when starting out in neuroscience to go looking for the computer in the
brain, for our awesome reasoning capacities; but if, however, you view your brain and
body and behavior with a robust appreciation of the fact that you are built to move, and if
you let that simple fact sink in, then you will never see yourself in quite the same way
again. You will come to understand why you feel so many of the things you do, why your
reactions are often so fast as to leave conscious thought behind, why you rely on gut
feelings, why it is that during the most powerful moments of your life satisfying
moments of flow, of insight, of love, of risk taking, and traumatic moments of fear, anger
 and stress you lose any awareness of a split between mind and body, and they merge as
one.

Seeing yourself as an inseparable unity of body and brain may involve a shift in your
self-understanding, but it is a truly liberating one.

Many of the advances leading to our dominance over other animals did indeed take place
in the body, which over time became taller, straighter, faster, cooler, more dexterous and
much more talkative. According to some evolutionary accounts, human prehistory was
driven by the growth of our neocortex, the rational, conscious, newest and outermost
layer of the brain. At this brain structure blossomed, we developed the ability to think
ahead and choose our actions, and in so doing became liberated from automatic behaviors
and an animal enslavement to immediate bodily needs.

The true miracle of human evolution was the development of advanced control systems
for synchronizing body and brain.

By observing an important message from our evolutionary past, if you do not need to
move, you do not need a brain.

Our thoughts are intimately tied to our physiology. Decisions are decisions to do
something, so our thoughts come freighted with physical implications.

When faced by situation of novelty, uncertainly, opportunity of threat, you feel the things
you do because of changes taking place in your body as it prepares for movement.

Movement in times of emergency has to be lightning fast, these gut feelings are generated
quickly, often faster than consciousness can keep up with, and are transmitted to part of
the brain of which we have only a dim and diffuse awareness.

Gut feelings and emotions, rationality and even self-consciousness itself should be seen
as more advanced tools that emerged over the course of evolution to help use regulate our
body.

We evolved in a world where dangerous objects frequently hurtled at us at high speeds.

The brain anticipates the actual location of the object, and moves the visual image we end
up seeing to this hypothetical new location. In other words, your visual system fast-
forwards what you see.

Research in experimental psychology has found that perceptual acuity and general levels
of attention increase as more senses are involved. In other words, vision becomes more
acute when coupled with hearing, and both become more acute when coupled with touch.
The explanation ventured for these findings is that information arriving from two or more
 senses instead of just one increases the probability that it is reporting a real event, so our
brain takes it more seriously.

The brain has an even more effective way of saving you from your fatally slow
consciousness. When fast reactions are demanded it cuts out consciousness altogether and
relies instead on reflexes, automatic behavior and what is called preattentive
processing. Preattentive processing is a type of perception, decision making and
movement initiation that occurs without any consultation with your conscious brain, and
before it is even aware of what is going on.

To speed our reactions the brain tends therefore to pass control of the movement, once it
has been learned, back to lower regions of the brain where programs for unthinking,
automatic and habitual actions are stored.

We tend to believe that our brain interacts with our body just as a person interacts with a
car, choosing the direction and speed and issuing commands to a passive and mechanical
device. But his belief does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Consciousness is merely a bystander observing a decision already taken, almost like

watching ourselves on video. Scientists and philosophers have proposed many
interpretations of these findings, one of which is that the role of consciousness may not
be so much to choose and initiate actions, but rather to observe decisions made and veto
them, if need be, before they are put into effect, much as we do when we practice self-
control by stifling inappropriate emotional or instinctive urges.

Intuition is thus nothing more mysterious than recognition. It cannot be trusted in the
absence of stable regularities in the environment.

We should not be asking if we should trust our intuitions; we should be asking how we
can train ourselves to possess a skill that can be relied on.

There is in fact a connection between preconscious decisions and the body, because it is
gut feelings that allow us to rapidly assess whether a pattern and a considered choice will
most likely lead to a pleasant or a nasty outcome, whether we like or dislike, welcome or
fear it.

Without such visceral coloring we would be lost in a sea of possibilities, unable to

choose. We may be gifted with considerable rational powers, but to solve a problem with
them we must first be able to narrow down the potentially limitless amount of
information, options and consequences.

Feeling was an integral component of the machinery of reason.

Your body affects your thoughts, and here again everyday examples are easy to find.
When you are hungry or thirsty, for instance, your thoughts change and you develop what
 is called a selective attention to signs of food and water, and you stop paying attention
to anything else, such as the book you are reading or the beauty of a sunset.

During taxing mental and physical activities our glucose reserves become depleted, and
this reduces our capacity of self-control. Scientists concluded that allocation of energetic
resources during emergencies follows a last in, first out rule, according to which mental
abilities that developed last in our evolutionary history, like self-control, are the first to be
rationed when fuel is low. Muscles, which draw a small amount of glucose when at rest,
come to monopolize available resources during physical activity.

When you feel depressed you may decide, in a moment of self-assertion, to pick yourself
up and battle on, forcing a smile, straightening your posture, walking more briskly; and in
time these changes may actually work, you may end up feeling happier.

We tend to think that our emotional feelings come first, and then cause our emotional
behavior. But according to William James, the feeling of an emotion is in some ways the
least important part of the experience.

Our body, through its muscles, can thus transmit information back to the brain fast
enough not only to keep up with our emotional life but also to generate it.

A good meal can prove more than a mere gustatory treat: it can settle the body and calm
the brain and suffuse us with a profound sense of well-being. In short, neural activity in
our head can affect our digestion; neural activity in our gut can affect our mood and
thoughts.

Feelings help slant our attention, memory and cognitive operations so that they
synchronize with our bodies. Feedback ensures that our tissues do not work at cross
purposes. Feedback, carried by nervous system and hormones alike, unifies body and
brain at the most important points in our lives. And at these moments of euphoria, of
flow, of love, of fear, of fight body and brain merge.

Gut feelings economize on limited computational resources and safeguard our decisions,
preconsciously steering us away from dangerous options we might be considering.

In fact, our conscious brain has surprisingly little grasp of what makes us decide to do
one thing rather than another.

We frequently and often comically misinterpret our actions. Given this unfortunate fact,
we can appreciate the necessity when making an important decision of obtaining a second
opinion. One of the most valuable sources of a second opinion, one that brutally and
coldly exposes the faults in our reasoning, is the use of statistics. Alternatively, another
person working with you, a coach say, can also help improve your decision making.
 Effort, risk, stress, fear, even pain in moderate doses, are, or should be, our natural state.
But just as important, just as vital to our health, the key to continued growth, is what
sports physiologists refer to as the recovery period.

Should we be denied these downtimes, even very brief ones, even when things are going
well, our biology can become unbalanced, leading us into pathological mental and
physical states and inappropriate behavior.

Challenge, recovery, challenge, recovery that is what toughens us.

Information warns us of danger, prepares is for action, helps us survive. And it enables us
to perform that most magical of all tricks predicting the future.

The amount of signal is proportional to the amount of novelty or put another way, the
amount of uncertainty in it. That may seem counterintuitive. However, real information
should tell us something we do not already know; it should therefore be unpredictable.

Information is synonymous with unpredictability, with novelty. When receiving pure

information we are in a state of maximum uncertainty about what comes next.

The common sense notion that our senses operate like a movie camera, recording nonstop
the sights and sounds around us. However, they do not work at all like that. Indeed, it is
probably closer to the truth to say that we, like the frog, are built to ignore the world
unless something of importance happens.

We are so completely enthralled by information that one could, without exaggeration, say
we are addicted to it. The addiction develops under the influence of another
neuromodulator, this one called dopamine.

Dopamine stimulates the wanting of something rather than the liking of it.

We enjoy and crave environments in which we receive unexpected rewards; in other

words, we enjoy risk.

Perhaps curiosity itself, the need to know, is a form of addiction, making us race to the
end of a good mystery novel, or driving scientists to work day and night until they
discover insulin, say, or decode the structure of DNA, scientific breakthrough being the
ultimate hit of information.

A large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than
on a mathematical expectation.

Recent research has found that an enriched environment is such an attractive alternative
to drugs that animals addicted to cocaine, once returned to an enriched environment, will
actually kick their habit.
 The euphoria, overconfidence and heightened appetite for risk that grip traders during a
bull market may result from a phenomenon known in biology as the winner effect.
Biologists studying animals in the field had noticed that an animal winning a fight or a
competition for turf was more likely to win its next fight. This phenomenon had been
observed in a large number of species.

To raise our testosterone level, we must engage in all sorts of occult rituals and physical
exercises before our bodies will even consider our request for more power.

Sport scientists probably know more than anyone about what needs doing. Their
techniques include altering the balance between aerobic and anaerobic exercises, between
fun and grueling sessions, their timing and length, weights lifted, diet, amount of sleep
and so on, until their athletes achieve just the right levels of testosterone.

At low levels of testosterone an animal will lack motivation, arousal, energy, speed and
so on, but as testosterone levels rise so too does the animals performance in competition
and fights. When testosterone reaches its high point on the inverted-U curve the animal
enjoys optimal performance. It is in the zone. However, should testosterone continue to
rise, the animal begins to slide down the other side of the hill, and its risk-taking becomes
increasingly foolish.

There is a further cost of high testosterone. Elevated testosterone, and the larger or more
ornamented body it promotes, is energetically expensive, and can eventually wear down
an animals body.

Rising testosterone, it should be pointed out, does not start a bull market; usually a
technological breakthrough or the opening up of new markets does that. But testosterone
may be the catalyst that turns a rally into a bubble.

In many animals testosterone levels fluctuate over the course of the year, and in humans
these levels rise until the autumn, and then fall until the spring. This autumnal drop in
testosterone can lead animals into a condition called irritable male syndrome, in which
they become moody, withdrawn and depressed.

The stress response is useful when we are faced by a mountain lion, it can prove largely
counterproductive when seated in the workplace. Indeed, workplace stress provides a
vivid illustration of how our body can have a plan of its own for handling a crisis, one
over which our conscious minds have little control.

Cortisol slows digestion by inhibiting digestive enzymes and shunting blood away from
the stomach walls. It further inhibits the production and effects of growth hormone,
stunting growth in young adults exposed to stress.
 Cortisol has further effects in preparing us for a crisis; it suppresses the reproductive tract
by inhibiting the synthesis of testosterone and sperm in men, and estrogen and ovulation
in women.

Researchers have found that three types of situation threat and elicit a massive
physiological stress response those characterized by novelty, uncertainty and
uncontrollability.

Control, even the illusion of control, can mitigate the stress response, while the loss of
control in a threatening situation provokes the most terrifying stress response.

The stress response evolved as a rapid, short-lived and muscular retaliation; it was
designed to switch on quickly, and to switch off after a short period of time. If it fails to
do so, widespread medical problems ensue, largely because the stress response is
metabolically expensive. The state of heightened readiness it promotes can be maintained
over the long term only at the cost of breaking down many tissues in the body, much like
burning furniture to keep a house warm.

The ancient regions of the brain controlling the stress response the amygdala,
hypothalamus and the brain stem cannot distinguish clearly between a physical threat,
which is usually brief (one way or the other), and a psychological or work-related one,
which can endure for months, even years.

Just as high levels of cortisol help us store traumatic events, so too do they later help
retrieve memories of them. As cortisol levels rise, and our exposure to the hormone
becomes chronic, we increasingly recall the events that were stored under its influence.

Learned helplessness, a state in which a person loses all faith in his ability to control
his own fate.

Prolonged and severe stress leads to physical diseases such as the difficulty maintaining
an erection, reduce sleep time, raised heart rate and blood pressure. At the extreme,
stressed individuals, with elevated glucose and inhibited insulin, can become susceptible
to abdominal obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The bodily response initiated to handle the stress feeds back on the brain, causing anxiety,
fear, and a tendency to see danger everywhere. In other words, cortisol is the molecule of
irrational pessimism.

Given what is at stake, we have to ask: can we turn off the cortisol? Can we control its
toxic body-brain feedback loop? Sadly the answer is: only with very great difficulty. Our
conscious and rational selves have very little control over subcortical parts of the brain
such as the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the brain stem.
 Our findings illustrated just how disconnected the conscious and unconscious stress
responses can be, how people often invent stories to accompany their behavior.

Despite this seemingly bleak conclusion, research into the physiology of the stress
response holds out more promise than discouragement. This research raises the
possibility of training our physiology so that we develop a greater mental and physical
stamina, toughening us against the fatigue, anxiety and psychiatric disorders that follow
from chronic stress.

Physical toughness is today relatively well understood. Sports scientists have made great
advances in their understanding or strength, posture, coordination and endurance. Mental
toughness, by comparison, has received far less attention, and remains accordingly less
well understood.

Mental toughness involves a particular attitude to novel events: a toughened individual

welcomes novelty as a challenge, sees in it an opportunity for gain; an untoughened
individual dreads it as a threat and sees in it nothing but potential harm.

Resilience to stress comes from experiencing stress.

The process of mental toughening bears similarities to that of physical toughening.

The most important toughening regime, not surprisingly, is exercise. Humans are built to
move, so move we should. The more research emerges on physical exercise, the more we
found that its benefits extend far beyond our muscles and cardiovascular systems.
Exercise expands the productive capacity of our amine-producing cells, helping to
inoculate us against anxiety, stress, depression and learned helplessness. It also floods our
brains with what we called growth factors, and these keep existing neurons young and
new neurons growing so our brains are strengthened against stress and aging.

One type of toughening regime is especially intriguing, and that is exposure to cold
weather, even to cold water. People who are regularly exposed to cold weather or who
swim in cool water may have undergone an effective toughening regime that has made
them more emotionally stable when confronted by prolonged stress.

Fatigue should be understood as a signal our body and brain use to inform us that the
expected return from our current activity has dropped below its metabolic cost. The cure
for fatigue, according to this account, is not a rest; it is a fresh task.

When we are mired in stress, what we desperately need to do is minimize the novelty in
our lives. We need familiarity. But quite often we seek out the exact opposite, responding
to chronic stress at work, for example, by taking a vacation in some exotic place, thinking
that change of scenery will do us good. And under normal circumstances it does. But now
when we are highly stressed, because then the novelty we encounter abroad can just add
to our physiology load.
 People practicing Buddhist meditation engaged their gut feelings more than others, and as
a result made more rational choices in a financial decision-making task.

Once we come to understand the signals our bodies send us, including fatigue and stress,
there is a great deal we as individuals can do to toughen ourselves against their ravages,
and we as managers can do to minimize their impact.

Market stability needs biological diversity.

Women are not as stressed by failures in competitive situations as are men; they are more
stressed by social problems, with family and relationship.

We have drifted in the intervening centuries from Aristotles way of looking at mind and
body. Because for Aristotle, the two could not be separated. He believed that mind is of
necessity embodied, that if we did not have a body we would not, quite simply, have
much to think about.

Outliers: The Story of Success

Book Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell suggests that success follows a predictable course in Outliers, using stories,
researches, and histories. It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of
the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who
have been given opportunitiesand who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize
them.

My Reading Notes
The definitions of outlier: (1) something that is situated away from or classed differently
from a main or related body, (2) a statistical observation that is markedly different in
value from the others of the sample.

Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent
on who we werethat is, our genes. It depended on the decisions we makeon what we
chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by
the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.

Biologists often talk about the ecology of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is
the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no
other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed
through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all
 know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the
sunlight that warmed them, then soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits
and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?

The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the
child born at the end of the year (especially in sports) persists. It locks children into
patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that
stretch on and on for years.

Those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of
special opportunities that lead to further success.

Success is the results of what sociologists like to call accumulative advantage.

We so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top
rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as
failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those
who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a
role we all playand by we, the author means societyin determining who makes it
and who doesnt.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the
world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society dont matter
at all.

Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer
psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to
play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

People at the very top dont work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.
They work much, much harder.

10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being
a world-class expertin anything.

Practice isnt the thing you do when youre good. Its the thing you do that makes you
good.

The other interesting thing about that ten thousand hours, of course, is that ten thousand
hours is an enormous amount of time. Its all but impossible to reach that number all by
yourself by the time youre a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and
support you. You cant be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the
side to help make ends meet, there wont be time left in the day to practice enough. In
fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special
 program or if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to
put in those hours.

What truly distinguishes successful people is not their extraordinary talent but their
extraordinary opportunities.

We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit. But its not that
simple. There are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to
work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that
extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society. Their success was not just their
own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up.

The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has
reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesnt seem to
translate into any measurable real-world advantage. A basketball player only has to be tall
enoughand the same is true of intelligence. Intelligence has a threshold.

If intelligence matters only up to a point, then past the point, other thingsthings that
have nothing to do with intelligencemust start to matter more.

Practical intelligence includes things like knowing what to say to whom, knowing when
to sat it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect. It is procedural: it is about
knowing how to do something without necessarily knowing why you know it or being
explain Its practical in nature: that is, its not knowledge for its own sake. Its knowledge
that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want. And critically, it is a kind
of intelligence separate from the sort of analytical ability measured by IQ.

No onenot rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even
geniusesever makes it alone. Successful people dont do it alone. Where they come
from matters. Theyre products of particular places and environments.

Sometimes, successful people didnt triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as
adversity ended up being an opportunity.

The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside of us or from
our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular
place in history presents us with.

Autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward are, the most people
agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much
money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. Its whether our
work fulfills us.

If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can
shape the world to your desires.
 Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist,
generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and
demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in
directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.

Plane crashes are much more likely to be the results of an accumulation of minor
difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions. The kinds of errors that cause plane
crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.

High-power distance communication works only when the listener is capable of paying
close attention, and it works only if the two parties in a conversation have the luxury of
time, in order to unwind each others meanings. It doesnt work in an airplane cockpit on
a stormy night with an exhausted pilot trying to land at an airport with a broken glide
scope.

We assume that being good at things like calculus and algebra is a simple function of how
smart someone is. But the difference between the number systems in the East and the
West suggest something very differentthat being good at math may also be rooted in a
groups culture.

Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for
twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after
thirty seconds.

Awaken The Giant Within: How to Take

Immediate Control of Your Mental,
Emotional, Physical, and Financial Destiny
Book Author: Anthony Robbins

Awaken The Giant Within is a self-help book packed with many big ideas. Even some claim
that the concepts in the book are not backed by science and research, but its undoubtedly a must-
read book for anyone who likes to master their inner self and change their destiny.

My Reading Notes
Every single decision we make are going to shape our life. Before every action, we make
a decision to do something, then we make a decision to start taking that action.
 Not making decision consciously is equal to giving up the right to set your own destiny.

Our belief system formed with an idea or statement, then reinforced by reference we gain
from life experience, people around, and the society. When that said, we can change our
belief system to work in our favor.

Manage your thoughts by asking the right questions. Because most thoughts are simply
questions were asking ourselves in our head. Ask the right questions every morning will
set yourself up in peak state to start yourself.

If you keep asking Why am I a failure?, your subconscious mind will simply give your
reasons to prove yourself a failure. Instead, ask yourself these.

Mind your vocabulary. Vocabulary is what helps us to express and describe ourselves
our situation, feelings, emotions and more. But what most of us didnt notice is that
vocabulary has the power to change the intensity of a feeling. Using vocabularies that
intensify negative emotions will only make you feel even worst. So, choose your
vocabulary wisely.

Manage your emotions by understanding what they mean knowing what it means when
you feel upset, disappointed or angry, and understand their differences. Come up with a
plan upfront to solve each of them so you dont make decisions that go against with your
will.

Understand your positive emotions, learn how to recreate them and intensify them to
allow yourself stay in the peak state throughout your day.

Set goals for each area of your goals. Set both short and long term goals, be specific and
include a deadline for each of time. Then, come up with a system to work on each of
them.

A few universal areas you can set goals on are emotional/spiritual goals, physical/health
goals, relationship goals, financial goals, and time/life goals.

Plan a system to work toward your goals and nurture those routines into your habits.
Youre more likely to succeed by taking small actions consistently (even you feel down)
then focus on big actions and depend on your motivation to kick in.

Understand your life vision because its how we navigate our life. Knowing which
area/vision is your top priority and which are not in your list at all. People who prioritize
security will have a very different life compared to people who prioritize adventure. Find
out yours but one thing to remember is to be flexible with it. Our life vision changes
from time to time as we grow and gain more life experience along the journey.
 Observe the rules you have in your life because its what makes you unhappy, especially
when come to the matter of relationship and communication with others. Most of the
time, we have too many rules that dont serve us well anymore, change time and set new
rules for yourself. If you have rules like If my boyfriend loves me, he should always
fulfill all my needs, youre going to have a hard time in your relationship and feeling
upset all the time.

Observe and adjust your emotional rules, physical rules, relationship rules, and financial
rules.

We dont achieve what we want, we achieve what we tolerate. Many people want to get
lean and healthy but they still practice many unhealthy behaviors. At the end of the day,
they blame programs that dont work or anything else. Expand your identity and raise
your standard, you will start to behave like who you think you are.

Most decisions and actions we make are directly related to the identity we set for
ourselves, and only then we gain the results to reinforce and strengthen that identity.

The Fast Diet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy,

and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of
Intermittent Fasting
Book Author: Dr. Michael Mosley & Mimi Spencer

The Fast Diet is the first intermittent fasting book I read in my life after a few months of me
experimenting with intermittent fasting. It covered the benefits of intermittent fasting backed by
research and case studies, shows you how to do it with the 5:2 method. And finally comes with a
huge list of recipes and case studies by people who practice the same type of intermittent fasting.

My Reading Notes
In intermittent fasting, there are not complicated rules to follow; the strategy us flexible,
comprehensible and user-friendly. Youll still enjoy the foods you love, most of the time.
It is much more a diet remedy, it is a sustainable strategy for a healthy, long life.

Its hard to convince others to eat less and skip meals, but the truth is, our remote
ancestors did not often eat four to five meals a day. Instead, they would kill, gorge, lie
around and then have to go for long periods of time without food. Our bodies and genes
were forged in an environment of scarcity, punctuated by the occasional massive blow-
out.
 The idea that eating little and often is a good thing has partly been driven by snack
manufacturers and faddish diet books. But it has also had support from the medical
establishment, as long as you dont simply end up eating more. Unfortunately, in today
real work thats exactly what happens.

Intermittent fasting helps to reduce a hormone called IGF-1 that has growth-promoting
effects on almost every cell in your body. It keeps your cells constantly active. You need
adequate levels of IGF-1 when you are young and growing, but high levels later in life
appear to lead to accelerated aging and cancer. A reduction of IGF-1 means that youre
reducing your risk of a number of age-related diseases.

During the fasted phrase in intermittent fasting, instead of expending energy on growth
and sex, your body spends its precious store of energy on repair. The result is that all the
little gene mechanics are ordered to start doing some of the urgent maintenance tasks that
have been put off till now.

Your body is stuck in the fat-storing mode as your insulin levels are elevated due to the
fact that youre eating all the time. With a few hours of fasting, your body able to turn off
the fat storing and turn on the fat burning mechanism, thats how intermittent fasting
helps in weight loss, and lower the risk of obesity-related diseases.

PS: You can read more about this in one of my popular article about intermittent fasting.

The trouble with constantly eating lots of sugary, carbohydrate-rich foods and drinks, as
we increasingly do, is that this requires the release of more and more insulin to deal with
the glucose surge. Up to a point, your pancreas will cope by simply pumping out even
larger quantities of insulin. This leads to greater fat deposition and also increase the risk
of cancer.

Intermittent fasting leads to an overall enhancement in your mood and sense of

wellbeing. This may be a consequence of your brain producing increased levels of the
neurotrophic factor, which will hopefully make you more cheerful, which in term should
make fasting more doable.

Please note that I only include how intermittent fasting leads to those benefits it claimed here,
but not the recipes and case studies in the book. If youre interested in learning how to start
practicing the 5:2 intermittent fasting, you can read a short guide here.

59 Seconds: Think A Little Change A Lot

Book Author: Professor Richard Wiseman
59 seconds is one of my favorite self-help books because it uncovers many hot self-help myths
with science. Almost everything in it is backed by fascinating research; it also offers a bite-size
action you can take to live happier, perform better, procrastinate less, improve your relationships
and reduce your stress level. Frankly speaking, I found it a little dull to read this book at first but
it got much interesting during my second read.

My Reading Notes
Having people list three things that they are grateful for in life or three events that have
gone especially well over the past week, can significantly increase their level of
happiness for about a month. This, in turn, can cause them to be more optimistic about
the future and improve their physical health.

Research has shown that low self-esteem somehow causes materialistic tendencies, and
materialistic also leads to an unsatisfied and unhappy life. To live a little happier, buy
experience but not goods because the positive emotions you can get from the experience
is longer (or forever). Besides, focus on giving rather than receiving to achieve long-term
happiness.

The Franklin Effect People like you more when they carry out a favor for you.
However, the effect has its limitations and is more likely to work with small favors rather
than more significant requests that either make people respond begrudgingly or, even
worse, refuse.

The Pratfall Effect The occasional slip-up can enhance your likeability. However, it is
important to realize that the effect only really works when you are in danger of being
seen as too perfect.

The Bystander Effect The more people who are around when a person is apparently in
need of assistance, the lower the likelihood of any one person actually helping. If you are
unfortunate enough to require assistance, increase your chance of getting help by picking
out a friendly face in the crowd, and be specific with your problem you have and
assistance you need.

A large body of research now suggests that although visualization might make you feel
good, the technique is, at best, ineffective. To achieve your aims and ambitions, there are
four key techniques that will help you succeed: have the right kind of plan, make a public
announcement to increase your level of commitment, focusing on the action and benefits,
and reward yourself each step of the way.

Procrastinators frequently put off starting certain activities because they are overwhelmed
by the size of the job in front of them. However, by starting to work on the task for a
few minutes, they often feel an urge to see it through to completion.
 People who visualize themselves taking the practical steps needed to achieve their goals
are far more likely to succeed than those who simply fantasize about their dreams
becoming a reality. Therefore, rather overly visualize yourself achieving your goals,
visualize yourself doing.

Asking people to spend just a few minute imagining a close friend standing up at their
funeral and reflecting on their personal and professional legacy helps them to identify
their long-term goals, and assess the degree to which they are progressing towards
making those goals a reality.

Many standard texts on creativity emphasize the value of relaxation. Genuine creativity
can come from spending a few moments occupying your conscious mind. Everyone can
be more creative; it is just a case of keeping the loud guy (conscious mind) in your head
busy, and giving the quiet guy a chance to speak up.

When it comes to anger management, putting on the boxing gloves or punching a pillow
are far more likely to increase, not decrease the feelings of aggression. Instead, it is
possible to significantly reduce such feelings by focusing on the benefits that have risen
such feelings by focusing on the benefits that have risen from the seemingly negative
events underlying your anger.

Long-term couples will feel more attracted to one another when they regularly engage in
novel and exciting joint activities which involve working together to achieve a goal. In
another word, couples who face lifes foam obstacles together, stick together.

When it comes to the way we think and behave, negative events and experiences are far
more noticeable and have a greater impact than their positive counterpart. With that said,
for a relationship to succeed, the frequency of positive comments has to outweigh the
number of negative remarks by about five to one.

To reduce regrets in decision making, adopt a will do attitude to the opportunity

because most people tend to regret things they didnt do. But if you do regret not doing
something, see if there is anything you can do to remedy the situation. Finally, if it really
isnt possible to do anything to make things better, focus on the benefits of your dont
do to reduce the intensity of feeling regret.

Praising a childs effort rather than their ability encourages them to try regardless of the
consequences, therefore side-stepping any fear of failure. This, in turn, makes them
especially likely to attempt challenging problems, find these problems more enjoyable,
and try to solve them in their own time; rather than depend on their talent.
Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved
Indirectly
Book Author: John Kay

Obliquity a book thats wise and pleasant to read. It packed with many true stories from
historical events, politics, businesses and the authors personal experiences. As John Kay pointed
out, we can only learn about our objectives and how to achieve them through a gradual process
of risk taking and discovery what he calls obliquity.

My Reading Notes
The achievement of happiness is a matter of personal fulfillment rather than objective
circumstances.

The capacity of humans to survive appalling circumstances, and emerge little affected, is
an extraordinary testimony to our powers of adaptation.

The job of a leader and his/her team is to deliver to commitment in the short term while
investing in the long-term health of the business Jack Welch, CEO of General
Electric from 1981 to 2001.

Everyday experience tells us that while greed is a human motive, it is not, for most, a
dominant one.

Greed is not generally an overriding motive even for the very wealthy. For them, money
is a mark of status, a register of achievement, or by-product of a passion for power or for
business.

People who are obsessive in their greed, that obsession frequently destroys them the
organizations that attract them.

We dont consider any man successful until he has died well Plutarch.

There are three broad senses of the term happiness. The lowest (basic level) comprises
the momentary feelings that make us happy. The intermediate level is typically a state of
mind, a sense of satisfaction and well-being. While Eudaimonia is a high-level concept,
a measure of quality of life, of flourishing, of fulfilling ones potential.

To function well, we have to break high-level objectives into goals and actions.
 The 19-century French scientist Louis Pasteur who discovered penicillin with obliquity
during a botched experiment by his assistant produced unexpected results.

Most real-life problems have less clear descriptions. Our high-level objectives are loosely
defined and cannot be completely broken down in advance into specific goals and
actions.

Good problem solving and decision making is necessarily oblique because in the process
of solving problems we learn not just about strategies for achieving our high-level
objectives but about the nature of the objectives themselves.

Great artists do not only break the rules, they redefine them.

Only at the end will we know whether life was lived well, because we will never know
whether the life was lived or the work was completed was the best possible.

The world is too complex for directness to be direct.

Almost all real problems are incompletely and imperfectly specified, and to tackle them
we have to try to close them in some way.

Closing a problem means deciding what information should be discarded and what
should be added. In even the simplest problem, our analysis is based on interpretation of
the context.

Abstraction is the process of turning complex problems we cannot completely describe

into simpler ones that we think we can solve.

Today, even a cheap computer program will defeat an average chess player, but only
because it us programmed with the skills of experts. The computer is an efficient
decision-making aid, but not an efficient decision maker.

The direct decision maker perceives a direct connection between intentions and
outcomes; the oblique decision maker believes that the intention neither necessary nor
sufficient to secure the outcome.

The direct decision maker emphasizes the importance of rationality of process; the
oblique decision maker believes that decision making is inherently subjective and prefers
to emphasize good judgment.

The illusion that we have more control over our lives than we possess, that we understand
more about the world and the future than we do or can, is pervasive.
 The key characteristic of many kind of evolutionary processes are a tendency to
repetition or replication, frequent modification through incremental change and a filtering
mechanism that favors modifications that fit the environment.

Adaptation is smarter than you.

In business, in politics and in our personal lives, we do not often solve problem directly.
The consequences of what we do depend on responses, both natural and human, than we
cannot predict. The system we try to manage are too complex for us to fully understand.
We never have the information about the problem, or the future, we face that we might
wish for.

When happy people talk about their lives, when wealthy people talk about their careers,
when the leaders of profitable businesses talk about their companies, they routinely talk
about many things besides the pursuit of happiness, wealth or profit.

Sometimes we want things that are incompatible. We want to eat cream cakes but also
want to remain slim and fit. We want to give up smoking but we also want another
cigarette. We want a secure retirement but we do not want to save. Our expressions of
preference often seem contradictory.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at
the same time and still retain the ability to functions. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Our behavior depends not just on what people do but also on our beliefs why they do it
on our familiarity with the wider social context, and for good reasons.

Good decision making is pragmatic and eclectic. To fit the world into a single model or
narrative fails to acknowledge the universality of uncertainty and complexity.

Goals are often vague, interactions unpredictable, complexity extensive, problem

descriptions incomplete, the environment uncertain. That is why obliquity comes into
play.

The $100 Startup: Fire Your Boss, Do What

You Love And Work Better To Live More
Book Author: Chris Guillebeau

The $100 Startup is a must-read book for anymore who is interested in starting a micro-
business. It lay out the possibility of starting and running a successful business with a
ridiculously small team (1 to 5 members) with many real life case studies. Besides, there are
great insights on how you can start and run your own small business to live in your own term
from positioning yourself, finding your audience and prospects, creating your products or
services, marketing, scaling and leveraging.

My Reading Notes

To start a business, you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing
to pay for it, and a way to get paid.

Convergence represents the overlapping space (intersection) between what you care
about and what other people are willing to spend money on.

If youre good at one thing, youre most probably good at other things too.

To succeed, merge your passion and skill with something that is useful to other people.

When you focus on providing value above all else, your business will be successful. And
value means helping people.

Give people what they really want, not just what you think they should have or want.

Market the core benefits that usually related to emotional needs than physical needs to
people instead of a list of features.

Most people want more of some things (money, love, time) and less of other things
(stress, pain, debt). Always focus on what you can add or take away to improve their life.

Many follow-your-passion businesses are built on something indirectly related, not the
passion or hobby itself.

Not every passion or hobby is worth building into a business, and not everyone will want
to have a business that is based on a passion or hobby.

There are many ways to build a business that is location independence, but the business
of information publishing is especially profitable.

You dont necessarily have to think of your audiences or customers in categories of age,
race, and gender. Instead, you can think of them in terms of shared beliefs, interests, and
values.

Use a survey to understand customers and prospects. The more specific, the better.
 Plan as you go to respond to the changing needs od your customers but launch your
business as soon as possible, with a bias toward action.

First sales usually provide far more motivation than the dollar value. So, fid a way to get
your first sale in as soon as possible.

To avoid overcomplicated things, explain your business with a 140-characters mission

statement.

As much as possible, connect your offer to the direct benefits customers will receive.

What people want and what they say they want are not always the same thing; your job is
to figure out the difference.

When developing an offer, think carefully about the objections and then respond to them
in advance.

The difference between a good offer and a great offer is urgency.

Offer reassurance and acknowledgement immediately after someone purchases

something or hires you. Then find a small but meaningful way to go above and beyond
their expectations.

A good launch is like a Hollywood movie.

A series of regular communications with prospects before launch will help you re-create
the anticipation of an audience of any size to your upcoming product.

If youre not sure where to spend your business development time, spend 50% on
creating and 50% on connecting. The most powerful channel for getting the word out
usually starts with people you already know.

If you build it, they will come but youll probably need to let them know what youve
built and how to get there.

Theres nothing wrong with having a hobby, but if youre operating a business, the
primary goal is to make money.

Whether its money, access to help, or anything else, you probably have more than you
think. Be creative.

Moving on up by increasing income in an existing business is usually easier than

initially starting the business.
 By making careful choices, you can often grow the business without dramatically
increasing the workload, allowing you to scale without hiring more people.

Horizontal expansion involves going border by serving more customers with different
(usually related) interests.

Vertical expansion involves going deeper by serving the same customers with different
levels of need.

By leveraging skills and contacts, you can be in more than one place at the same time
with outsourcing, affiliate recruitment, and partnerships.

Work on your business by devoting time every day to important activities that improve
the business, not just by responding to an urgent task that is happening. Extended
reading: Urgent Life vs Important Life

Regularly monitor one to two key metrics that are the lifeblood of your business, then
check up on others monthly or bimonthly.

A business that is scalable is both teachable and valuable. If you ever want to sell your
business, youll need to build teams and reduce owner dependency.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We

Do in Life & Business
Book Author: Charles Duhigg

The Power of Habit is by far one of the most recommended books (by me), I believe everyone
should read it if they want to take control over their life. It explains perfectly how our habits
work backed by science, research, and real-life stories. Besides, the book has provided practical
strategies and techniques to apply the changes on the individual, organizational and society level.

My Reading Notes
Habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. In another
word, the brain will make almost any routine into a habit because it allows our minds to
ramp down more often.

The habit formation within our brain is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue to tell your
brain to go into automatic mode. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or
 mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps you brain to figure out if this
particular loop is worth remembering for the future.

Habits emerge without our permission.

Habits are so powerful because they create neurological cravings. Often, these cravings
emerge so gradually that were not really aware they exist.

To create a new habit, put together a cue, a routine, and a reward, then cultivating a
craving that drives the loop.

You cant extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it by using the same cue, provide
the same reward, but change the routine.

To break your bad habits, identify the cues and rewards, then, you can change the routine.

For some habits, theres one other ingredient thats necessary: belief.

Unfortunately, there is no specific set of steps guaranteed to work for every person in
breaking their bad habits and building a new habit.

Keystone habits are effective because they lead to other small changes that lead to many
small wins.

Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage. Once a small win has been
accomplished, forces are set in motion that favors another small win. Small wins fuel
transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people
that bigger achievements are within reach.

To succeed, we need a keystone habit that creates our culture and environment such as a
daily gathering of like-minded friends to help find the strength to overcome obstacles.

In the heat of a difficult decision or a moment of uncertainty, keystone habits transform

us by creating cultures that make clear the values that we might otherwise forget.

If you want to do something that requires willpower, you have to conserve your
willpower muscle during the day. If you use it up too early on tedious tasks like writing
emails or filling out complicated and boring expenses forms, all the strength will be gone
by the time you get home.

When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are
doing it for personal reasons their personal choice or pleasure its much less taxing. If
they feel like they have no autonomy, if theyre just following orders, their willpower
muscles get tired much faster.
 Organization routines provide the hundreds of unwritten rules that companies need to
operate. They allow workers to experiment with new ideas without having to ask for
permission at every step. Routines reduce uncertainty.

Good leaders seize crises to remake organizational habits. In fact, crises are such valuable
opportunities that a wise leader often prolongs a sense of emergency on purpose.

An organization with dysfunctional habits cant turn around simply because a leader
orders it. Rather, wise executives seek out moments of crisis or create the perception of
crisis and cultivate the sense that something must change, until everyone is finally
ready to overhaul the patterns they live with each day.

Peoples (buying) habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life
event.

To encourage people to practice new behavior, it needs to take advantage of patterns that
already exists within them.

Social change and movement only happen with the existence of the weak link the
change as a whole within a group of people without a direct connection and the strong
link the change of people around with close relationship (peer pressure).

Habits emerge within the brain and often, we dont have the ability to control them, but
were conscious and aware of them. With that said, its still our responsibility to cultivate
our own habits and take charge of our own life.

The Champions Mind: How Great Athletes

Think, Train, and Thrive
Book Author: Jim Afremow, PhD

The Champions Mind is one very useful book for every young athlete. Although Im not an
athlete, I found it extremely helpful when to implement the lessons and techniques in the book to
my regular training. Besides, it also covered how to set up the correct mindset to thrive as an
athlete.

Again, these dont just benefit people who are participating in sports, but applicable to anyone
who is trying to elevate the standard in any area of their life. What I love the most is the inspiring
stories about many successful athletes Jim Afremow covered in the book.

My Reading Notes
 If you can spot greatness in someone else, then you already have some of that greatness
within you, because only a person with similar traits can recognize those traits in others.

The mental abilities of confidence, concentration, and composure are crucial fir being a
champion in everything you undertake, be it work or sports or both.

Part of the process requires us to maintain our eagerness to learn and grow, and to take
well-trained, disciplined action to make a solid change in our lives.

Attitude is a decision, and it is also a learned behavior, requiring discipline and energy to
sustain.

Champions arent made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have
deep inside them a desire, a dream, and a vision.

Identify precisely what you do that hurts your own cause the most. Eliminate that action
or viewpoint immediately. To perform at a champions level, you must break any bad
habits. We are all champions until we lose to ourselves.

The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of
exhaustion when no one else is watching.

Win the day This means you should take advantage of the opportunity that each day
brings to be the best athlete you can be.

If youre not getting better, youre getting worse A winning philosophy that must be
embraced to reach personal excellence and competitive greatness.

Feed your positive thoughts so it triumphs against the negatives ones. Feed the right wolf.

Train like you are No.2, but compete like you are No. 1.

Focus on your performances, not on unwanted outcomes.

To perform at a champions level, you must cultivate long-term memories for your
success, and short-term memories for your failure.

You can hate to lose, but dont be afraid to lose. Confidence without complacency keeps
you on target when you are playing well and winning.

Identify three heroes or role models that you can mirror or mimic when you need a
confidence boost during a challenging situation.
 Focus, or selective attention, is your dedication to the task at hand to the exclusion of all
else.

Full presence produces seamless fusion you become your performance. Otherwise, you
are always one step behind what you are doing because you are judging what is
happening and are not fully in the moment. A mind in the moment is not self-conscious or
concerned about what opponents or spectators are thinking or doing.

Mental toughness is the ability to remain positive and proactive in the most adverse of
circumstances.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a
pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a
deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate
our lives.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising each time we fall.

Do not take on the additional of being your own coach, parent, spectator, or shrink. Stay
in athlete mode by focusing all of your energy on execution, not self-analysis.

Avoid the perils of perfectionism and survive the paralysis-by-analysis syndrome

underperforming by overthinking.

It takes 10 years or even longer to become an overnight success.

Motivation will always fluctuate, but it is irrelevant at the moment of truth when you
actually act. Youll discover that full motivation usually shows up during the process, not
beforehand.

Know and understand the five stages of loss. The first stage is shock and denial. The
second is anger. The third stage is bargaining. The fourth is depression. And the fifth
stage is acceptance.

Deal with the small before it becomes large. Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher.

Find the good, its all around you. Find it, showcase it, and youll start believing it.

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where,

and Why It Happens
Book Author: Benedict Carey
How We Learn is a book packed with research and findings on the topic of how our brain
functions in term of gaining memories and then use them. Its not easy to read, but it comes with
many solid techniques that aid your learning in real time. The mechanism of learning is so much
more amazing, far beyond plain self-discipline.

My Reading Notes
The science of learning is, at its core, a study of the mental muscle doing the work of how
it manages the streaming sights, sounds, and scents of daily life.

The theory that memory was uniformly distributed was wrong. The brain had specific
areas that handled different types of memory formation.

The brain does not store facts, ideas, and experiences like a computer does. It embeds
them in networks of perceptions, facts, and thoughts, slightly different combinations of
which bubble up each time.

Just retrieved memory does not overwrite the previous one but intertwines and overlaps
with it. Nothing is completely lost, but the memory trace is altered and for good.

Using our memories changes our memories.

If learning is building up skills and knowledge, then forgetting is losing some of what
was gained. It seems like the enemy of learning, yet there are upsides to forgetting too.

Forgetting is natures most sophisticated spam filter. Its what allows the brain to focus,
enabling sought-after facts to pop to mind. It works to block distracting information, to
clear away useless clutter.

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we

remembered nothing. Nineteenth-century American psychologist, William James.

With a little forgetting, you get benefits from further studies that strengthen learning, like
an exercised muscle.

Every memory has two strengths: the storage strength and the retrieval strength.

Storage strength is the measure of how well learned something is. It builds up steadily
with studying, and more sharply with use.

On the other hand, retrieval strength is a measure of how easily a nugget of information
comes to mind. It, too, increased with studying and with use. However, it drops off
quickly without reinforcement, and its capacity is relatively small.
 The brain developed this system for a good reason. In its nomadic hominid youth, the
brain was continually refreshing its mental map to adapt to changing weather, terrain, and
predators. Retrieval strength evolved to update information quickly, keeping the most
relevant details handy. While the storage strength evolved so that old tricks could be
relearned quickly, if needed.

Desirable difficulty: The harder your brain has to work to dig out a memory, the greater
the increase in learning.

The environment we practice becomes the trigger when were performing. Learning
practicing and studying in the same environment get easier over time, while learning in
a different environment and context exposes us to a wider range of mental triggers.

Since we cant predict the context in which we have to perform, were better varying the
circumstances in which we prepare.

Spacing out and varying the context dramatically improve our learning.

Testing does not equal to studying. In fact, testing is greater than studying.

Self-examination is more effective than straight learning because when successfully

retrieve a fact, we then re-store it in a different way than we did before. Not only has
storage level spiked, the memory itself has new and different connections.

The act of guessing engaged your mind in a different and more demanding way than
straight memorization did, deepening the imprint of the correct answers.

Get away from an unsolved problem for a brain doesnt mean the brain gave up, but tap
into the incubation mode to solve the problem with the subconscious mind.

There are two mental operations that aid incubation, picking up clues from the
environment, and breaking fixed assumptions.

Having a goal foremost in mind tunes our perceptions to fulfilling it, and hat tuning
determines, to some extent, where we look and what we notice.

Start working on the large project as soon as possible and stop when we get stuck, its not
quitting, but percolation. In order to gather string and collect casual date, then, listen
closely to all those incoming bits and pieces.

We all need a certain amount of repetitive practice, but repetition creates a powerful
illusion. Instead, mixing your learning to create interleaving. Interleaving is, essentially,
about preparing the brain for the unexpected.
 Mixed-up practice doesnt just build overall dexterity and prompt action discrimination.
It helps prepare us for lifes curveballs, literal and figurative.

Perceptual learning is active and automatic, no external reinforcement or help required.

We, of course, have to pay attention, but we dont need to turn it on or tune it in. Its self-
correcting, and it works to find the most critical perceptual signatures and filter out the
rest.

Sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, intellectual and
physical.

Stages of sleep: Stage 1 is to consolidate memories (often laced with REM-like periods);
REM is a stage that aid percolation, and interpreting emotionally charged memories;
Stage 2 is the single most critical stage for motor learning; Stage 3 and 4 usually lumped
together as slow-wave or deep sleep that is important for declarative memory
consolidation.

Napping is sleep too.

The Narrow Road: A Brief Guide to the

Getting of Money
Book Author: Felix Dennis

The Narrow Road is a straight-forward (occasionally rude) guide of money-making that every
entrepreneur needs to know. I dont entirely agree on all the points wit the author, but who am I
to judge. Its going to help you skip through tons of time in figuring out the way with the
universal rules and principles on how we should approach business, startup, and life.

My Reading Notes
In the getting of money, its wise to consider ones motives for the getting itself. Its
better to wrestle with motive early and consider its strength at leisure than to be surprised
by it at some perilous moment in the future when all is in the balance.

The three valid reasons for not attempting to become rich are: (1) I do wish to be rich; (2)
I would like to be rich but I have other priorities; and (3) I am too stupid to make the
attempt.
 Apart from those listed above, most of the so-called reasons for not pursuing wealth are
not reasons at all; they are excuses. They are the children of fear and the parents of a
thousand if onlys.

Anyone in good health and of reasonable intelligence, provided they utterly commit
themselves to the journey, can succeed on the narrow road. The commitment is vital.

Luck helps but only if you do not waste time seeking it. The belief that you have a great
idea is not worth cuckoo spit. Ideas are ten a penny while the ability to execute counts for
a great deal more.

Who is likely to succeed? Not those who want to and not those who need to or those who
deserve to, but those who are utterly determined to, whatever the cost to themselves and
to those around them.

There is no point in sitting around thinking about getting started not just for the getting
the money but for just about anything.

Forget glamor if the getting of money is your priority. The reason is obvious. The laws of
supply and demand apply not to commodities but to the choices people make. Too many
people wish to make blockbuster movies and live in Beverly Hill. Not enough people
wish to start a landfill company and dig holes.

Gold rushes rarely happen in old mines. New or rapidly developing sectors often provide
more opportunities to get rich.

You have to cut loose to get rich, from parents and family, from working for others, and
from negative influences. Its not that they do not care about you; they may well do. But
two fears confront them: they (openly) fear you are placing yourself in harms way,
which cannot be a good thing; and they (secretly) fear that should you succeed, you will
expose their own timidity.

Young, penniless, and inexperienced? Excellent. You possess an advantage neither

education nor upbringing, nor even money can buy having almost nothing, you have
nothing to lose.

Slightly better off and on the way up? You have the experience and the remnants of
youthful stamina. Now is the time to decide whether you wish to continue to make your
employer even richer, or, instead, become rich yourself.

Veteran manager or experienced professional? Find yourself a young and fearless partner.
Its your best, perhaps your only chance to survive and succeed on the narrow road.

If you have ever wondered why there are so few really wealthy self-made men and
women in the world, you now have the answer. It has little to do with chance and
 everything to do with your capacity to accept the risk of being humiliated in the attempt
not just once, but many times, perhaps.

Startup capital is simply too precious to squander on physical purchases. The creating of
a frugal company culture begins on the first day.

Revenues are not within your control. Cash spent on perks and fancy gear is.

Compulsion trumps desire in two ways: intensity and longevity.

The road to riches is a marathon, not a sprint.

Life is not a rehearsal. The getting of money may be a silly game, but it is a game with
serious rules. It requires a level of discipline and toleration of hardship that is inimical to
what most people regard as the purpose of a fulfilled life.

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. Failure to monitor cash flow is the source of
most startup failures.

Obsessive monitoring and forecasting of cash levels cannot, of themselves, generate cash.
But they can provide startups owner with an early warning one that may well make the
difference between ruin and survival.

Keeping costs low is a vital necessity for a startup company. One golden rule is:
Overhead walks in two legs.

Do not fall in love with any project. You may believe in it wholeheartedly, but must
remain prepared to abandon it should it show signs of failing. Then, examine whether the
failure lies in the product or service itself or in its implementation.

If you are determined to become rich, there is only one talent you require: the talent to
identify, hire, and nurture others with talent.

Talent is indispensable, although it is always replaceable. There are six simple rules
concerning talent: identify it, nurture it, reward it, protect it from being poached. And
when the time comes, fire it.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you are seeking for the right place and the right time, you are reading the wrong book.
It is always the right time and this is the only place we have.
 You must choose between seeking riches or seeking contentment. You may achieve
neither, but you surely cannot seek both.

Given time, a salary begins to exert an attraction and addictiveness all of its own; regular
paychecks and crack cocaine have that in common.

Working for others is a reconnaissance expedition; a means, not an end; an

apprenticeship, not a goal.

There are only six ways of obtaining capital. You can be given or inherit it; you can win
it; you can steal it; you can marry it; you can earn it; you can borrow it. However, the best
two options we have here are either earning capital or borrowing it.

Very, very few entrepreneurs who accept a 51 percent partner in a new venture will get
rich if they are also expected to run it. Control is mandatory.

You cannot get rich all on your own. No one can. You have to work within (or more
likely, create) the right environment.

Human capital is by far the most important element of your environment, whether youre
starting up or deep in the game. By focusing on obtaining the right human capital you
vastly increase your chances of becoming rich. Your employees, colleagues, professional
advisors, suppliers, and customers are all human capital. Choosing those that will serve
you best is an art form.

In the earliest days of a startup, you will likely have to do the hiring yourself.

The truth is, there are many clever, cunning, and adept people who are risk-averse. You
are not risk-averse, because you are dedicated to becoming rich. Believe it or not, much
cleverer people than yourself will happily work for you, providing they do not have to
brave the narrow road.

When hiring, ignore prejudices, likes, and dislikes. This is not only good law, its good
sense. Effectiveness, integrity, adeptness, professionalism, a desire to shine in the world
these are the attributes you seek. Who you like or do not like is irrelevant.

Team spirit is for losers, financially speaking. It is the glue that binds losers together a
strategy used by employers to shackle useful employees to their desks.

The road to riches begins with commitment and proceeds upon the basis of decisions and
actions taken.

Listen by all means listening intently is one of the most underrated of all
entrepreneurial talents but defer to no one.
 Equal partnership suck!

Anyone determined to create wealth from a standing start must make a pact with
themselves to abandon the fear of failure. One cannot banish fear, but one can face it
down, crush it, bury it, padlock it in the deepest recess of your heart and soul and leave
it there to rot.

Having a great idea is not enough. It is the manner in which ideas are executed that
counts. Implementation will always trump ideas, however good those ideas are.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled in executing the
great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams. They do not have to
be your ideas execution is all.

Man alone lays claim to ownership. We purport to believe that individuals or groups can
own the most astonishing things: islands, mines, mountains, forests, rivers, hills, and
deserts. Such a collective delusion illustrates how silly the chasing of wealth really is. It
defies logic because we are mortal and can take nothing with us. Wealth may provide
access, but never true ownership.

The getting of money is a game. While the objective is absurd, the rules are deadly
serious precisely the reverse of the position taken by many who wish to become rich. In
their estimation, the objective is serious while the rules are often absurd.

Contracting an incurable disease is a serious matter; the death of a loved one is a serious
matter; even the rejection of your affection can be a serious matter. The making and
losing of money is not a serious matter.

Ownership of an asset isnt the most important thing in the getting of money it is the
only thing.

There is only one enemy time.

Time spent recharging your batteries and maintaining your physical and mental health is
not wasted. It is a necessity. Time frittered away attending to tasks easily achieved but
relatively inessential to your ultimate goal is wasted a criminal waste of precious
resource.

Prioritizing is the key for every successful entrepreneur.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca

Preparation is the key. Being prepared to do the heavy lifting and the homework in
advance. Getting on with the job in hand, but remaining alert enough to spot a lucky
opportunity when it arrives and then hammering at it with prepared intensity. If one is not
 prepared, the opportunity will go begging. If one is not alert, all the preparation will be
for naught.

All who learn to delegate wisely (and early) increase their chances of success in the
getting of money to a significant degree. Entrepreneurs and moguls are often poor
managers because they never had time to practice the art of management. They were too
busy delegating and becoming rich.

Tenacity will sustain and encourage you; not just to persist, but to do so in a more
adaptable way.

Without self-belief, nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.

Persistence offers you a second or third bite at the cherry. Tenacity ensures that you will
continue to search for alternative ways to succeed. Self-belief encourages you to stare
down failure and naysayers while tenacity works its magic.

Embrace our doubts; without them, there is only naked ego, the kind of certainty that
leads to untrammeled arrogance, to cruelty, or worse.

How to become a leader? By not seeking all the glory your smarter employees earn.

Making time to sleep well, eat well, and take an occasional walk in the park is not
slacking, not a betrayal of the cause. Its just good sense. Keeping mentally and
physically fit is essential.

It is difficult facing up to swiftly changing realities on the ground. Most of us would

prefer for things to stay pretty much the same so that we can carry on making money in
the same way. But things do not stay the same.

Ownership shall be half of the law, doing an outstanding job shall be the other half.

Besides increase your chance in succeeding, there is an extra benefit attached to

excellence. Should your company fail, the reputation of what was produced will endure
while the failure of the business itself will soon be forgotten.

Breaking your neck is a misfortune. Losing someone you love is a tragedy. Failing to
accumulate a fortune on the narrow road is not a misfortune, its just a part of the game.

When going through hell, keep going.

Never fall in love with a deal. A deal is just a deal. There will always be other deals and
other opportunities. No deal is a must-do deal.
 The best time to sell a business is when you dont have to. The worst time is when you
have little choice.

Hire the best-qualified accountant or finance director you can afford, even before you can
afford them.

Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is always an orphan. Anonymous

Closing down a business is a miserable affair. Shoulder the responsibility squarely. Get it
done as fairly and responsibly as you can. And remember, there will be other
opportunities later. Youll be back.

It was all just a silly game, wasnt it? Dont forget to help other young entrepreneurs
when you can. But dont tell them what you found at the end of the road. No need to spoil
the surprise!

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Book Author: Seth Godin

In books such as Purple Cow and Tribes, Seth Godin taught readers how to make remarkable
products and spread powerful ideas. But Linchpin is different. Its about you your choices,
your future, and you potential to make a huge difference in whatever field you choose.

I think the best sentence to summarize the essence of this book is a line by Seth Godin himself
The only way to get what youre worth is to stand out, to exert indispensable, and to produce
interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

My Reading Notes
A genius is someone with exceptional abilities and the insight to find the not so obvious
solution to a problem. A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the
world unstuck.

No one is a genius all the time, but all of us are geniuses sometimes.

The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps
drumming the genius part out. The problem is that we trade our genius and artistry for
apparent stability.
 Ten years ago (this book was published in 2010), our economy wanted you to fit in, it
paid you well to fit in, and it took care of you if you fit in. Now, like it or not, the world
wants something different from you. We need to think hard about what reality looks like
now.

Where does Average come from? (1) You have been brainwashed by school and by the
system into believing that your job is to do your job and follow instructions. (2) Everyone
has a little voice inside of their head thats angry and afraid. Thai voice is the resistance
your lizard brain and it wants you to be average (and safe).

We are surrounded by bureaucrats, note takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF laborers,
map followers, and fearful employees.

What factory (traditional corporations) owners want is complaint, low-paid, replaceable

cogs to run their efficient machines. Factories created productivity, and productivity
produced profit. It was fun while it lasted for the factory owners.

How was it possible to brainwash billions of people to bury their genius, to give up their
dreams, and to buy into the idea of being merely an employee in a factory, following
instructions? The key piece of leverage was this promise: Follow these instructions and
you dont have to think. Do your job and you dont have to be responsible for decisions.

In the factory era, the goal was to have the highest PERL (Percentage of Easily Replaced
Laborers). If you can easily replace most of your workers, you can pay them less. The
goal was to leverage and defend the system, not the people.

Now, here are the only two choices: Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and
cheaper; or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human.

The Law of the Mechanical Turk: Any project, if broken down into sufficiently small,
predictable parts, can be accomplished for awfully close to free.

When the job description and automation intersect, the people are doomed. And its
happening, and get quicker and quicker.

We have reached the end of what Thornton May calls attendance-based compensation
(ABC). There are fewer and fewer good jobs where you can get paid merely for showing
up. Instead, successful organizations are paying for people who make a difference and are
shedding everyone else.

Today, the means of production = a laptop computer with Internet connectivity. Three
thousand dollars buys a worker an entire factory.

Its not about what youre born with, its about what you do.
 Your outlook is completely due to your worldview.

The linchpin sees the world very differently. Exceptional insight, productivity, and
generosity make makers bigger and more efficient. This situation leads to more
opportunities and ultimately a payoff for everyone involved. The more you give, the more
the market gives back.

Abundance is possible, but only if we can imagine it and then embrace it.

You cant or you dont want to?

If you can be human at work (not a machine), youll discover a passion for work you
didnt know had. When work becomes personal, your customers and coworkers are more
connected and happier. And that creates even more value.

In a world that relentlessly races to the bottom, you lose if you also race to the bottom.
The only way to win is to race to the top.

The sign in front of your public school could say: We train the factory workers of
tomorrow. Our graduates are very good at following instructions. And we teach the power
of consumption as an aid for social approval.

The only way linchpins differ from a mediocre rule-follower is that they never bought
into this self-limiting line of thought.

Studies show us that things learned in frightening circumstances are sticky. We remember
what we learn in situations where successful action avoids a threat. Schools have figured
this out. Classrooms become fear-based, test-based battlefield in order to convince us to
fit in.

What they should teach in school? (1) Solve interesting problem. (2) Lead.

Leading is a skill, not a gift. Youre not born with it, you learn how. And schools can
teach leadership as easily as they figured out how to teach compliance. Schools can teach
us to be socially smart, to be open to connection, to understand the elements that build a
tribe.

Is there anyone in an organization who is absolutely irreplaceable? Probably not. But the
most essential people are so difficult to replace, so risky to lose, and so valuable that they
might as well be irreplaceable.

The law of linchpin leverage: The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock
minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time,
youre not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people could do.
 From the outside, it appears that the art is created in a moment, not in tiny increments.
However, the opposite is true.

Wikipedia and the shared knowledge of the Internet make domain knowledge on its own
worth significantly less than it used to be. Today, if all you have to offer is that you know
a lot of reference book information, you lose, because the Internet knows more than you
do.

The depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot.

Every interaction you have with a coworker or customer is an opportunity to practice the
art of interaction. Every product you make represents an opportunity to design something
that has never been designed, to create an interaction unlike any other.

Solves problems that people havent predicted, sees things people havent seen, and
connects people who need to be connected.

If you seek to become indispensable, a similar question is worth asking: Where do you
put the fear? What separates a linchpin from an ordinary person is the answer to this
question. Most of us feel the fear and react to it. We stop doing what is making us afraid.
Then the fear goes away.

The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds.

Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would
make them standardized, not worth talking about.

If it wasnt a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldnt be worth much.

If your boss wont raise your bar, you should.

The first kind of linchpin never say no, because she always manages to find a way to
make things happen, and she does it. Its done.

The second kind of linchpin says no all the time. She says no because she has goals,
because shes a practical visionary, because she understands priorities. She says no
because she has the strength to disappoint you now in order to delight you later.

Digging into the difficult work of emotional labor is exactly what were expected and
needed to do.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the
status quo. And an artist takes it personally.
 Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesnt matter. The intent
does.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in
another.

Passion is a desire, insistence, and willingness to give a gift.

I dont believe that youre born to do a certain kind of art, mainly because your genes
have no idea what technology is going to be available to you. Cave painters, stone
carvers, playwrights, chemists, quantum-mechanic mechanics people do their art where
they find it, not the other way around.

Passion isnt project-specific. Its people-specific. Some people are hooked on passion,
deriving their sense of self from the act of being passionate.

Artists are optimists. The reason is simple: artists have the chance to make things better.

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to
improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.

Artists dont think outside the box, because outside the box theres a vacuum. Outside of
the box, there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing
to work against. Artists think along the edges of the box, because thats where things get
done. Thats where the audience is, thats where the means of production are available,
and thats where you can make an impact.

The discipline of shipping is essential in the long-term path to becoming indispensable.

The reason the resistance persists in slowing you down and prevents you from putting
your heart and soul and art into your work is simple: you might fail.

Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure
differently. Successful people learn from failure, but the lesson they learn is a different
one. They dont learn that they shouldnt have tried in the first place, and they dont learn
that they are always right and the world is wrong and they dont learn that they are losers.
They learn that the tactics they used didnt work or that the person they used them on
didnt respond.

Finding good ideas is surprisingly easy once you deal with the problem of finding bad
ideas. All the creativity books in the world arent going to help you if youre unwilling to
have lousy, lame and even dangerously bad ideas.
 You call the resistance hard-hearted capitalist common sense. Perhaps you call it
being realistic about the system we live in. Better, I think, to call it stalling, a waste,
and insidious plot to keep you from doing your real work.

The resistance is everywhere, all the time. Its goal is to make you safe, which means
invisible and unchanged. Visibility is dangerous. It leads to the possibility of people
laughing at you, or even death. Change is dangerous because it involves moving from the
known to the unknown, and that might be dangerous.

The resistance will help you find the thing you most need to do because it is the thing the
resistance most wants to stop.

Anxiety is practicing fears in advance. Anxiety is needless and imaginary. Its fear about
fear, fear that means nothing. The difference between fear and anxiety: Anxiety is diffuse
and focuses on possibilities in an unknown future, not a read and present threat.

Little ideas are important, unfortunately, they could easily disappear. The challenge is in
being alert enough to write them down, to prioritize them, to build them, and to ship them
out the door. Its a habit, its easy to learn, and its frightening.

Schools dont spend a lot of time teaching you about the power of unreciprocated gifts,
about the long (fifty thousand years) tradition of tribal economies being built around the
idea of mutual support and generosity.

Three reasons why its now urgent to understand how gift culture works. First, the
Internet has lowered the marginal cost of generosity. Second, its impossible to be an
artist without understand the power that giving a gift creates. And third, the dynamic of
gift giving can diminish the cries of the resistance and permit you to do your best work.

In the linchpin economy, the winners are once again the artists who give gifts. Giving a
gift makes you indispensable. Inventing a gift, creating art that is what the market seeks
out, and the givers are the ones who earn our respect and attention.

The new form of marketing is leadership, and leadership is about building and
connecting tribes of like-minded people.

The magic of the gift system is that the gift is voluntary, not part of a contract. The gift
binds the recipient to the giver, and both of them to the community. A contract isolates
individuals, with money as the connector. The gift binds them instead.

When we meet a stranger, we do business. When we encounter a member of the tribe, we

give gifts.
 For the last five hundred years, the best way to succeed has been to treat everyone as a
stranger you could do business with. This is one reason that some multilevel marketers
and insurance salesman make people nervous.

If I touch you in any way, you then have two obligations: to make us closer, and to pass it
on, to give a gift to another member of the tribe. Gifts dont demand immediate payment,
but they have always included social demands within the tribe.

The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one
place to another that hasnt been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we
want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times thats exactly the wrong
approach.

The greatest artists see and understand the challenges before them, without carrying the
baggage of expectations or attachment.

Linchpin is enlightened enough to see the world as it is, to understand that this angry
customer is not about me, that this change in government policy is not a personal attack,
that this job is not guaranteed for life. At the same time, the linchpin brings passion to the
job. She knows from experience that the right effort in the right place can change the
outcome, and she reserves her effort for doing just that.

The market doesnt care about your defense. It cares about working with someone who
can accurately see what was, what is, and where things are headed.

The linchpin has figured out that we get only a certain number of brain cycles to spend
each day. Spending even one on a situation out of our control has a significant
opportunity cost.

Your competition is busy allocating time to create the future, and you are stuck wishing
the world was different. Were attached to a certain view, a given outcome and when it
doesnt appear, we waste time mourning the world that we wanted that isnt here.

The fascinating and universal truth is that the opportunities came after we were inspired
we werent inspired by the opportunities.

People arent going to follow you because you order them to. Theyre not going to seek
out a new path because you tell them that they must.

Were good at visualizing this future, and if we think its not going to happen, we get
nostalgic for it. This isnt positive visualization, its attachment of the worst sort. Were
attached to an outcome, often one we cant control.

Every day is a new chance to choose. Dont let your circumstances or habits rule your
choices today. Become a master of yourself and use your willpower to choose.
 Organizations obey Newtons laws. A team at rest tends to stay at rest.

Humility is our antidote to whats inevitably not going to go according to plan. Humility
permits us to approach a problem with kindness and not arrogance.

Doing what you love is as important as ever, but if youre going to make a living at it, it
helps to find a niche where money flows as a regular consequence of the success of your
idea. Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you
need to make a living at it. Go find a job you can commit to, a career or a business you
can fall in love with.

What youre doing might not be working, and you might not be able to do what youre
doing and get paid for it. But I am certain that if you give enough, to the right people in
the right way, your gifts will be treasured and your journey will be rewarded. Even if
thats not why youre doing it.

The Virgin Way: How to Listen, Learn, and

Lead
Book Author: Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson has always been one of my role models in life and business. The Virgin
Way covers a huge part of Richards real life experiences in both life and businesses. These
lessons might be seem as ridiculous during the era when Richard Branson started and growing
his own companies, but I can see there is a growing trend on these leadership approaches and
how it positively impacts companies, communities, economy, and the planet.

My Reading Notes
The simple fact is that if you dont enjoy what youre doing and the people with whom
youre doing it, then there is no possible way that you are ever going to do it as well as
something that you do enjoy.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Mahatma
Gandhi

If you live every day like its your last, someday youll almost certainly be right.
Steve Jobs

As fallible human beings we all make our share of mistakes and get ourselves into the
kind of predicaments that result from making the wrong choices, but in the vast majority
 of such situations we all have the ability to pause, take stock and say, Sorry, but Im
really not happy with this so Im out of here. This may be easier said than done and
taking any such drastic action usually calls for a lot of courage. However, as the old
adage goes, when you make mistakes at least try to make them quickly.

If your vision is to reach a distant beach where, because of the reefs surrounding it, no
one has ever set foot, then the chances are that reading the same old charts as everyone
else has used isnt going to get you there either.

Never cry over spilt milk. If an item didnt sell, write it off, learn from the experience and
quite dispassionately move on and try something else.

You may have seen the Three Wise Monkeys that embody the proverbial principle of
see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Well, while there wasnt a lot we could do about
the see no evil part, we definitely can control ourselves to never think or speak badly of
others.

Any outward displays of anger or rudeness never serve any useful purpose and if
anything play only to your disadvantage.

We are all very much the product of our upbringing and our environment.

The maturation of companies as being very much like that of young people. When they
are newborn or toddlers they tend to get away with all kinds of stuff on the basis that they
are just finding their feet and so they generally enjoy a higher forgiveness factor. If
companies survive this stage (many do not), like teenagers they then start to develop acne
and other character blemishes while they get a little bit cocky and know-it-all. After that
there comes a more mature stage: they have hopefully learned from their mistakes and
settled down, but this period is filled with very different kinds of risks, with complacency
possibly being the biggest. And once a company reaches the mid-life crises stage it easily
gets lazy, overweight, set in its ways and, like adults, can spend more time looking in the
rear-view mirror than forging new ways forward and trying to see whats around the next
corner.

Youre guaranteed to miss every shot you dont take.

The most common human failings listening too little and talking too much.

Richard Bransons lifetime habit: capturing my thoughts, observations and just about
anything of interest that someone said or did in my hard-backed lined notebooks.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down
and listen.
 Rather than constantly interrupting a speaker with self-serving questions, it is a whole lot
smarter (and better table manners) to note down comments and questions and save them
for later if indeed the issues havent been covered by the time everyone gets to ask
questions.

A really skillful listener not only takes in what has been said but will also hear what has
not been said. Paying close attention to not just what someone says but the way in which
they say it can help you to read between the lines a place where the real story is often
dramatically different to what the casual listener might understand is being said on the
lines.

Actively creating meaningful ad hoc or semi-formal opportunities to speak with rather

than at your people, and then actually listening attentively to their responses, achieves
some incredibly positive outcomes.

Making the commitment every week to spend some quality time with your most
important assets your people is every bit as critical as any other entry in your diary.

Stop issuing edicts to come unto me and instead get out there, walk about and change a
few lives. Its hard to imagine the impact of a C level heavyweight showing up
unannounced at a mid-level managers or front-line staffers workplace and saying, Hey,
its Mario, right? Im Maggie Cohen, the chief information officer, and I just came down
here to see if you can spare me a few minutes to talk about your great idea for the new
distribution software and then sitting down and listening and taking notes.

Nobody has ever learned anything by listening to themselves speak.

Always try to look at what we are doing from the customers perspective. Often the case,
with the best will in the world, one can simply get too wrapped up in the creative process
and forget to step back and see how whatever youre working on is going to look from
the customers perspective.

A problem is handled quickly and effectively will almost always serve to generate more
long-term customer loyalty then when the original service was delivered satisfactorily.

Having senior people who demonstrably care enough to pay attention to customer-
focused nitty-gritty details as opposed to just the stock price serves to encourage
everyone in the organization to get into the habit of seeing what you look like from the
outside in.

Dont spend all your time obsessing over what the competition is up to divert some of
that energy to looking in the mirror to see how you appear to your employees, your
competition and your customers.
 Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument,
debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. Colin Powell

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

A good speech should be like a womans skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short
enough to create interest.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed
pause.

When a leader displays the self-confidence to effectively say, Hey, I cant be expected to
have all the answers, so Id love to hear your thoughts on the subject, it not only has a
very humanizing effect, but it also tells the employees that their opinions are respected
and considered to be of value.

Before anyone even tries to come up with a mission statement, however, there is the little
matter of actually considering your companys commitment and ability to live up to it.

One of the primary roles of a mission statement has to be explaining the core purpose of a
company and outlining expectations for internal and external clients alike.

If you must have a mission statement, keep it real, make it unique to your company and
keep it concise.

Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others. Lao Tzu

The modern definition of leadership is how it is becoming much less about power vested
in a single person or role, and more about a collective process in which the authority and
power is shared by a group with a shared interest.

To stand still today is to go backwards and quickly!

Delegation is handing on the responsibility for a situation together with the authority to
resolve it. Relegation on the other hand is simply pushing a problem away but without
including the power to really do anything much about it except perhaps to shoulder the
blame.

Management guru Peter Drucker deftly defines an entrepreneur as, Someone who
searches for change, responds to it and exploits opportunities. Innovation is a specific
tool of an entrepreneur hence an effective entrepreneur converts a source into a
recourse.
 Sometimes not knowing enough about the correct way to do things and doing them
anyway can open up the most amazing new doorways.

The harder I practice, the luckier I get. Gary Player, one of the all-time golf greats

A combination of good luck and good judgment: two elements that the sum of which will
always be greater than the whole.

Smart leaders and clever entrepreneurs have the knack of engineering their luck its also
known as risk-taking.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca, Roman

philosopher

Curiosity may not be good for cats, for business leaders it is a very healthy and often a
very productive trait.

A good example of finding better solutions for the same or less cost simply by always
asking how it can be done differently. The irrefutable fact is that no matter how good
something might be, there is always room for improvement.

True customer loyalty is not something that can be bought and retained with bribes like
frequent flier miles or occasional discount coupons.

Generating employee and customer loyalty are both about the same thing creating a
level of engagement that supersedes whats in the paycheck or the bonus loyalty plan
points.

Sometimes, rather than sitting back and complaining about lousy service, it really pays to
get out there and find a way to improve upon it by reinventing it yourself.

Smaller companies that have the freedom to turn the traditional corporate pyramid of
stockholders first, employees last, on its head and put their employees and customers
ahead of shareholder interests are usually doing the latter a far greater service.

One of the greatest advantages to being the little dog in a big dog pound is the ability to
react quickly and ride every competitive coat-tail that comes your way.

All ideas are second-hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside
sources, and daily used by the garner with a pride and satisfaction born of the
superstition that he originated them. Mark Twain

Firings are much more of an indictment on the companys failure than that of the
employee no matter what the circumstances behind it might be.
 My first big business lesion was that you have simply got to delegate your duties if you
want your venture to survive and (ideally) grow.

An interview is a game of figuring out whether or not the character of a candidate will be
a good fit with the culture of the company.

While you may need to hire specialists for some positions, take a close look at people
who have thrived in different industries and jobs are usually more versatile, have
transferable skills, and can potentially tackle problems creatively.

Dont jump to the conclusion that someone that has worked for five different companies
in the last five years cannot hold down a job it could just be that job couldnt hold
them!

Its not the hours you put into that matter, its what you put into the hours.

Dont worry about profit. Think about customer service. Profit is a by-product of good
customer service. Its not an end in and of itself.

Everything begins and ends with our people. If we keep our employees happy and
engaged, they will keep our customers happy who will then reward us with their loyalty.
That repeat business helps our bottom line and creates value for our shareholders.

In any cases Elon Musks successes at Tesla, PayPal, and Space-X only serve to
demonstrate the incredible results that can flow from vision and leadership coming
together on one inspired individual with the assistance of an army of equally inspired
followers.

Everything thats really worthwhile in life usually involves some degree of risk.

When we are more positive our brains are more engaged, more energized, creative,
motivated, healthier, resilient and productive.

Ninety percent of ones happiness is generated from within, not by external factors like
fat bank accounts and expensive possessions.

A sense of humor and the ability not to take oneself too seriously are critically important
attributes for any healthy corporate culture.

Business doesnt have to be a zero-sum game, where some win and others lose. When
done properly, everybody stands to gains: companies, communities, and the beautiful
planet on which we are privileged to live.
 Our educational systems need to give young people the opportunity to plug into
curriculums that encourage them to raise to their full potential, take risks, embrace
failure, and challenge the established norms wherever and whenever they can.

Secondary education should be encouraged to place greater emphasis on developing

emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and real-life problem solving skills.

A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else
thought they could. Zig Ziglar

No matter how incredibly smart you think you are, or how brilliant, disruptive or plain
off-the-wall your new concept might be, every startup team needs at least one good
mentor.

Youll never make even a dent in their armor with traditional marketing methods. You
have got to get yourself out there. Be visible, take risks, get creative, make yourself heard
and take the fight to them before they bring it to you.

Collaboration, whether external or internal, is a vital component in building a healthy

company, as well as integral constituent of any entrepreneurs life.

Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into
someone, you ask what theyre doing, you say Wow and soon youre cocking up all sorts
of ideas. Steve Jobs

It is almost certainly the fear that if they are pushed into making a quick decision, there is
always a change that it could turn out to be the wrong one.

If on first hearing an idea strikes you as a really good one, you may well be correct, but
you mustnt allow that first reaction to influence your ability to objectively weigh the
cons as well as all the pros when they are presented.

Just because no significant cons are presented it doesnt mean they dont exist. Nothing is
perfect, so work hard at uncovering whatever hidden warts the thing might have and by
removing them youll only make it better still.

Avoid making decisions in isolation.

Do everything you can to protect the downside.

When the going gets tough, though, as in the case of a major accident involving your
company, as the leader your job is to gather as much reliable up-to the minute
information as is available, step up and take the bull by the horns. Whatever the situation,
indecision is not an option, and in most cases ninety percent of life is just showing up.
 Value and purpose-driven entrepreneurs stand a much better chance of succeeding in a
global marketplace.

Business and government must encourage established entrepreneurs and young talent to
focus on problem areas like health, education, climate change and social care.

In todays euphoria, nobody remembers how at one stage Apple couldnt sell iPods and
had to resort to giving a free one to every student at Duke University to get it going. It
can be a long, lonely, and often painful process to build a company.

Good design is incredibly important. You must look cool and do cool. This gives
customers both rational and emotional reasons to invest in a brand.

Trust the process, trust your instincts and trust your team. Dont start second-guessing
yourself or worrying about a few mistakes along the way you will only learn form
them.

Think and Grow Rich

Book Author: Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich is the father of all modern self-help book. The title itself may
sound skeptical, but its one of the must-read books in your lifetime. The author, Napoleon Hill
spent 20 years of his lifetime on researching and analyzing hundreds of well-known men during
his time to come up with this masterpiece.

My Reading Notes
There is quite an irony to the fact that Hill had not been rich when he wrote Think and
Grow Rich far from it which may, on the surface, undermine his apparent authority to
write such device. Yet Hill might have answered that this was exactly the point: here was
a success philosophy that worked as long as it was faithfully practiced, and which
inevitably would pay off handsomely.

Anything the human mind can believe, the human mind can achieve.

Thoughts are things, and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness
of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other
material objects.
 I had learned, from years of experience with men, that when a man really desires a thing
so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order
to get it, he is sure to win.

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken
by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.

Before success comes in any mans life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat,
and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical
thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do.

Success comes to those who become success conscious.

Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure conscious.

Another weakness found in altogether too many people is the habit of measuring
everything, and everything, by their own impressions and beliefs.

We are the masters of our fate, the captains of our soils because we have the power to
control our thoughts.

Desire was not a hope! It was not a wish! It was a keen, pulsating desire, which
transcended everything else. It was definite.

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all
sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind
known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.

Success requires no apologies, failure permits no alibis.

Practical dreamers do not quit!

Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition.

All who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking
struggles before they arrive. The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually
comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their other
selves.

No one ever is defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.

Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds.

 Faith is the head chemist of the mind. When faith is blended with the vibration of
thought, the subconscious mind instantly picks up the vibration, translates it into its
spiritual equivalent, and transmits it to infinite intelligence, as in the case of prayer.

The emotions of faith, love, and sex are the most powerful of all the major positive
emotions.

Love and faith are psychic; related to the spiritual side of man. Sex is purely biological
and related only the physical. The mixing, or blending, of these three emotions, has the
effect of opening a direct line of communication between the finite, thinking the mind of
man, and infinite intelligence.

Repetition of affirmation of orders to your subconscious mind is the only known method
of voluntary development of the emotion of faith.

Every man is what he is, because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy
his mind.

Your subconscious mind recognizes and acts upon only thoughts which have been well-
mixed with emotion or feeling.

Do not wait for a definite plan, through which you intend to exchange services or
merchandise in return for the money you are visualizing, but begin at once to see yourself
in possession of the money, demanding and expecting meanwhile, that your subconscious
mind will hand over the plans you need. Be on the alert of these plans, and when they
appear, put them into action immediately.

Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized
into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

Anything acquired without effort, and without cost is generally unappreciated, often
discredited; perhaps this is why we get so little from our marvelous opportunity in public
schools.

One of the strange things about human beings is that they value only that which has a
price.

There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal
weakness of lack of ambition.

Too many people who begin at the bottom never manage to lift their head high enough to
be seen by opportunity, so they remain at the bottom. It has a tendency to kill off
ambition because we form the habit of the daily routine of accepting our fate.
 We rise to high positions or remain at the bottom because of conditions we can control if
we desire to control them. Both success and failure are largely the results of habits!

Mans only limitation, within reason, lies in his development and use of his imagination.

Your imaginative faculty may have become weak through inaction. It can be revived and
made alert through use. This faculty does not die, though it may become quiescent
through lack of use.

Ideas are intangible forces, but they have more power than the physical brains that give
birth to them. They have the power to live on after the brain that creates them has
returned to dust.

If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan, if
this new plan fails to work, replace it, in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a
plan which does work. The majority of men meet failure, because of their lack of
persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

No men are ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.

There are two types of people in the world. One type is known as leaders, and the other as
followers. Most great leaders began in the capacity of followers. They became great
leaders because they were intelligent followers.

Efficient leadership calls for the ability to organize and to master details.

Every person must be his own salesman of personal services.

You should know all of your weaknesses in order that you may either bridge them or
eliminate them entirely. You should know your strength in order that you may call
attention to it when selling your services.

Everyone wants more but it is something entirely different to be worth more!

The yearly analysis should disclose a decrease in faults, and an increase in virtues.
Annual self-analysis will disclose whether advancement has been, made, and if so, how
much. It will also disclose any backward steps one may have made.

Capitalism consists not alone of money, but more particularly of highly organized,
intelligent groups of men who plans ways and means of using money efficiently for the
good of the public and profitably to themselves.
 Money, without brains, always is dangerous. Properly used, it is the most important
essential of civilization.

No system has ever has created by which men can legally acquire riches through mere
force of numbers, or without giving in return an equivalent value of one form or another.

The system denies no one this right, but it does not, and cannot promise something for
nothing, because the system itself is irrevocably controlled by the law of economics
which neither recognizes nor tolerates for long, getting without giving.

Procrastination, the opposite of decision, is a common enemy which practically every

man must conquer.

One of Henry Fords most outstanding qualities is his habit of reaching decisions quickly
and definitely and changing them slowly.

The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs, are,
generally, easily influenced by the opinions of others. Opinions are the cheapest
commodities on earth.

The value of decisions depends upon the courage required to render them. The great
decisions were reach by assuming great risks, which often meant the possibility of death.

In your search for the secret of the method, do not look for a miracle, because you will
not find it. You will find only the eternal laws of Nature.

The leaders in every walk of life decide quickly and firmly.

Indecision is a habit which usually begins in youth. The major weakness of all
educational systems is that they neither teach nor encourage the habit of the definite
decision.

The basis of persistence is the power of will.

You may find it necessary to snap out of your mental inertia, through a similar procedure,
moving slowly at first, then increase your speed, until you gain complete control over
your will. Be persistent no matter how slowly you may, at first, have to move. With
persistence will come success.

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage.

Persistence, concentration of effort, and definiteness of purpose were the major sources
of achievements.
 The Master Mind may be defined as: Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit
of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.

A group of brains coordinated in a spirit of harmony will provide more thought-energy

than a single brain.

The positive emotions of thought form the side of the stream which carries one to fortune.
The negative emotions form the side which carries one down to poverty.

Poverty needs no plan. It needs no one to aid it because it is bold and ruthless. Riches are
shy and timid. The have to be attracted.

The men of greatest achievement are men with highly developed sex natures; men who
have learned the art of sex transmutation.

The men who have accumulated great fortunes and achieved outstanding recognition in
literature, art, industry, architecture, and the professions, were motivated by the influence
of woman.

A better definition of a genius is, a man who has discovered how to increase the
vibrations of thought to the point where he can freely communicate with sources of
knowledge not available through the ordinary rate of vibration of thought.

The sixth sense is Creative Imagination. The faculty of creative imagination is one
which the majority of people never use during an entire lifetime, and if used at all, it
usually happens by mere accident.

The reasoning faculty is often faulty because it is largely guided by ones accumulated
experience. Not all knowledge, which one accumulates through experience, is accurate.

The human mind responds to stimulation. Among the greatest, and most powerful of
these stimuli is the urge of sex.

Sex energy is the creative of all genii. There never has been, and never will be a great
leader, builder, or artist lacking in this driving force of sex.

The urge of sex has been grossly misunderstood, slandered, and burlesqued by the
ignorant and the evil-minded, for so long that the very word sex is seldom used in polite
society. Men and women who are known to be blessed yes, blessed with highly sexed
natures.

When the emotion of love is mixed with the emotion of sex, that same man will guide his
actions with more sanity, balance, and reason.
 The road to genius consists of the development, control, and use of sex, love, and
romance.

If you believe yourself unfortunate, because you have loved and lost, perish the
thought. One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and
temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral and transitory.

Mans greatest motivating force is his desire to please woman! It is this inherent desire of
man to please woman, which gives woman the power to make or break a man.

You cannot entirely control your subconscious mind, but you can voluntarily hand over to
it any plan, desire, or purpose which you wish transformed into concrete form.

Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the
other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions
constitute the dominating influence of your mind.

Form the habit of applying and using the positive emotions! Eventually, they will
dominate your mind so completely, that the negatives cannot enter it.

Through the medium of the ether, in a fashion similar to that employed by the radio
broadcasting principle, every human brain is capable of picking up vibrations of thoughts
which are bring released by other brains.

The depression was a blessing in disguise. It reduced the whole world to a new starting
point that gives everyone a new opportunity.

All men have become what they are, because of their dominating thoughts and desires.

Before you can put any portion of this philosophy into successful use, your mind must be
prepared to receive it. The preparation is not difficult. It begins with study, analysis, and
understanding of three enemies which you shall have to clear out. These are indecision,
doubt, and fear!

Indecision is the seedling of fear! Indecision crystallizes into doubt, the two blend and
become fear! They germinate and grow without their presence being observed.

Fears are nothing more than states of mind.

Every human being has the ability to completely control his own mind.

The fear of poverty paralyzes the faculty of reason, destroys the faculty of imagination,
kills off self-reliance, undermines enthusiasm, discourages initiative, leads to uncertainty
of purpose, encourages procrastination, and makes self-control an impossibility. It takes
 the charm from ones personality, destroys the possibility of accurate thinking, diverts
concentration of effort, it masters persistence, turns the willpower into nothingness,
destroys ambition, beclouds the memory and invites failure in every conceivable form; it
kills love and assassinates the finer emotions of the heart, discourages friendship and
invites disaster in a hundred forms, leads to sleeplessness, misery, and unhappiness.

The fear of criticism robs man of his initiative, destroys his power of imagination, limits
his individuality, takes away his self-reliance, and does him damage in a hundred other
ways.

The fear of loss of love is the most painful of all fears. It probably plays more havoc with
the body and mind than any of the other basic fears, as it often leads to permanent
insanity.

The fear of death is useless. Death will come, not matter what anyone may think about it.
Accept it as a necessity, and pass the thought out of your mind. It must be a necessity, or
it would not come to all. Perhaps it is not as bad as it has been pictured.

Worry is a state of mind based upon fear. It works slowly, but persistently. It is insidious
and subtle. Worry is a form of sustained fear caused by indecision, therefore, it is a state
of mind which can be controlled.

Kill the habit of worry, in all its forms, by reaching a general, blanket decision that
nothing which life has to offer is worth the price of worry. With this decision will come
poise, peace of mind, and calmness of thought which bring happiness.

The most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open
to the negative influence of other people.

The Impact Equation: Are You Making

Things Happen or Just Making Noise?
Book Author: Chris Brogan & Julien Smith

The Impact Equation is not a tactical social media guidebook but more than that. Chris Brogan
and Julien Smith developed an equation and formula for anyone who wants to make an impact
online. I personally like the ideas because they are not those get-famous-quick hacks but long-
term principles and fundamentals to create a true impact online. And by online today, I mean
the world.
My Reading Notes
Impact = Contrast x (Reach + Exposure + Articulation + Trust + Echo)

If you read the newspaper and visit most mainstream websites for your daily influx of
news, the only ideas you are exposed to are good ideas the ideas that have already won.

Contrast is sometimes called the USP the unique sales proposition.

However, were not looking for universal uniqueness; we are looking only for uniqueness
inside our own little field.

Contrast means having strong positioning so you are creating more value, sometimes
with a different price, than most competitors in your category. Its the multiplier in the
Impact Equation because its value cannot be underestimated.

When Contrast is low, nothing you do has any impact whatsoever. When you begin to
differentiate yourself, however, you create an immediate visibility that is not easily
trumped.

Good ideas make you feel something, anything! Its emotional regardless positive or
negative.

Good ideas attach themselves to other concepts in the brain. With existing ideas to grip
on to, your idea can hold on to the audience in a much more permanent way.

Good ideas fulfill a need.

If you personally want to create something amazing, the best strategy is to act like the
Internet (for me, the world) does. You have to be comfortable with creating garbage in
order to have some measure of awesome stuff.

Creating todays garbage is an important aspect of creating tomorrows gold. This is

really about letting the audience decide what is good or bad.

Using small words doesnt attract small minds. Small words are a way to seed ideas in
anyones mind without creating unnecessary barriers.

Your choice of words and description arent the secret sauce of the idea. They are the
wind that carries the paper airplane to its destination. Your words must serve the idea.

Writing is now one of the few skills you must have and we really mean must here
for the twenty-first century.
 Having too many ideas is a starting point. Next you might decide upon a framework to
determine which ideas are worth acting upon. Thats where most people miss a step.

Thinking through the potential longevity of an idea is another good way to gate these
opportunities and decide whether or not to give them a go.

Articulation means keeping the message brief and bite-size.

Its possible that high Articulation (or clarity) in your message may in fact be enough of a
differentiator to put you over the top from invisible to visible, from zero impact to high
impact.

Reach can be a very tricky thing to accomplish.

The most common methods of obtaining visibility are in fact the least effective. They are
by definition most crowded, since they are the business owners first thought, so the
market for attention in these spaces gets competitive first.

The platform is the channel itself. Its the show, no the advertisements.

The purpose of the platform is audience building. Reaching people does nothing unless
you provide them with enough value to make them stop what theyre doing, either now or
later, and participate in your media.

Exposure is the art of hitting people, again and again, making sure that you are
everywhere without offending the hell out of your prospective audience, until they finally
decide to take some kind of action. At its simplest, Exposure is frequency.

The more content you create, the better you will know your audience, and even the
failures will teach you about what matters to them. As your content gets spread out and
hits different parts of the web, the creation of an ideal reader or audience is perhaps one
of the most valuable processes available.

Community and audience are different. Your community is the people who work to
maintain an ongoing interaction with you. And never ever make the mistake of crowning
yourself the kind or queen of that community. Instead, realize that you have the privilege
and honor to serve the community, even if they have chosen to gather around your ideas,
your products or services, or something else of your creation.

Credibility x Reliability x Intimacy / Self-interest = Trust.

Credibility is what you say that ca actually be backed up by your credentials.

Reliability is what happens when you do what you say you will do.
 Intimacy is all levels of closeness between individuals, often for personal reasons that
arent related to business but that influence business decisions every day.

Self-interest is the force multiplier for everything else; self-orientation is the big problem
that drastically reduces your trust in any transaction.

Echo is about finding common experiences and using them to help people realize that you
have some understanding of their lives.

Each of us is the hero of our own story.

No one is perfect. There are mistakes, missteps, and mispronunciations. Thankfully, as

long as youre doing at least something right, almost no one will remember them. Instead,
theyll remember your home runs and big hits. Theyll remember the work that helped
them achieve a breakthrough, reach many other people, or make a million dollars.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits & the

Art of Battling Giants
Book Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Before I read this book, I thought its about how David, as an underdog, uses his willpower and
resilience to win over the battle with Goliath, his strong opponent. However, I was wrong. Its
more than that.

David and Goliath changes the perspective we see strengths and weaknesses, advantages and
disadvantages, blessing and misfortune. In many cases in life and work, what we think as a
misfortune is the best thing that can happen to us, and what we think as an advantage can lead to
the worst outcome.

I suggest you should still read the full copy of this book to get a grip of the full essence of it. Its
packed with real-life stories to deliver a few simple but crucial ideas and messages.

My Reading Notes
What we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts,
because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.
 Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them
strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can
change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate.

Having lots of resources is an advantage. But it makes you immobile and puts you on the
defensive. Meanwhile, movement, endurance, individual intelligence, knowledge, and
courage allowed underdogs to do the impossible.

The willingness to try harder than anyone else set winner and losers apart.

Underdog strategies are hard. To play by Davids rules you have to be desperate. You
have to be so bad that you have no choice.

What we think of as an advantage and as a disadvantage is not always correct.

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification then you
learn to value it differently.

Like any parent, he a self-made successful person wanted to provide for their
children, to them more than he had. But he had created a giant contradiction, and he knew
it. He was successful because he had learned the long and hard way about the value of
money and the meaning of work and the joy and fulfillment that come from making your
own way in the world. But because his success, it would be difficult for his children to
learn those same lessons.

People are ruined by challenged economic lives. But theyve ruined by wealth as well
because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-
worth.

Money makes parenting easier until a certain point when it stops making much of a
difference.

Wealth contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Many people have simply fallen into the trap that wealthy people and wealthy institutions
and wealthy countries all Goliaths too often fall into: the school assumes that the
kinds of things that wealth can buy always translate into real-world advantages.

We all assume that being bigger and stronger and richer is always in our best interest, but
it isnt.

The inverted-U curve reminds us that there is a point at which money and resources stop
making our lives better and start making them worse.
 The Big Fish-Little Pond option might be scorned by some on the outside, but Small
Ponds are welcoming places for those on the inside.

There are times and places when it is better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond than a Little
Fish in a Big Pond, where the apparent disadvantage of being an outsider in a marginal
world turns out not to be a disadvantage at all.

When you are a little fish in one of the deepest and most competitive pond, the
experience of comparing yourself to all the other brilliant fishes will eventually shatter
your confidence. It makes you feel stupid, even though you arent stupid at all.

We form our impressions not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible
context, but locally by comparing ourselves to people in the same boat as ourselves.
Our sense of how deprived we are is relative.

Citizens of happy countries have higher suicide rates than citizens of unhappy countries,
because they look at the smiling faces around them and the contrast is too great.

How you feel about your abilities in the context of your surrounding shapes your
willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. Its a crucial element in your
motivation and confidence.

The smarter your peers, the dumber you feel; the dumber you feel, the more likely you
are to drop out.

Normally we think that we are better at solving problems when they are presented clearly
and simply but the opposite happened. Making the questions disfluent causes people to
think more deeply about whatever they come Theyll use more resources on it. Theyll
process more deeply or think more carefully about whats going on. If they have to
overcome a hurdle, theyll overcome it better when you force them to think a little harder.
And thats what we called the desirable difficulty.

An extraordinarily high number of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic.

The opposite of desirable difficulty is capitalization learning: we get good at something

by building on the strengths that we are naturally given.

As human beings, we are hardwired to seek the approval of those around us. Yet a radical
and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge
convention.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying
to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
 The one trait in a lot of dyslexic people is that by the time they got out of college, their
ability to deal with failure was very highly developed. And so they look at most situations
and see much more of the upside than the downside.

Learning how to deal with the possibility of failure is really good preparation for a career
in the business world.

The idea of desirable difficulty suggests that not all difficulties are negative.

Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough
times start. Courage is what you earn when youve been through the tough times and you
discover they arent so tough after all.

There are things that either build you up or put you down.

The weak could compete in even the most lopsided of contests if they were willing to use
their wits.

The occasions in which difficulties, paradoxically, turn out to be desirable when the
unexpected freedom that comes from having nothing to lose.

We need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the
way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has
nothing to lose, and because of that, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set
by others.

When you are in the position of David, you got to use what you got.

It has been said that most revolutions are not caused by revolutionaries in the first place,
but by the stupidity and brutality of governments. Sean MacStiofain

We often think of authority as a response to disobedience, however, disobedience can

also be a response to authority.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters first and foremost
how they behave.

The principle of legitimacy is based on three things. First, the people who are asked to
obey authority have to feel like they have the voice that if they speak up, they will be
heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to a reasonable expectation that
the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the
authority has to be fair. It cant treat one group differently from another.
 Power has an important limitation. It has to be seen as legitimate, or else its use has the
opposite of its intended effect.

The inverted-U curve is all about limits. They illustrate the fact that more is not always
better; there comes a point, in fact, when the extra resources that the powerful think of as
their greatest advantage only serve to make things worse.

The human psyche follows the course of least resistance. The course of least resistance is
whats easy.

This final lesson about the limits of power is not easy to learn. It requires that those in
positions of authority accept that their greatest advantage has real constraints.

The excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy
leads to defiance, not submission.

There are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the
gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death
and destruction. But at the same time, you create a community of remote misses. If you
take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair, But one time in then, out
of that despair rises an indomitable force.

...

Influence: What It Really Means and How to

Make It Work for You
Book Author: Jenny Nabben

Influence is an excellent toolkit for influencing skills and effective professional communication.
It covers many ideas, sciences, and techniques of speaking persuasively and compellingly.
Besides, the three biggest takeaways I love the most from this book are how to effectively
influence any personality you encounter; how to properly listen, understand, and ask the right
questions; finally, how to expertly handle high-pressure situations and challenging people.

My Reading Notes
Being able to positively influence others is one of the most important skills for success in
our personal and professional lives.
 If building confidence is about having a better sense of our self in the world, influence is
about having a bigger impact on the world.

The skills of influence are built on finding the balance between heart and head, between
using our intellect and using our emotional intelligence, between knowing when to push
through and knowing when to yield to others.

To influence others we need to stand up and be heard, but we also need to sit still and
listen deeply to what others have to say.

Our fight-flight response is the most primitive and powerful emotional trigger we can
experience and overrides rational thinking every time.

Emotions act as the brains shortcut to guide our approach and avoidance behavior.

Most of us like to believe that we make decisions based on our ability to weigh up logic
and fact, however, ultimately, we are predominantly influenced by emotion.

If we want to influence others, we need to appeal to their emotions because its the first
and most motivational system in our evolutionary drive to survive.

We each have our own personal mental shortcuts to filter information, direct our attention
and help us make decisions. These are called meta-programmes because they are
unconscious cognitive habits that influence how we communicate and what motivates us.

See the world from the other persons perspective.

Some people are more motivated by what they want to move toward and some from what
they want to move away from.

Some people like to be communicated with by being presented with the big picture and
some need to see the detail in order to make a decision.

Some people are very independent in their decision-making and rarely ask for other
peoples input or advice. Others, however, seek feedback, input, and advice and will often
need to get the opinion of others before making a decision.

Some people like to be presented with options before making a decision while others
want to see a step-by-step process that leads to a particular outcome.

Some people focus much on the task at hand while others focus on the relationship
between people.
 Understand different communication style, relationship values and decision-making
strategies to make your influence more effective.

The first place to start when we think about preparing to influence others is getting a
deeper understanding of their personal preferences and motivators, and then understand
how our own emotions affect and influence others.

Emotions are contagious. And the mirror neuron system allows us to resonate
emotionally with others and affects every interaction we have.

Use the STAR model to help you build your emotional awareness, emotional resilience
and move back into positive emotions so you can positively influence others: aware of
the switch of emotions, consciously process them with thoughts and self-talk, assess and
analyze what it really means, and finally, resolve and reset your emotional state.

If you become a master at the other influencing skills but fail to build your skill as a
listener, the other skills will be largely wasted. You may come across as someone who has
knowledge, whos confident and good communicator, but you wont have true influence.

Listening is a radical act in a world that loves to talk.

Listening is the foundation upon which every other skill depends on. Because if you dont
really listen, youre likely to miss the important information from your team, your
employees, your colleagues, and your friends.

There is a big difference between hearing and listening. Listening requires focused
attention.

While its important to listen to other, we also need to pay attention to whats happening
for us on the inside. Listening to our own internal voice, our automatic responses and our
emotional reactions can help us develop our own emotional self-awareness.

What are some practical ways to make listening a positive habit of influence in your life
and business? Simple ask great questions then sit back and listen to the answers.

Language and vocabulary can unconsciously affect the decisions we make in everyday
life.

Remember that my cat is not your cat once we understand more about how our minds
process the same language in different ways, we can use language that directs the mind of
the other person to where we actually want it to go.

Avoid using jargon and abstract language if you want to connect with your audience and
include everyone in the conversation.
 Converting complex information into easily digestible and tasty nuggets flavored with
emotion and color will make it memorable.

When we want to influence others to support us, we need to use open and honest
communication and acknowledge who is taking decisions.

Metaphorical language turns complex information into a brain-friendly format so we can

map over knowledge from something we have prior experience of, to something that is
new and different.

Across every culture in every part of the world, humans have told stories to understand,
share and recall knowledge.

One of the brains unique design features is its ability to recognize patterns so that we can
quickly predict what is most likely to happen next. Over the centuries, we have used
narrative story structure as the most elegant way to communicate our message, our
passion, our vision and who we are.

Share your passion by telling a passionate story. Talk about real people, in real situations,
facing real challenges to emotionally engage with the audience.

Great stories activate multi-sensory networks sights, sounds, texture, color, and emotion
to prime a detailed internal representation in the minds of the audience. This makes
them easy to recall by simplifying the complexity.

Summaries your story into a single compelling idea to reveal the emotional heart of your
message.

In meetings, attend to the emotional needs of participants. People thrive when they feel
needed, consulted and respected.

In presentations, make eye contact with your audience to help you relax and build
rapport. Besides, effectively use the stage, room, and space to reinforce your message.

On the phone, use your voice as a tool to convey emotion, understanding, and empathy.
Pay the same degree of attention as you would if you were sitting opposite the person.

When dealing with difficult people, unpack the word and get really clear about what
specifically you find difficult. Is it their tone of voice? Is it what they are doing? Once we
label someone as difficult, we can begin to fix them in our mind and it can become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. So, start by working out the specific behaviors you find
challenging. This helps to separate out the positive behaviors from the ones you find
difficult.
 Stand back and become an observer to avoid being drawn into a negative emotional
spiral.

When facing differences in opinion, stand up for you but not against the other person.

Always keep an open mind and open heart, create neutral space to calm emotions while
maintaining a connection with the other person.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts,

Minds, and Actions
Book Author: Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment is a book of how to influence people and create movement in both individual and
organizational level. To reduce the content is this book, the key to leave an impact on others is by
having a great cause, understanding the audience, and delivering values for the long run. It
covers many practical action steps in delivering a presentation, using online channels and
mastering real face-to-face communication. Although some of the tips especially techniques to
use online platforms are outdated, Guy Kawasaki still did a great job in delivering the principle
of becoming a great enchanter.

My Reading Notes
Enchantment can occur in villages, stores, dealerships, offices, boardrooms, and on the
Internet. It causes a voluntary change of hearts and minds and therefore actions.

Enchantment transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It

reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers.

By putting yourself in the mindset of the people youre trying to enchant, youll
appreciate the amount of change that enchantment requires. It can take weeks or months
for enchantment to occur, so prepare for a marathon, not a sprint.

Start with the first impression that you make: your smile, your dress, your handshake, and
your vocabulary.

A fake smile wont make people like you.

 A fake smile uses only the zygomatic major muscle the one that runs from your jaw to
the corner of your mouth. A great, genuine smile uses the orbicularis oculi muscle, too.
This muscle surrounds your eyes.

A real smile is so special that it has its own name: the Duchenne smile, in honor of
Guillaume Duchenne, a French neurologist.

Vocabularies are the facials expressions of your mind. Use simple words. Use active
voice. Keep it short. And use common, unambiguous analogies.

For people to like you, they have to accept you. For people to accept you, you have to
accept them first.

The single most important factor in determining whether or not you connect with another
person is neither personality nor mutual interests it is simple proximity.

Pursuing your passions makes you more interesting, and interesting people are
enchanting.

Finding shared passions is a great tool to developing relationship because they lower the
resistance.

Likable people create win-win outcomes in which everyone gains something.

One way to become likable is to adopt a yes attitude. This means your default response to
peoples request is yes. Dont be alarmed: This isnt risky practice, because most requests
at the beginning of a relationship are small, simple and easy.

A yes buys time, enables you to see more options, and builds rapport. By contrast, a no
response stops everything.

Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.
Zig Ziglar

When people trust each other, they stop playing games, they look beyond temporary
problems, and they expose themselves with less hesitation. Good enchanters are likable,
but great enchanters are likable and trustworthy.

The first step to becoming trustworthy is to trust others first.

Always act with honesty.

Immediate and complete disclosure of your interests is a key component to

trustworthiness.
 The combination of both knowledge and competence encourages people to trust you and
increases your powers of enchantment.

If you want people to trust you, show up physically and virtually, interact with people t
establish trust.

Craft description for you or your organization. It should explain what you do and why do
you exist. Make it short, clear, different, and humble.

Combine your cause, your vision, and your actions in a deep, intelligent, complete,
empowering, and elegant message.

The best way to enchant people is to make the process easy and smooth for them to go
with your flow.

People who know what they want and can clearly explain their wishes are more
enchanting. Stating your goals adds to the trust factor, because you are now transparent.
Your agenda is on the table, and while people might not like it, at least they know what it
is.

People dont want more information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They
want faith faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell. Annette
Simmons, author of Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins.

It is faith moves mountains, not facts. Facts do not give birth of faith. Faith needs a story
to sustain it a meaningful story that inspires belief in you and renews hope that your
ideas do indeed offer what you promise. Genuine influence goes deeper than getting
people to do what you want them to do. It means people pick up where you left off
because they believe. Annette Simons

Quality is more important than ever, because your product must pass more than the
cursory examination of an influential.

More choices can also lead to dissatisfaction because people may look back and wonder
if another of the options would have been better. With more options available, there are
more choices to regret. When it comes to analysis, perhaps more choices leads to
paralysis, so fewer choices might help you enchant people.

Derek Sivers believes the first follower is important, because he brings credibility to the
leader. Then, the subsequent followers emulate the first follower not only the leader. In
his words, the first follower is what transforms the lone nut into a leader.

Enchantment is a process, not an event. You will encounter reluctance, but people often
resist anything worth doing.
 Instant successes are seldom instant, and if you talk to the people behind these
successes, youll find out that they came after months of fear, uncertainty, and confusion,
along with a flagrant lack of adoption.

If you can show people social proof that others are embracing your cause, you may
convince them to embrace it too.

Scarcity is a barrier to fulfillment. Nevertheless, there are people who like to overcome
barriers, so scarcity increases the buzz and desirability of your cause.

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way Daniele Vare

Once you find a way to agree, you are more likable, and when youre more likable,
youre more likely to overcome resistance. After establishing a toehold, beachhead, or
common ground, you can build from there.

According to Benedict Franklin, he that has once done you a kindness will be more
ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.

If youre doing something worthwhile, you will encounter competition. In fact, if you
dont encounter completion, you should wonder if you are doing something worthwhile
enough.

Its not always true that you get what you pay for, and if you have a loser of a cause,
money wont help. If you have a great cause, money wont matter. In practice, adding
financial incentives to a great cause may hurt it.

Invoking reciprocity is a powerful way to make enchantment last. Provide values upfront.
Give with joy, give early, give often and generously, give unexpectedly, and dont hesitate
to ask for a favor in return when you need it and the person youre asking can do it.

When people thank you for doing them a favor, I know youd do the same for me is a
much better response than Youre welcome.

The more an organization welcomes criticism and takes action to fix problems, the
stronger its relationship with its ecosystem.

Great speakers give the same presentations over and over, but these great speakers are so
good that their audiences dont realize this.

Enchanters dont sell products, services, or companies. They dont think in terms of the
cost of goods sold. Enchanters sell their dreams for a better future. This perspective is the
foundation for a presentation that transforms people. It makes them think of what could
be, not what is. It enables enchanters to draw energy from the audience and then send it
back at an even higher level.
 Practice your presentation until youre sick of it. Then practice more. If you think Steve
Jobs gets on stage and wings it, youre wrong. He spends hours preparing and hes
Steve Jobs.

Go to the venue early so you can circulate with the audience.

Make your presentation as many times as you can, because repetition improves the
rhetorician.

The best Twitter tip is to take manual engagement to the extreme. Before you respond to
people, look at their profiles so you can make your tweet more relevant.

Counterintuitive as this may seem, money is often not the sole, or even primary, reason
for loving a job. Motivating people is not as simple as feeding money into employees and
getting out results as if they are vending machines.

Provide the MAP Mastery: people want to improve their skills and competency;
Autonomy: management shouldnt constantly tell people what to do and how to do it;
Purpose: purpose refers to the meaning an organization makes in other words, how the
organization is making the world a better place.

People often judge their intentions against the results of others. By doing this, they
seldom find fault with their performance and almost always find shortcomings in the
performance of others.

If you want to enchant employees, you should reverse this outlook. Judge yourself by
what youve accomplished and others by what they intended.

Sometimes, you should just suck it up and deal with adversity, because thats what great
people do. And as a bonus, youll enchant the folks who work for you.

If there is a single principle that can guide your management style, it is that you should
never ask people to do something you wouldnt do.

One win can overcome a hundred losses, so celebrating success is a powerful way to
enchant employees. Emphasize team wins rather than individual ones and give credit to
all the employees involved.

At the end of every day, one of the most value assets of your organization goes home.
The question is whether they will return in the next morning. An enchanting boss makes
sure his or her employees know they are valuable and they are appreciated.

The best way to enchant your employer is to make him or her look good.
 You may think you see the big picture, but you dont see your employers big picture.

People who underpromise and overdeliver are more enchanting.

Employees with many professional friendships are more enchanting, because these
relationships make them more effective employees and provide social proof of their
wonderfulness.

Delivering bad news as soon as possible, because good bosses want bad news early so
that there are more opportunities to fix the problem. Bad bosses only want good news,
however, because they prefer to live in a bubble.

Dopeler Effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter, when they come at you
rapidly.

When you buy something cheap and bad, the best youre going to feel about it is when
you buy it. When you buy something expensive and good, the worst youre going to feel
about it is when you buy it.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Book Author: Robin Sharma

I have read many self-help books before this. Yet, I kept hearing reviews and praises about this
book from my circle, and so I decided to grab one of them from a book fair. The Monk Who
Sold His Ferrari is truly the book you need to read if youre striving to achieve a happier life.

The story translates the insights very well. The lessons in it are simple, but yet most people find
it hard to put them into practice on a daily basis. For me, its like a revision of those life lessons I
learned in the past, but in another perspective with an interesting story line.

My Reading Notes
Cultivate your mind, it will blossom your expectations.

There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There no such thing as a negative experience,
but only opportunity to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery.

To transcend pain, you must first experience it.

Success on the outside begins with the success on the inside.

 The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue. And it only does so as the
unintended side-effect of ones personal dedication to cause greater than oneself.

Daily incremental improvements produce lasting results, which in turn lead to positive
change.

One must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment
of like is a miracle and a mystery.

Never get into the petty habit of measuring your self-worth against other peoples net
worth.

You will never be able to hit a target that cannot see. People spend their whole lives
dreaming of becoming happier, living with more vitality and having an abundance of
passion. Yet they do not see the importance of taking even ten minutes a month to write
out their goals and to think deeply about the meaning of their lives.

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Practice the art of Kaizen by pushing yourself daily to make incremental improvements
consistently.

Courage allows you to run your own race, to do whatever you want to do because you
know that it is right, and gives you the self-control to persist where others have failed.

People grow the most when they enter the Zone of the Unknown.

The only limits on your life are those that you set yourself. When you dare to get out your
circle of comfort and explore the unknown, you start to liberate your true human
potential.

Fear is nothing more than a mental monster you have created, a negative stream of
consciousness.

Happiness comes through the progressive realization of a worthy objective.

Self-awareness, the very quality that separates humans from animals. Only a human
being can step out of himself and analyze what he is doing right and what he is doing
wrong. A dog cannot do this. A bird cannot do this. Even a monkey cannot do it. But you
can.
 You sow a thought, you reap an action. Reap an action, you sow a habit. Sow a habit, you
reap a character. Sow a character, you reap your destiny.

Failure is not having the courage to try, nothing more and nothing less. The only thing
standing between most people and their dreams is the fear of failures. Yet failure is
essential to success in any endeavor.

Implement small positive punishment to harness your discipline.

The more you nurture the embryo of self-discipline, the more it will mature.

Time is the most precious commodity and its non-renewable. Focus on your priorities
and maintain the balance by simplifying your life.

The quality of your life ultimately comes down to the quality of your contribution. Live
every day to contribute and to give.

Life doesnt always give you what you ask for, but it always gives you what you need.

To achieve true happiness, embrace the present, live in the now, and savor the journey
and live each day as your last.

Launch: The Secret Formula to Sell Almost

Anything Online
Book Author: Jeff Walker

Launch provides many great success stories of business owners taking their venture to the next
level, by using what the author Jeff Walker called the Product Launch Formula. Its obvious that
the content in this book is set up in a way to promote his higher level digital product online. But
it still covers many great points that are extremely useful to anyone who is new to internet
business model. Besides, it also delivers tips and inspirations in the context of entrepreneurship.

My Reading Notes
The Product Launch Formula is useful in every type of market and niche you can think of
even for tiny businesses.
 The Product Launch Formula is a system to get your target market so engaged with your
product or business that they almost beg you to sell it to them. And this all happens
before you even release the product.

The growth of the internet since the late 1990s has changed the world in a fundamental
way. The three areas of business with the biggest change are the speed of communication,
the cost of communication, and the interactivity of businesses.

People find conversations a lot more interesting than monologues or lectures.

The primary sequences in PLF: (1) Pre-prelaunch: you use it to start building
anticipation among your most loyal fans and validate your products before you start
creating it, (2) Prelaunch: this is the phrase where you release multiple pieces of high-
quality content to educate your prospect, (3) Launch: this is the day you actually send
your product or service out and start talking order, (4) Post-launch: This is the follow-up
phrase after your launch to communicate with your buying customers and prospects who
didnt buy.

Stories are powerful. They are how humans have passed down wisdom, knowledge, and
culture for as long as weve been around.

We all like to think that we make rational, logical decisions. But the vast majority of our
decisions and behaviors are based on emotion and mental programming and then we
use our precious logic to justify those decisions.

The email list is a list of people who have asked to subscribe to your emails. Of course,
you have to give people a reason to subscribe. It might be to receive a newsletter or get
daily updates or learn about daily special deals or find out about new content.

In the online world, your list is EVERYTHING.

When building your list, always send only the emails that people have asked to receive.

The reality is that spamming is a very quick way to put yourself out of business.

Remember that your email is landing in a very personal place the inbox of your readers
computer.

The first thing you need to do to build your list is getting clear on who your prospect is.

Build a squeeze page with a really strong opt-in offer in order to build up your list.

The secret to having a list is to just get started.

 Instead of delivering the equivalent of a super-long monologue to say buy this! buy this!
buy this!, turn the whole process into a conversation a launch conversation.

The nice mental triggers to pull off a successful launch: Authority, Reciprocity, Trust,
Anticipation, Likeability, Events and Ritual, Community, Scarcity, and Social Proof.

At the heart of every product and every offer, it offers some opportunity for change or
some solution to a problem.

If you have a great product thats going to make a big impact on your customers lives,
then you owe it to them to make the best offer possible to get them to overcome their
procrastination.

Launch your product using the lists other people have already built and curate using Joint
Venture launch, also known as affiliate marketing.

No one can be an island; you need to build a strong relationship in your industry.

In our current world, nearly everyone needs to be in the information business to some
degree. And adding an information component to a business either as part of the selling
process or as part of the product will become a huge part of almost every successful
business.

That corporate voice is death to sales; people want to buy from people.

In your business, you want to work on those things at which youre great. Dont spend
your time on the stuff thats difficult for you. Work on your strengths, not your
weaknesses. Hire people to do the things that are not in your genius zone.

Your most scarce resource is focus. You should start the day by focusing on your highest-
value activities before you get caught up in other peoples agendas for you.

Having great clients whom you love working with and serving is a fantastic shortcut to
loving your life.

Good Products Bad Products: Essential

Elements to Achieving Superior Quality
Book Author: James L. Adams

Good Products Bad Products is a very detailed book on how to improving the quality of
products not just in terms of performance and profits, but also in terms of human-fit, aesthetic,
craftsmanship, and eco-friendliness.

Although this book was written in the context of the industrial products, the content is still
extremely useful for anyone who involved in any kind of product design and creation regardless
your role as the investor, operator, engineer, designer, or user. It makes you give the term
quality a few thoughts from multiple angles and perspectives the book is provided.

My Reading Notes
All products could be improved.

Improved product quality, however, brings added value, increases competitive ability,
does not necessarily add to cost, and leads to higher demand.

Company growth would be determined by the need to provide enough resources to keep
new product development strong and engineers motivated and proud of the product line,
and that their product would be the best of their kind.

The universities are obsessed with theory, optimization, rigorous and logical thinking,
breakthroughs, and the next big thing not goodness. We teach critical thinking more
than creative thinking.

Characteristics of good products, such as elegance, and the emotions involved with
outstanding products, namely love, are not easily described by these languages you
cant put a number on elegance or love. It is also difficult to define such things with the
degree of clarity necessary to allow for improvement.

Traditions and values, especially in large organizations are extremely difficult to change.
It takes time to develop new sensitivities and values on the part of consumers as well as
products.

The Economic theory seems to have several embarrassing flaws when it comes to product
quality in dealing with anything that does not have a price determined by supply and
demand, such as the pleasure and pride the owner receives from an extraordinary crafted,
well-functioning, elegant and beautiful product.

Attributes of design thinking on product quality: creativity, comfort with many

intellectual disciplines, cost consciousness, coordination abilities, knowledge of the
customer, understanding of overall quality, and whole brain thinking.
 We like to quantify performance, but our interaction with products is extremely complex,
and putting numbers on such things as performance seems to simplify describing the
product.

Performance should include reliability, durability, serviceability, and maintainability as

factors, since failures, even if for reasons not directly the fault of the producer, reflect
poorly on the performance of the product.

Another example of the difficulty of quantifying performance is that more performance

is not necessarily better.

Traditionally, the price of a product has included the cost of design, materials, and
production plus associated profits and business expenses that are passed along to the
buyer. The true cost might also reflect social cost of environmental pollution, cleaning up
after the product, or exploitation of scarce resources.

The true cost of a product to a customer includes not only the purchase price and any
charges on financing but also repair and service, operating costs, insurance, and other
costs incurred while owning the product.

Advertising tends to exaggerate the positive qualities of the product that might not lead
the consumer to the desired outcome.

For producers of high-quality products, honesty is the best policy.

Traditionally, performance and cost goals and selling price are determined by marketing,
competition, technical feasibility, organizational capability, and the intuition of various
experienced people. But we should keep in mind the nature of the process may constrain
and guide the designer or manufacturer of the product.

Performance, cost, and price also look different when examined from different
viewpoints.

By changing perspectives, almost any product can be found to have a downside as

performance, cost and price increase.

Good products must fit people.

Designers often become so distracted by considerations other than human fit that it does
not receive the attention it deserves. Product function, cost, appearance, and reliability
may dominate the designers attention. Tight schedules or budgets do not encourage
prototypes and usage tests. Even worse, designers may design for themselves.
 We all believe in products being user-friendly, but as individual products become so, our
growing panoply of products seems to require increasing numbers of neurons to deal with
it.

Designing products for safety is the most challenging task, since people seem to be at
their most brilliant in devising ways to hurt themselves.

Craftsmanship is the process of making things extraordinarily well. It involves fits and
finished, obsession with details, tender loving care, and pride.

To neglect craftsmanship in the production of industrial products is foolish perhaps in

the long run suicidal. Craftsmanship is a state of mind that permeates design and
manufacturing and is highly appreciated by consumers.

Good craftsmanship results in aesthetic pleasure and pride both to the manufacturer and
to the user.

Despite its importance, craftsmanship is often inadequately stressed in industry, partly

because it is difficult to measure and describe in words and numbers.

Craftsmanship requires both left-brain and right-brain thinking, involving knowledge,

sophistication, and emotion.

Despite the fact that we humans pride ourselves on our cognitive abilities, we are heavily,
if not dominantly, influenced by emotion when assessing the quality of a product.

Our actions and responses are molded by a combination of thought and emotion.

If a user loves a product, everyone involved benefits if the user hates it everyone loses.

A major complexity in dealing with emotion stems from the great diversity in emotional
responses among humans.

Humans also carry conflicting emotions within themselves.

The social sciences have developed powerful methods of qualitative understanding of

societies that will be useful to the designers of products.

Most people involved in the design and production of industrial products do not even
spend a year becoming sensitive to, and comfortable with, aesthetic considerations.

Aesthetic considerations are not limited to appearance. Therefore, feel, smell, sound, and
in the case of food products, taste, are equally important considerations with their own
elements and principles.
 Products please us by satisfying certain criteria in our mind. Some of these seem innate,
such as pleasure from things that are precise, neat, and simple, and therefore probably
efficient and dependable.

Simple forms that have evolved through usage often become extremely elegant because
the unnecessary has been stripped away over time.

A symbol is something specific that typically stands for something more abstract.

The products of industry are also symbolic. They are specific, and rightly or wrongly, we
assume that they convey a message about the owner.

The symbolism associated with individual products is partly historical, partly a function
of the role they play, and partly a function of a conscious effort by the producers and
distributors.

Globalization is making it more difficult to correlate products with countries of origins.

One of the effects of globalization is increasing standardization of industrial products.

But there is a potential downside, which is the products lose their strong cultural identity.

Compatibility with the Earth and its ecosphere will unavoidably become increasingly
important in product quality.

Protecting the ecosphere and moving ourselves to a sustainable and high-quality level of
existence is a huge problem, but the making of the high-quality products needed to do so
is a huge opportunity.