Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story is a powerful warning about the dangers of both intellectual lethargy and censorship. In a dystopian future that’s eerily familiar, Americans have replaced philosophical and critical thought with mindless entertainment, and the government burns books to keep the populace peacefully unenlightened. The novel made me more appreciative of books, and more disgusted with the current culture that’s obsessed with worthless, “fun” entertainment.

As the plot unfolds, we learn that Americans have stopped reading, turning to radio and TV for entertainment. In the past, minorities of every race, religion, and political party began ripping offending pages out of books. To restore order, the government began burning books and suppressing the intellectuals and philosophers whose ideas were disturbing the peace.

One of the characters, Faber, explains that their oppressed, bookless culture lacks 3 things: quality of information, leisure to digest it, and the right to act on it. He regrets not speaking up when the book burnings begin. One of his major points, however, is that the books themselves aren’t magical; it’s the ideas they contain, any medium could carry the ideas.

I’ve known about this book for years, but finally decided to read it after seeing it on NPR’s Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books (book #7).

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Review: Great by Choice by Jim Collins

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is an engaging exploration of why some companies become great while others don't, despite experiencing similar uncertainty, chaos, and “luck”. It shows that greatness depends on action and discipline, not circumstance or luck. Essentially, success depends more on what we do than what the world does to us. This finding is encouraging and empowering, since we often feel that we’re at the mercy of forces outside our control.

I liked the point that one of the most important forms of luck is people luck, or "Who Luck"; having the right mentor, partner, friend, etc. Because the right people can be key to success, I've been trying to expand my network and maintain strong relationships.

I read this for the Holland Chamber of Commerce Business Book Group. Jim Collins is known for his thorough research, and this is no exception. I liked this book more than Good to Great (see my review) because it’s more about individuals than companies, so I found it easier to apply the lessons to myself and my web design business, OptimWise.

Core behaviors of 10Xers
Fanatic discipline: they have relentless focus, independence of mind, and extreme consistency.
Empirical creativity: they base decisions on empirical evidence, not conventional wisdom or authority figures.
Productive paranoia: they’re hyper-vigilant of changes in their environment, and respond with preparation and productive action.
Level 5 ambition: they balance personal humility and professional will. They’re ambitious for a cause greater than themselves.

20 mile march
Hit specified performance markers consistently over the long term. This requires high performance in hard times, and holding back in good times.

Fire bullets, then cannonballs
Once you’ve met your industry’s innovation threshold, being innovative doesn’t matter much.
Bullets are low-risk, low-cost tests to see what will work. Based on the resulting empirical evidence, concentrate your resources and fire a cannonball (a higher-risk, higher-cost action). Be creative, but validate your ideas. Then, keep 20 Mile Marching to make the most of the big success.

Leading above the Death Line
Prepare for bad events by building cash reserves and taking other precautions.
Pay attention to risk and respond to changes.
The sign of mediocrity isn’t unwillingness to change, but chronic inconsistency (always changing with every new trend; being controlled rather than taking control).
“Not all time in life is equal. Life serves up some moments that count much more than other moments. We will all face moments when the quality of our performance matters much more than other moments.”

SMaC
Create a SMaC recipe: a Specific, Methodical, and Consistent success formula, and amend it only rarely. Think of the US Constitution and its amendments.

Return on luck
The authors define luck as a significant, unpredictable event.
10Xers didn’t have more good or bad luck, but they had a better return on luck (ROL).
The question isn’t whether you’ll have luck (good or bad), but what you’ll do with it. The problem isn’t a lack of good luck; it’s failing to execute on it.

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Review: 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books to Transform Your Life, From Timeless Sages to Contemporary Gurus

50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books to Transform Your Life, From Timeless Sages to Contemporary Gurus by Tom Butler-Bowdon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a decent introduction to some of the most popular self-help books. It does a good job summarizing the main points of each book, explaining each book’s influence or claim to fame, and giving some biographical information about each book’s author. Since it’s really a reference book, I felt like I was being dipped into and out of the ideas, rather than immersed in them. For that, there’s no substitute for the books themselves.

The author uses a looser definition of self-help than I had anticipated. I expected modern self-help books like How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In addition to these, the list also includes books like Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Thoreau’s Walden. There are also several ancient philosophical and religious works such as The Bhagavad-Gita and The Bible.

I didn’t like the list's inclusion of New Age, paranormal “spiritual” works, advocating pseudo-scientific nonsense about using your mind to influence the physical world, bring good luck, and heal yourself and others.

Only a few of the books from my self-help shelf appear on this list. The list of all 50 books is available on Butler-Bowden’s site.

Common themes in self-help books
• Take control of your life, and take action! Don’t just float through life.
• Set high goals.
• Success depends on hard work, not luck.
• Be optimistic; think positively.
• Maintain a mindset of abundance, not poverty.
• Achieve “flow”, the mental state in which work comes naturally and brings joy and fulfillment.

Additional notes
• Effectiveness is more important than efficiency. (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
• Be prosperity-conscious, not poverty-conscious. Appreciate the abundance of what you have, rather than focusing on what you lack. (Real Magic)
• Benjamin Franklin embodied the essence of self-evaluation and self-improvement. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is an excellent guide to self-improvement.

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Review: The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is unsurprisingly “touchy-feely”, but it contains insightful and practical lessons about love in marriage. Chapman says that people express love in five broad ways, or “love languages”, and he shows how to determine and speak your spouse’s love language. Chapman stresses the importance of communication and expectations in marriage. The book is mostly about love between spouses, but there’s a chapter near the end applying the lessons to parent-child relationships.

It sounds cheesy, but the main concept is that each person has a “love tank” that must be filled for a person to feel loved. Your goal in marriage is to keep your spouse’s love tank full by speaking their love language. I liked Chapman’s idea of a Love Tank Game in which spouses ask each other each evening after work, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how full is your love tank? What can I do to fill it?”

My pastor recommended this book during premarital counseling. My wife had already read it, and recommended it as well. Chapman is a Christian and he references the Bible throughout the book, but the lessons apply to anyone regardless of religion.

The 5 Love Languages
Words of Affirmation: praising & complimenting
Quality Time: undivided attention
Receiving Gifts: spontaneous gifts
Acts of Service: chores and errands
Physical Touch: hugging, kissing, sex

Clues to determine your love language
What you ask your spouse for
How you express love to your spouse
What you love or hate about your spouse
Take the quiz at http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessment...

While reading the book, I guessed that my primary love language is Words of Affirmation or Quality Time. According to the quiz, my languages rank as Quality Time, followed closely by Words of Affirmation, then Acts of Service, Physical Touch, and Receiving Gifts. I’m a minimalist, so gifts aren’t very important to me. A good point for me to hear was that even if you’re frugal and rarely buy yourself gifts, you’d do well to buy gifts for your spouse, if gifts are her love language. It’s not about you, it’s about your spouse.

Additional notes
Request, don’t demand that your spouse perform acts of service.
Don't give advice unless you’re asked for it; just listen and sympathize.

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Review: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book opened my eyes to how humans make decisions, and how easily they can be influenced by their peers and by the way choices are presented to them. Through engaging research and entertaining anecdotes, it shows how to “architect” choices to nudge people towards certain decisions. The authors call this “libertarian paternalism”, because it uses incentives to motivate desired behavior rather than using command and control measures like laws and bans. I highly recommend this book for its practical insight into behavioral psychology and behavioral economics.

In an ideal world, people would have the time, knowledge, and motivation to make the perfect choices. In reality, humans are irrational, emotional, ignorant, apathetic, or downright lazy, so simply providing as many choices as possible rarely works. Libertarian paternalism strikes a balance between freedom of choice and incentivizing behavior.

I read this book because it was listed in .net Magazine’s The top 25 books for web designers and developers. I picked up a few ideas to use when creating websites for my web design business, OptimWise: use incentives to nudge users in certain directions, provide good default options, and gracefully handle user errors.

The authors explain that humans have “automatic” and “reactive” systems; the automatic system is the subconscious, emotional “gut instinct”, while the reactive system is the intellectual conscious. Nudges help the reactive system overpower the automatic system.

The authors use liberal paternalism to advocate specific policies for public and private institutions, dealing with topics in personal finance (saving, retirement, debt, mortgages), health care, education, and politics. They also address the ethical issues of choice architecture.

I love personal finance, so I especially liked seeing how nudges can lead to better retirement saving and investing. The authors show how something as simple as automatic enrollment in retirement plans results in a significant increase in participation.

I liked the RECAP (Record, Evaluate, and Compare Alternative Prices) concept, which says vendors and service providers should give consumers a statement of the costs associated with different hypothetical patterns of service usage to help them make informed choices about things like electricity and gas consumption.

I liked the authors’ idea that people should be able to waive the right to sue for medical malpractice, in exchange for lower medical costs. I’m not sure how I feel about their proposal to privatize marriage; they say this would give religious organizations the freedom to set rules about homosexuality, divorce, etc., while allowing the government to honor civil unions with benefits.

6 principles of good choice architecture
• iNcentives: motivate behavior with incentives
• Understand mappings: show the outcomes that will result from the choices
• Defaults: provide default options
• Give feedback: show people the effect their choices are having
• Expect error: make choices foolproof
• Structure complex choices: present complex choices in easily understood ways

Miscellaneous notes
• The more you ask for, the more you get.
• People hate losses twice as much as they like gains.
• People like to do what they believe most people think is right. They also like to do what most people actually do.

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Review: A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4) by George R.R. Martin

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is my least favorite of the Song of Ice and Fire books so far. Why? This book follows only half of the series' characters, and I don't like most of them, especially Tommen, Cersei, Robert Arryn, and Jaime. I didn't mind the stories of Brienne and Samwell as much, but I much prefer to read about Tyrion, John Snow, and even Daenerys.

As its title indicates, the book contains several violent fights, so readers with bloodlust won't be disappointed. It's also full of the series' usual richly detailed descriptions of people, towns, traditions, religions, and foods, bringing the stories to life.

I didn't enjoy it, but I'm considering this book a necessary bridge to A Dance with Dragons and the rest of the series.

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Review: The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this thought-provoking and relevant look at how social media is bringing small-town shop values back into business. Vaynerchuck shows that businesses need to build long-term, personal relationships with their customers by caring about them. Social media, because it magnifies word of mouth, is more effective at making emotional connections than broadcast marketing.

Vaynerchuck uses stats, case studies, and firsthand experience to make his points and recommend actions. Although he mentions several specific platforms, the ideas transcend the tools. I was inspired by Vaynerchuck’s Crush It : Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion and I plan to use the concepts in this book to make OptimWise succeed in the Thank You Economy.

How all businesses should use social media
• Care. Respond to comments and invite people to share their thoughts. Outcare competitors that are bigger, cheaper, or more popular.
• Show up first to connect with early adopters (first-mover advantage).
• Be authentic. Be yourself and speak from the heart.
• Connect with the individual, not the business. Behind every B2B is a C.
• Build a community to turn buyers in to advocates. Join or create conversations around topics related to your product or service. Thank people when they provide feedback, positive or negative.
• Focus on quality, not quantity of fans/followers.

Consumers in the Thank You Economy
• People do business with people they like.
• 70% of people turn to family and friends for purchasing advice.
• Make every customer feel special.
• Dissatisfied customers are opportunities to fix problems and build relationships.

Social Media in the Thank You Economy
• Social media takes time; it’s a marathon.
• Provide quality content followed by quality engagement.
• Evoke emotion (positive or negative) so people are compelled to share.
• Let consumers decide that they want to know you; don’t try to persuade them.
• Pull people in; don’t push your message out.
• Start and join conversations about your general interests first to build relationships. Later, talk specifically about your business.

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