Feynman is one of the brightest physicists of the 20th century who also happened to be a talented lecturer and an author of a book which is fun to read. Here are some excerpts from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” that I found interesting:
On freedom:
So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel heed by a need to maintain your position In the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
Isn’t it a modern luxury that very few of us can afford?
On pointless communication
When it came time to evaluate the conference at the end, the others told how much they got out of it, how successful it was, and so on. When they asked me, I said, “This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There’s a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!
On mindfulness and watching your thoughts become dreams:
I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don’t notice that they’re not logically connected until you ask yourself, “What made me think of that?” and you try to work your way back, and often you can’t remember what the hell did make you think of that!
So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they’re completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.
After four weeks of sleeping all the time, I wrote my theme, and explained the observations I had made. At the end of the theme I pointed out that all of these observations were made while I was watching myself fall asleep, and I don’t really know what it’s like to fall asleep when I’m not watching myself. I concluded the theme with a little verse I made up, which pointed out this problem of introspection:
Better late than never. 201 was quite a year with lots of risks, mistakes and challenges. A lot learned and it’s time to jump start 2012 and make it awesome. As I am not a big fun of sharing personal stuff and goals, let me share with you the best books, films and music I stumbled upon in 2011. Who knows, maybe you will finding something interesting for yourself as well. Or maybe I will caution you from something that is not all that great. So, what was worth spending time on this year?
Despite pretentious title and correspond cover, “Suceed” fully met my expectations and appeared to be not an empty self-help “You can do it all” rant but more or less practical interpretation of scientific research in a field of psychology and motivation. Probably, the biggest compliment I can give a books is to say that I wrote down many notes in my Evernote while reading it. In this case notes were record-high long. Basically it’s my notes that I’d like to share here. Otherwise, how would I force myself to re-format and make them more structured?
Book is about setting your goals in a way that increases your chances to achieve them and enjoy the process. Percent of trivialities not as high as I expected it to be which is quite rare for self-help/self-development books. I personally found quite many ideas to be practically applicable and I hope so will you. So, what is my summary?
Difficult goals & self-control
Usually, it pays off to set difficult goals. They usually bring much higher gratification than the ones you, honestly speaking, considered to be quite easy to achieve. For example, corporate departments that identified themselves with hard work usually appeared to be happier as well.
Metaphorically speaking, self-control is a muscle. Immediately after its usage it gets temporarily weaker (you ability control yourself is lower) but in overall it grows and develops as you use it.
Example of weakness: 2 groups of people were presented with 2 plates, one with a chocolate and another one with radishes. While 1 groups was allowed to eat as much chocolate as it wanted, another one could only eat radishes. Than, both groups were given a difficult (in fact, unsolvable) task and the 1 group performed much better (didn’t give up for longer time). Same effect after attempts to suppress laughter when watching comedy, etc.
Positive thinking
It’s very important to distinguish between 2 types of positive thinking. First type is believing that you are capable of achieving a goal one day. Second type is expecting that it will be easy for you to resist all the temptations and get through all the obstacles.
1 type is important and helpful, while the 2 type might be harmful and dangerous. Instead of expecting your way to be easy you should better realistically expect it to be quite challenging but prepare for obstacles and believe that you will be able to get through them.
When setting goals you might use this tactic: name one barrier or sacrifice associated with a goal and than one reason why this goal is important for you. Then, repeat it few times. It allows you to think more realistically and decide whether you really want to pursue this particular one.
I listened to Getting to Yes by William Ury who is probably the most recognized negotiations expert few months ago.
If you never heard about William Ury, short TED talk might be the best way to get to know about his impressive career:
And here are the notes that I wrote down while reading it. Probably they will be of some use for you as well:
1. Always set a goal of negotiation form the very beginning: “You want to sell at the higher price and I want to buy at the lower price. Let’s find the fair price that can both agree upon.”
2. Always try to understand interests behind a position. How did you arrive at that price? Why do you consider it just?
3. Always repeat the position of another side: “Correct me if I’m wrong. Do I understand correctly that you consider this price to be just because…”
4. Always set a principle, external standard to judge the agreement. E.g. fair solution.
5. Separate a person from a problem. “We are very grateful for everything you did for us but it’s very important for us to arrive at the fair solution.”
Business model generation book that I’m currently reading is a brilliant example of how complicated topic can be structured and explained visually so simple that even a kid would understand it.
CONS
It should be noted that it doesn’t go into much deep granularity level, doesn’t give you numbers, formulas or ready-to-use solutions.
PROS
However, it does give you food for thought, important questions to ask and what’s more even more important a great thinking framework that can also be used for brainstorming and collaboration.
Book with a stupid name Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner appeared to be quite surprisingly interesting and was listened on my way to work and back home in a week or so. I would probably even say that the sequel is better than the first book – Freakonomics.
Authors position themselves as economists doing research into non-conventional topics. However, I feel that it would be more appropriate to say that book is in the sociology field. Yes, individual & group level economics is often discussed, usually through the prism of decision-making. But in overall it’s more about psychology.
Topics covered are global warming (or cooling?) & ecology, technological & scientific breakthroughs, economics of prostitution, algorithmic search for potential terrorists based on banking activity and human altruism which is covered in more details in video below. In other words, as authors confess themselves, there is no uniting topic.
Superfreakonomics is full of curious facts. For instance, you have statistically higher chances to get into trouble if you walk home drunk then if you drive home drunk.
All topics are presented as stories revolving around particular characters and therefore easily digested. One of the main lessons sounds quite banal and generic: “people respond to incentives, sometimes unpredictably”. However, we forget about it more often than we’d like to think.
You might use this RSA video made from co-author’s speech as a trailer of some sort:
Update 2010.09.22: It turns out they make a movie based on the first book! Trailer is below:
Finished listening to My Stroke of Insight by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor today. It appeared to be as interesting as I expected, so I’d like to share it with you.
Jill is a Harvard PhD who built a highly successful career in science. Everything went just perfect till the moment when she got a stroke on one of her mornings. As a result, she lost almost all of her cognitive and physical skills, but survived. Moreover, eventually she finally recovered which took more than 8 years. Step be step she learned everything: from speech recognition, to walking and reading.
The Book tells her personal story and gives a basic understanding of our brain. According to author our brain functions can be separated by hemispheres: left and right. Right one lives in a present moment and is responsible for our sensory feelings, intuition, and perception of universe as a whole. Left one in turn is our rational mind, future planning, past evaluation, speech, critical thinking, etc.
After the stroke Jill lost functions of left hemisphere. The most interesting part is that despite the loss of cognitive functions, she describes her experience with sincere rapture. She emotionally tells us about feeling of “deep inner piece and bliss” and expresses ideas that I highly connected with a topic of mindful meditation that kind of follows me last month. BTW, here are two awesome Google Talks about it: first, second. I even decided to listen to book of the latter one, but that’s a separate story.
Quite an interesting book which summarizes ideas of economics of happiness (happynomics), sustainable development, ecological footprint and others. Sometimes it’s a little bit ideological: anti-consumerism, anti-credit, anti-FED, etc. But still there are lots, lots of interesting and familiar ideas. Both on individual level and on the level of world economy and national economy. I personally read it because it’s closely connected with my area of interest in terms of Ph.D. paper. But I’m sure it’s worth reading even if you did not have a particular interest in these specific topics. Overall, it’s an insightful book with fresh ideas.
2. Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, torrent.
Appeared to be much more of a non-fiction type than fiction compared to what I expected. Less of a personal story of Auschwitz and more of a scientific paper and a quick look on the 20th century history of psychotherapy. From Freud’s “will to pleasure” to the “will to power” and then to Frankl’s logotheraphy and “will to meaning”. If you’re into psychology or in the current search for meaning in your own life, I’m sure you’re going to enjoy this one, it’s a classic.
Currently reading: What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis (torrent), Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson and Crack the Case by David Orkhall. Another one that I still cannot finish is awesome On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser.
Did you read anything worthy recently? Care to share?
BTW! Question from twitter: how are you searching for books (both, audio and ebooks) if neither isohunt.com nor ebdb.net helps?
ZZE.ST is the blog where I share my personal insights, experiences, lifehacks and researches that made my life more fun & interesting and will probably do the same to you.
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So, what was worth spending time on this year?
