10% Happier is a book about Dan Harris and his discovery of meditation. He takes us through his personal journey, starting with his addiction to the rush of adrenaline from covering live news events in dangerous locations to his subsequent breakdown on live TV as a news anchor. This prompted him to seek out the … Read more
Deep Work is a book about prioritization. It’s about structuring your day more thoughtfully and getting the most out of the finite attention you have. Things like social media and the many internet tools and distractions that exist today are a media junkie’s dream. And if you’re someone who uses those tools for work, you … Read more
My Notes For Maps Of Meaning 1 (2017) – Jordan Peterson Maps of Meaning 1 (Order vs Chaos) In my Maps of Meaning 1 notes, I summarize the introduction to Peterson’s lectures by following his arguments that start with a historical journey that includes the political war between Capitalism and Communism and the archetypal war … Read more
Why is Stoicism suddenly mainstream? I wouldn’t have imagined that in 2018, ancient philosophies would become more relevant. I decided to put some books on Stoicism on my reading list. to see what the hype was about. Meditation is the first book that introduced me to Stoicism. (Stoicism translates to Stoa or “porch”, which is … Read more
Antifragile is about how we should measure risk. Taleb starts by providing a basic definition that will be the focus of the entire book. Some events or objects are anti-fragile. Others are fragile. Something that is fragile is vulnerable to stress. Ex: A porcelain coffee cup. A robust object can withstand shocks. Ex: A steel door. … Read more
It is easier to live in a comfortable illusion and believe that people are basically good, and that you are too. Taken to an extreme, this can become pathological. The person that does not want to see reality for what it is does not solve their problems, but only compounds them. Where bad eyesight can … Read more
“I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself.” – Michel De Montaigne Self-Determination Theory When something is intrinsically motivating, you don’t care about the external reward. If you intrinsically enjoy playing music, you will do so even if you are not paid to and there is no … Read more
The most painful death is the ego death. It requires you to take stock of who you are and what you believe in and make a conscious effort to destroy the fundamental constructs of your mental models about the world. But what is the ego? Unlike the Freudian definition – which situated the ego as … Read more
Character to Personality “We are social creatures” – true, but what happens when we care too much about what people think? In her book Quiet, Susan Cain describes how the US moved from being a character culture to a personality culture. Qualities such as honor, hard work, and loyalty were common ideals, but eventually were … Read more
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time” – Jim Rohn As one stage in life ends and another begins, you will think about how fleeting time is. It will occur to you that there are things you could have done, that will have made the present … Read more
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