19 posts tagged “book”
Currently I am reading 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran and is probably one of the deepest books I have come across for a while. To me its in the league of Ishmael and Way of the Peaceful Warrior
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge.
All all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
All all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself
and to one another, and to God (if you believe in one)
I highly recommend it and if you want to get a further taste of it, Google Books has about 18 pages of it here
So maybe its as simple as finding work that you are passionate about (rather than the paycheck) to get rid of the fugitive notion of work-life balance.
Imagine: Something you would be doing even if no one paid you for it
I just embarked on this rich and deeply stimulating book called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Apart from an excellent quote by the author in the Prologue that I tweeted here,
["We humans are not just a superficial race; we are a very unfair one"]
he also strongly emphasizes that life is about what we dont know. Its about being interested, not interesting.
Note the paradox in this social/web 2.0 world where people are busy claiming expertise, know it all and have authority based on how how many follow them on Twitter etc. Claim your expertise with an opinion by jumping in into the dicussion here.
Its a lot like the guy who lost his keys in the street somewhere.....When someone is asking him why he wasn't searching the rest of the street he replies "But I have light only under the street lights"!
More on it later but I had a post way back that titled 'Its about what you dont know, Stupid" so I was really excited to see Taleb reiterate that.
I have always loved and lived by Alan Toffler's quote "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
So when 2008 biennial news consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press came out with their results, it made me reflect a little since I read the print version of The San Jose Mercury News (Business and Technology section only) and almost all of The Wall Street Journal every single day along with many things online.
Being an Integrator - of news, books and people - I started thinking of the Perfect Storm for the main stream media, especially anything in the print.
A few observations that tie into Pew's study:
- Study: Americans [particularly young Americans] reading less than they used to
- 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book in 2006 [Some more stats here]
- The Success of Amazon's Kindle
- Literacy Debate: online, R U Really Reading?
- Nicolas Carr's piece in The Atlantic: Is Google Making Us Stupid
- In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998
- Social networking sites are very popular with young people, but they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites
It has already made some stragic inroads in that direction recently with a News feature and partnerships with New York Times and BusinessWeek. This is just the very tip of the potential LinkedIn has along with its Company feature and Recommendation Engine.
Imagine: People [primarily] Make News, People Report News and now People Deliver News!
Imagine: The business of Life ["All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players"]
Needless to say, having a wee bit of imagination is a good thing. Unlearning to learn some visual tools and skills seemed appropriate so here is what I have just picked up and reading currently.
More on it when I get through it but I can tell you that after about 40 pages, I am buying a big whiteboard for the home.
Swimmy, Stripes and Orbitting the Giant Hairball are
all excellent hand drawn visual presentations of very powerful messages. Furthermore, with coffee shops being a part-time habitat for me, napkins are always plentiful.
Matt Richtel has a very neat article in the New York Times here called "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop"
Some quotes from his article:
I am definitely not paid to blog but if you want to read what they have to say, there are some posts here and here"Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.
Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch had a post independent of this article that says a lot about the world of professional bloggers here called "Six Months In, And 600 Posts Later...The Worlds Of Blogging and Journalism Collide (In My Brain)". Some related quotes from this post are:
I won't be surprised if Matt Richtel's story was inspired by Erick's post."It is mostly breaking news, reporting facts and providing analysis. At TechCrunch, I am completely focused on blogging, 24/7"
That is because the blogging never stops. Just ask my wife and kids, who now mock me by repeating back my new mantra: “I’m almost done, just one more post.”
But we live or die by how fast we can post after a story breaks, if we can’t break it ourselves.
It tied in really well with my earlier post "Who Is Your Chauffeur" here. It was in response to a post on entrepreneurs but applicable to everyone and then of course, there was this post way back, which probably fits the best. The pictures of Stripe climbing (from the book Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus) away says it all.
It is really amazing how really simple things communicate the best. I have three books that use that extremely effectively and they all have one thing in common - they use presentation formats that appeal to children, not boring adults.
They all are:
- Simple
- Tell One Story and
- VERY importantly, Fuuuuuun!
1. Hope for the Flowers by
Trina Paulus recommended to me by my colleague, Tom Rolander here at CrossLoop.
Two caterpillars, Stripes and Yellow are the main characters, who go on to explore the 'more' in life
2. Orbitting the Giant Hairball by Gordon McKenzie recommended to me by a mentor of mine.
The Hairball is a reference to all the policies and rules that grow and thrive at corporations. You can see many of those in personal lives through patterns and a daily rut
3. Swimmy by Leo Lionni . My most recent favorite that I picked up is from Robert Kalin, The Founder and CEO of Etsy. It is extremely applicable to startups but can be applied to the power of relationships - professional and/or family.
Watch Robert reading it below and you get the distinction of being one of those few who have read at least one book this year:
Imagine: Being FUNomenal
I had a fantastic opportunity yesterday to attend a Churchill Club (They organize some of the best events in the Valley, btw) event called "Who Do You Trust? Trends in Trust and Influence for the Next Generation of Business Leaders". A post on that definitely coming up later.(I tweeted this event)
The one reason why I attended was to get a chance to see and listen to Robert Cialdini, Author of one of my all time favorite that I had referred to in this blog some time ago - “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”
One big take away I had from the event was an observation from his studies about "credible communicators" with reference to reporters, bloggers, social media folks, msm, friends etc - anyone can be a source of information that you might trust. These communicators had two characteristics:
- They are percieved as experts/ authorities in their domain
- Very importantly and critical, they were perceived as being objective and unbiased
For the latter, those who were perceived as trustworthy were straightshooters having built that reputation over some years. If you do not have the 'many years' luxury, here is what many people do:
State a weakness first and then right after that they follow it up with their argument or statement.
The example Dr. Cialdini gave was for Avis: We Are #2 But We Try Harder
Being personally always fascinated and studying social behavior (online and offline) - this blog being only one form of expression with the subtitle "Everything social offline, Online", I was very keen on making an attempt to sign up for his social experiments/thesis. After a quick introduction and chat, I signed up to be a part of this expertiments and thesis. He gracefull accepted my offer and now the hard part - waiting for the next steps assuming the right people in his team actually need more volunteers.
Imagine: I am not as good as David Pogue but I believe that CrossLoop is the best free software to help someone. To establish further trustworthiness, here is a Disclaimer: I am one of the Co-Founders of CrossLoop.
- It allows one to break conventional wisdom - some also call that wisdom of the crowds or herd mentality
- It enables one to easily differentiate
- It can have a revolutionary (creation) or evolutionary (improvement) outcome
- It enables one to explore the unknown and embrace failure, not fear it. If you fail fast, you get faster to your goal and eliminate more steps to your goal
- It magnifies discovery
With the above in mind and the following observation by Cathie Black (that I picked up - Yes - in The Wall Street Journal), I just ordered The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, a choreographer.
"My favorite lines are about the importance of naïveté, which she sees as a great advantage. Tharp renames it "forever the child" or "the ability to not know." She writes: "You do not know that failure can hurt, or even that you can fail." Not a bad state of mind, in work and in life."
Being a relatively new father and watching my daughter grow closely, I could not agree more.
Furthermore, one of my all time favorite books is Orbiting The Giant Hairball - A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie - another artist. He brings out the significance of naivete and all the advantages of being a child. At what age, did you stop raising your hand?
Imagine: A blog about all things you DO NOT know
I have a few posts up on happyness and I would like to especially refer to this one with reference to this article in The New York Times - In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich, by Gary Rivlin.
Obviously the observations by The Journal and The Economist ring true when you read the entire article that:
- Wealth is not making Americans happier and
- Rivalry is a big cause for it. The World is just not Enough.
I firmly believe that America is all about choices and it is our job to choose. Many obviously want that 'more' in life - it is really amazing how many here in the Valley (and probably at many other places as well) are climbing "this" pillar hard. Not one seems to know what is at the top but climb they do ... faster and faster.....others are, aren't they.... nudging others out, walking all over others and sacrificing time with their friends, family and children.
It only gets harder since they do not seem to have a strong Why. Friedrich Nietzsche is known to have said "He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how"
Imagine: The 'y' in happyness
My Groups
-
Voxaholic Updated: 5 minutes ago
-
The Vox Meetup Group Updated: 54 minutes ago
-
The Book Club Updated: Yesterday
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
