All posts tagged books

Treat Your Ideas as Tools [guest post]

by Jason on January 1, 2012 in Essays with 7 Comments
Hey guys,

I wanted to share with you a guest post from Aaron Tucker, one of the guys on Sebastian Marshall’s One Week Book Project team. In this post he shares some valuable insights into how you ought to think about your ideas and separating your beliefs from your identity.

The book itself, Ikagi, is phenomenal. I bought it, read it and have great things to say (amazon review). 4.5 stars from 24 people means I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Hope you enjoy the guest post!

Jason

Treat Your Ideas as Tools

I’m Aaron Tucker, and I just led the project management on The One Week Book Project.

This started with Sebastian Marshall putting together a team to take a principled stand against badness in publishing. It was my idea to do it only one week to show publishing what’s possible in the modern age.

We put together a kick ass team, collaborated intimately, and we produced a work that people are calling “life changing” in just a single week.

The title is IKIGAI, the Japanese word for “all-consuming passion, raison d’etre.” You should get a copy, it might change your life:

I’m here to talk about what I learned, so you can learn from it.

The hardest part wasn’t any of the actual work – picking the right posts, curating them, editing them, collaborating with the team, sometimes staying up late at night on Skype – all of that was fun.

The hardest part was owning up to the fact that I chose content for the book. Sebastian makes controversial points, and I worried that I’d be taking a path where people would eventually disagree with me.

It’s like the awkward pause in a dinner conversation, or the moment when you’re not sure if you’re about to put your foot in your mouth. You don’t want to say something that looks stupid, or reflects badly on you.
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Take My Readership Survey and Win a Kick-Ass Book!

by Jason on September 13, 2011 in General with 1 Comment

It’s really satisfying to run this blog because I feel that it helps people and adds value to their lives. After posting about how I’ve been blogging for over a year, I’ve decided its a good time to do a reader survey. I talked about discovering my audience but then thought to myself – “Is that just my impression or is that real? Maybe I should get some data!”

I sent this out first to my email subscribers – and the results have been interesting. I don’t want to give it way yet – because I’m curious to see if the trends are mapped by the broader causal readers.

By doing this survey, you can help me better understand how to improve it and make it even more useful, actionable and worth reading. To thank you for your support, I’ll be selecting two survey takers to win one of the kick-ass books below [1].

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard - great book on understanding how people / organizations enact sustainable change.
The 4-Hour Body - Tim Ferriss’s second best-seller. There is something here for everyone – if you want to upgrade your physical state, this is how you do it.
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? – the best Seth Godin book I’ve ever read. Covers a wide range of topics from work to leadership to innovation and highly recommended.

I’ll publish the survey results on my blog and strive to adjust my writing to fit the request. Note – I haven’t made all the fields required but the giveaway only applies to people who write at least a sentence or two in each of the 2 textboxes.

Thanks so much for your help and regularly scheduled posts will continue in a few days!
Jason

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Make Time To Read

by Jason on April 21, 2011 in Essays with 3 Comments

Jason Shen

I’ve always been a reader.

Growing up, I would read everything I could put my hands on. I read 20 books one summer to win a library contest. I love reading fantasy novels filled with dragons and spells and magicians – to the point where I’d hide books inside whatever reading in English and read during class.

As I got older, I started to enjoy non fiction, particularly business, psychology and personal development. I like that I can get useful, practical and actionable knowledge that I can use to make my work and life more successful.

Earlier this year, I ran into to a VC I knew. He had a friend with him who saw that I was holding a book – The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman (a book densely packed with wisdom, by the way). This VC’s friend asked to see the book and examined it briefly.

“When I was in business school, one of my professors was an angel investor. Made over 90 major investments and lots of money. He said he never read business books – they were a waste of time.” he said, as he handed the book back to me.

“My recommendation? Don’t read it.”

That guy is a complete moron.

That attitude really pisses me off. It’s one thing to say you don’t have time to read (which I respond – do you have time to eat? to sleep? to exercise? Because reading is on that level). It’s another thing to say it’s actually useless to read.

I once heard someone say that reading a book is like having a conversation with the author. Which means I’ve been able to chat with some really smart dudes: the former/current CEO’s of General Electric, Zappos and Amgen (one of the most successful biotech companies in the world) for instance. Those guys poured hundreds of hours into distilling decades of business knowledge into books that I’ve had a chance to read.

If you’re interested in succeeding in business and that’s not worth 15 bucks and a few hours of you’re time, you’re hallucinating.

Perhaps that professor was able to succeed without reading business books but that does not at all make it a broadly applicable heuristic.

Whatever field you want to succeed in, I guarantee there are books that you ought to read that would give you immense value and a competitive edge. So make the time. It’s so worth it.

I’ll end with a quote from Mark Twain:

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

I know what kind of man the VC’s friend and his professor falls under – what about you?

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Use This Navy SEAL Technique to Virtually Guarantee Victory

by Jason on February 17, 2011 in General with 4 Comments

In the excellent book Unleash the Warrior Within, former Navy SEAL Richard Machowicz explains a concept called “Advantage-Stacking”:

You want to stack so many advantages in your favor that, when the order comes, when the opportunity presents itself, you can’t help but win. Every successful person, whether they realize it or not, stacks advantages.

I love this concept. By incrementally improving various elements of yourself and your position, you can dramatically enhance your chances of success in whatever you’re trying to do. Here are a few ways you can stack advantages and win:

  • Commitment – How serious are you reaching this goal? Are you willing to do whatever is necessary to get the job done? A strong commitment is a powerful advantage.
  • Focus - Do you know exactly what you want or is it a more vague idea? Will you get distracted about other shiny objects? The more clear you are on exactly what you’re trying to achieve, the better.
  • Expertise – How much do you know about this domain/industry/practice? A deep level of knowledge and experience is a huge advantage against common/foolish mistakes and ignorant newcomers. Continue reading →
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IDEO’s Vision of the Future of Books (video)

by Jason on November 17, 2010 in video with 1 Comment

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book. Watch global design and innovation consultancy IDEO’s vision for the future of the book. What new experiences might be created by linking diverse discussions, what additional value could be created by connected readers to one another, and what innovative ways we might use to tell our favorite stories and build community around books?

www.ideo.com

I find these explorations into the future of things both fascinating and saddening. Because they never come true. They are at once a thoughtful exploration of what could be – based on what we know of current desires, interests and trends. At the same time, they are often not “out there” enough or require large changes in people’s behaviors to be successful.

For instance, does anyone really thing that fiction writers (besides Cory Doctrow and Rick Rordian) are going to adopt “non-linear” narratives? It’s hard enough to write compelling regular narratives, much less something that requires clues, text messages, photos, etc.

But anyway, they are still fun to watch and interesting to think about, especially when it comes out of a design shop as awesome as IDEO.

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