Nine Lies About Work | Marcus Buckingham, Ashley Goodall

You crave feedback. Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. Your competencies should be measured and your weaknesses shored up. Leadership is a thing. These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As strengths guru and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham and Cisco Leadership and Team Intelligence head Ashley Goodall tell there are some big lies--distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking--that we encounter every time we show up for work. Nine lies, to be exact. They cause dysfunction and frustration, ultimately resulting in workplaces that are a pale shadow of what they could be. But there are those who can get past the lies and discover what's real. These freethinking leaders recognize the power and beauty of our individual uniqueness. They know that emergent patterns are more valuable than received wisdom and that evidence is more powerful than dogma. With engaging stories and incisive analysis, the authors reveal the essential truths that such freethinking leaders will recognize immediately: that it is the strength and cohesiveness of your team, not your company's culture, that matter most; that we should focus less on top-down planning and more on giving our people reliable, real-time intelligence; that rather than trying to align people's goals we should strive to align people's sense of purpose and meaning; that people don't want constant feedback, they want helpful attention. This is the real world of work, as it is and as it should be. Nine Lies About Work reveals the few core truths that will help you show just how good you are to those who truly rely on you.

Self Knowledge | Mark Manson

Emotions are not a choice. Behavior is.

Everything is Fucked | Mark Manson

“Values” means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that’s worth striving for. And “community” means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things. Without a community, we feel isolated, and our values cease to mean anything.

Without values, nothing appears worth pursuing. And without control, we feel powerless to pursue anything. Lose any of the three, and you lose the other two. Lose any of the three, and you lose hope.

This assumption (that we must use our rational mind to dominate our emotions) has trickled down through the centuries and continues to define much of our culture today. Let’s call it the “Classic Assumption.” The Classic Assumption says that if a person is undisciplined, unruly, or malicious, it’s because he lacks the ability to subjugate his feelings, that he is weak-willed or just plain fucked up. The Classic Assumption sees passion and emotion as flaws, errors within the human psyche that must be overcome and fixed within the self.

How to Win Friends and Influence People | Dale Carnegie

Bernard Shaw once remarked: ‘If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.’ Shaw was right. Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don’t you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

It takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft manoeuvring he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged although nobody was hurt. Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the aeroplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying had been fuelled with jet fuel rather than gasoline. Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his aeroplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well. You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticise him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, ‘To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.

The 5 AM Club | Robin Sharma

Robin Sharma is one of the best writers I like but his book “the 5 AM Club” is really a big disappointment for me because the content does not make me believe the story. It was so "fictious" and it made me fell like I am reading a content which is designed as a product. But still there are quotes that I highlighted. Here they are:

Life’s too short to play small with your talents.

The Code of Extraordinary Mind | Vishen Lakhiani

The people making you feel guilty for going your own way and choosing your own life are simply saying, ‘Look at me. I’m better than you because my chains are bigger.

All of us have a child within who never received all the love and appreciation we deserved. We can’t go back and fix the past. But we can take responsibility to heal ourselves now by giving ourselves the love and appreciation we once craved. You can help heal your own inner child.

Becoming | Michelle Obama

Previously I’ve shared a part from Michelle Obama’s book “Becoming” about her approach towards smoking. It was a specific subject and you may find out my comments about it here:

https://unsmokeyourworld.blogspot.com/2019/08/michelle-obamas-unsmoke-story.html

Besides, the book contains Michelle’s insights about her becoming. It is a journey from an ordinary girl to a First Lady. Here are some of the highlights I have chosen:

The Prosperous Coach | Steve Chandler, Rich Litvin

The Prosperous Coach is a book originally written for professional coaches to make them better in terms of economic gains. Although  I am not a coach, I learnt great insights from the book. There are many things in this book for every professional to apply to their business. Here are my highlights from the book:

Show your clients what they cannot see. Say to your clients what no one else would dare to say. And you will have all the clients you ever desire.

I am Zlatan

Unfortunately I couldn’t export all the highlighted passages from the book to a document, so I wrote down my top three highlights from the book. Those are short but strong ones from Zlatan Ibrahimovic:

Little Black Stretchy Pants | Chip Wilson

We can only think of the future based on what we know from our past. When we don’t focus on the past, and the future is eliminated, all that is left is the present. The present is where all life really occurs. This was the origin of “The meaning of life may be living in the moment,” which became a key part of lululemon’s Manifesto (more on that later). I have my eccentric father to thank for introducing me to it. 

Creativity, Inc. | Ed Catmull

Great Management Tips from The Book Creativity, Inc.

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know—not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay

Rather than trying to prevent all errors, we should assume, as is almost always the case, that our people’s intentions are good and that they want to solve problems. Give them responsibility, let the mistakes happen, and let people fix them. If there is fear, there is a reason—our job is to find the reason and to remedy it. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover.

The closing took place on a Monday morning in February 1986, and the mood in the room was decidedly muted because everyone was so worn out by the negotiations. After we signed our names, Steve pulled Alvy and me aside, put his arms around us and said, “Whatever happens, we have to be loyal to each other.” 

The Latte Factor | David Bach

Three Secrets

1) Pay Yourself First

Keep your first hour’s worth of each day’s pay. An hour a day, in other words, of paying yourself first.

2) Don’t Budget – Make It Automatic

3) Live Rich Now

The first two secrets – pay yourself first, make it automatic – those are the how. This is the why. Figure out what matters, and follow that.

If you don’t know where you are going, you might not like where you end up. What am I doing with my life?

Trillion Dollar Coach | Bill Campbell

Based on interviews with over eighty people who knew and loved Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach explains the Coach’s principles and illustrates them with stories from the many great people and companies with which he worked. The result is a blueprint for forward-thinking business leaders and managers that will help them create higher performing and faster moving cultures, teams, and companies.

Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. In addition, this business genius mentored dozens of other important leaders on both coasts, from entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to educators to football players, leaving behind a legacy of growing companies, successful people, respect, friendship, and love after his death in 2016.

Ronaldo - A Biography of a Boy Who Rose Out of Poverty

In October and November 2018, I read the biography of Cristiano Ronaldo. It was an amazing book which I really liked a lot and will keep it in my library as one of the most motivating books I've ever read. Please also note that the book is named Football Book of the Year at the Cross Sports Book Awards 2016. 

 I bought this book with some other books for my son

Although it was a paperback format book, I took notes from the book to my Evernote while reading and then collected them all in one content below.