Mindful Reading

"How Emotions Are Made" is a book by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and a neuroscience researcher. This book delves into Barrett's Theory of Constructed Emotions, offering a fresh perspective on how emotions are formed. Initially, the book presents the classical view of emotions, which suggests that emotions are simply reactions to external events. Something happens, and as a result, we feel a certain way. In the classical view, these emotions are thought to have distinct markers in the brain, akin to a "fingerprint". For example, it is often said that the amygdala is the center of fear.

The book then goes on to discuss recent research that challenges this classical view, advocating for the Theory of Constructed Emotions. This theory proposes that emotions aren't mere reactions. Instead, they are complex predictions shaped by our past experiences and current context. According to this theory, we perceive and experience these predictions as reality, rather than experiencing the raw sensory input as reality. This theory suggests that our emotions, and even our perception of reality, are essentially a continuous flow of these constructed predictions.

In the concluding chapters, Barrett explores the broad implications of this theory on various aspects of life, including health, law, and our general understanding of the world around us.

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A discussion of the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics by Jocko Willink.

Jocko is a US Navy officer who served in the Navy SEALs. Through the SEALs training he learnt various fundamental principles of leadership, writing them down, codifying them, and putting them to the test in SEALs training and mission scenarios. Leadership Strategy and Tactics draws on this experience, teaching one how to deal with a wide variety of situations as a leader and as a subordinate, using examples from his SEALs experience.

As the title suggests, it covers both strategies and tactics in leadership. Strategy is about the long term objectives, and tactics are for dealing with the immediate situation at hand.  

Once having read through the book, one should have an idea of Jocko's core principles and tenets of leadership, as well as advice when dealing with specific situations as a leader - from a broad and a focused perspective. Finally, as the words "field manual" suggest, the book is intended to be used as reference material when dealing with various situations as a leader, and so while the chapters tie together nicely, it is also structured in short chapters dealing with specific advice, meaning, the chapters can be read individually when needing advice on a specific situation.

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A discussion of the book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett

How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett was published in 1908. The book looks at the work day, and the time outside of that - what Bennett calls the day within a day. It claims that most view the day - especially during the work week - as simply the time from when you start work to when you end work. The time outside of that is often viewed as pointless time where one waits for the next day to begin. What makes this worse, Bennett says, is that the average person doesn't give their full effort to their work, so to miss out on the day within a day is even more tragic.

Further than that, generally people don't know how to spend their spare time - and time, Bennett considers to be the most valuable of resources. There are lot's of books and articles on how to live on x dollars a day, but not how to live on 24 hours a day. This book aims to help people truly live on 24 hours a day - to spend your time wisely.

The book goes on to discuss how people often have an underlying desire to do more with their life, but don't. People feel like they have things left undone that they will do when they have more time. It then goes on to give tips with how to approach ones day within a day, so as to fully live. 

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A discussion of the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters is a book that looks at exactly that, going from zero to one. Specifically, going from something not existing to one existing.
"Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1." pg. 1
While most get lost in incremental improvement, Thiel focuses on creating the completely new. "Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things." pg. 2
The book looks at how monopolies and competition compare, and aims to show that monopolies are where the real value lies, both for companies and for end consumers. This is because while competition results in incremental improvement, creating something completely new is far more valuable. Competition leads to a war mentality, where monopolies lead to an abundance mentality. Monopolies - in the good sense - exist because they create something so good that others can't compete, and in doing so, monopolies are "powerful engines for making the world better." pg. 32

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A discussion of the book The Last Arrow by Erwin Raphael McManus

The Last Arrow by Erwin McManus book begins with the biblical story in 2 Kings 13, where Elisha tells King Jehoash to strike the ground with his arrows, so he strikes 3 times, and then, stops. As the story goes on we find out that he stopped striking the ground too early, had he continued to strike the ground till his arrows were done, he would've had victory over the Arameans, but instead they will now only wound them.
This story is the reference for the book, as McManus looks at the different areas of life, motivating us to keep going until we have nothing left, until we've given it everything we have, until we've used up our last arrow.
"My intention for this book is that you would never surrender, that you would never settle, that you would save nothing for the next life." pg. xi
"This book has one intention: that whether you win or lose, succeed or fail, live a life of celebrity or anonymity, that when you take your last breath, you will know without reservation that you have given everything you have, everything you are, to the life you have been entrusted with." pg. 28

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A discussion of the book How to Think by Alan Jacobs

How to Think by Alan Jacobs is a book in which Alan thinks about thinking. What is thinking? How do we do it well? And where does it go wrong?
The book looks at how we classify people and ideas, and how those classifications shape how we think; It looks at the words and metaphors we use, and how they too shape the way we think; It looks at the limitations of our thinking, and the hopes we have for improving our ability to think - hard as that might be. And finally, it looks at the pleasures and dangers of thinking.

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A discussion of the book Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Deep Work by Cal Newport is divided into two parts, the first part is titled "The Idea", and goes on to explain the difference between deep work and shallow work:
"Deep Work: Professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate." (pg. 3)
As opposed to "Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate." (pg. 6)
Part 1 looks at convincing the reader that deep work is valuable, rare, and meaningful. Through doing this, Cal is building a case for the Deep Work Hypothesis, the hypothesis is: "The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a result, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive." (pg. 14)
The second part of the book titled "The Rules", shifts it's focus to a set of four rules aimed at helping one develop the ability, habits, and mental strength to do deep work, those rules are Work Deeply, Embrace Boredom, Quit Social Media, and Drain the Shallows. Then for each of these rules, he discusses a set of strategies to help you stick to the rule. By cultivating the ability to do deep work, one is able to take advantage of the Deep Work Hypothesis, that is, those who cultivate the skill of deep work will thrive in the information economy.
The ultimate goal of this book is to develop ones ability to go deep. pg. 71

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A discussion of the book Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed.

Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed at it's core is about learning from failure. In aviation there is the idea of a black box, these are systems installed in planes that continually gather all kinds of information about the aircraft and its crew - from the altitude of the plane to the words spoken in the cockpit. In the event of failure, an abnormal landing or even a crash. The information gathered by the black box is analyzed to try and understand what went wrong. Rather than blaming this or that, the culture in aviation is one of learning from failure and improving based on what was learnt. In large part, it is this culture that is responsible for the incredible safety standards commercial aviation has today. This is where the book, Black Box Thinking, gets its name.

It covers a diverse set of stories about various people, industries, companies, policy makers, and more, looking at the different ways they deal with failure. There are those that repeat mistakes because they fear failure or can't face the reality of failure due to some traumatic circumstance - these are generally people with a fixed mindset, stuck in a closed loop system, not allowing feedback from the outside world, especially not allowing feedback from failure, and so not learning from those failures, repeating the same mistakes over and over. Then there are those are willing to learn from failure, taking in feedback, and adapting over time - these are generally people with a growth mindset, they are in open loop systems, systems that accept that failure is a normal part of life, take the feedback from failure, then learn and improve.

The books key insight is that success, even high performance, doesn't come from being a gifted genius, but from a willingness to repeatedly learn from failure, making marginal improvements that compound over time.

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A discussion of the book The Psychology of Money by Morgan House.

As the title suggests, the book is about the psychology of money, and as the subtitle suggests, it goes through timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness. The book looks at how people think about money, how they feel about money, how they spend it or don't, the idea of status and money, greed, the rational and irrational things people do with and for money, and much more related to the psychology of money.

But mostly, it's about how we behave in relation to money, as it says on page 2, "The premise of this book is that doing well with money has a little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people."

The author goes on to say, "...financial success is not a hard science. It's a soft skill, where how you behave is more important that what you know." (pg. 4) This soft skill, he calls "the psychology of money". And so, in 20 chapters, based on the original report he wrote of the same title (The Psychology of Money), the book gives a series of short stories and examples, in which the author is trying to convince you that soft skills are more important than the technical side when it comes to money.

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A discussion of the book Effortless by Greg McKeown.

Effortless, as it says on the cover, is about making it easier to do what matters most. Put differently, making it easier to do the essential things, and hard to do the pointless. The book looks at various situations where people take the difficult path and various situations where people take the effortless path. In some sense, the books claim is that often, we equate success with working hard and working endless hours, but, it doesn't have to be that way. As the title of the introductory chapter says, "not everything has to be so hard", in other words, often, there is an effortless way. Whether that's solving a challenging problem, generating wealth, or dealing with the difficulties of being human; "not everything has to be so hard".

The book is split into three parts:

• Part 1: Effortless State - "How can we make it easier to focus?"
  How can we get into that effortless state? Think along the lines of what many know as the flow state. Where we don't feel like we're continually fighting an uphill battle, but rather we feel we're in the flow state - "rested, at peace, and focused". pg. 15
• Part 2: Effortless Action - "How can we make essential work easier to do?"
  How can we make the work we do, the actions, effortless? Where it's easy to do what matters. It's "about simplifying the process to make the work itself easier to do." pg. 17
• Part 3: Effortless Results - "How can we get the highest return on the least effort?"
  How can we make it effortless to get results? That is, getting results without continued effort, these results are what Greg calls residual results - think along the lines of automation and compound interest. We should use leavers that give us leverage to get residual results. There are various levers, 5 of which are: learning, teaching, automating, trusting, and preventing. The effortless results section looks at those leavers.

Those are the three main parts of the book, and lastly, to end the introduction, here is a sentence and a story that sum up the book well:

The sentence goes: "Of course, you can't make everything in your life effortless, but you can make more of the right things less impossible - then easier, then easy, and ultimately effortless" pg. 19

And the story goes, "Discovering the effortless way of living is like using special polarized sunglasses while fly-fishing. Without them, the glare on the water makes it difficult to see anything swimming below the surface. But as soon as you put them on, their angled surface filters out the horizontal light waves coming off the water, blocking the glare. Suddenly, you can see all the fish underneath. When we're accustomed to doing things the hard way, it's like being blinded by the glare coming off the water. But once you start putting these ideas into practice you will start to see that the easier way was there all along, just hidden from your view." pg. 17-18

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