One Minute Book Review

Hello, I am your host Aun Abdi and welcome to the monthly One Minute Book Review podcast, where I break down in more detail the books that I have read and reviewed in the previous month.

In this months episode, I will be discussing Deep Work by Cal Newport. This month was a hectic month outside my One Minute Book Review channel. Work and family pressures meant that only one book was reviewed last month. Many more books were read I am hoping I have the time this month in May to catch up on the reviews.

In today’s episode of ‘5 Reason Friday’, I will be discussing why you SHOULD read 'Crushing It' by Gary Vaynerchuck.

Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary 'Vee' as he is better known, is an entrepreneur, who has built his brand around motivating an entire generation. After releasing his first book 'Crush It' in 2009, Gary has been able to transform the lives of many wannabe entrepreneurs into the success stories they are today. 'Crush It' was the book that preceded 'Crushing It', the book that I will be discussing in today's Five Reason Friday.

A New Series called 'Knowledge Bites' where I talk about some of the models, concepts and theories that have captured my attention whilst reading that I have reviewed.

In this week's episode I will be giving an introduction into 'Cognitive Dissonance Theory'.

This week's episode of 5 Reason Friday is 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell

Today I will be reviewing Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. DEEP work is the ability to spend four or more, disconnected, undistracted & entirely focused hours a day practising new skills or generating high-level output while leveraging an expertise. In this book, Cal Newport describes how to become a practitioner of deep work and the impact it can have on your personal and professional life. This book is practical which is one of the reasons why I enjoyed it. The steps that Cal describes to go into a state of Deep work can prove beneficial as it has done for Bill Gates and Carl Jung to name a few. The book is supplemented by a brief PDF that describes some of the key themes and points Cal explains, and I have found this useful when implementing the strategies he outlines. This book is for those who want to increase productivity while also becoming a leader in their field. I rate this book five stars.

This week's episode of 5 Reason Friday is 'The Whistler' by John Grisham

March's book review recap includes:

Zero To One by Peter Thiel

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

A Birmingham Story by Ryan Sinclair

The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

Hooked by Nir Eyal

This week's episode of Five Reason Friday is 'Vagabonding' by Rolf Potts.

Hooked is an in-depth analysis of how to build habit-forming products that allow for customer retention. Following the 'Hook Model' consisting of a trigger, action, reward and investment, product forming companies have a model to develop and market in our current system. The book centres on the 'Hook Model' explaining in detail how it can apply in the real world and how it has helped companies such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to amass such a large following. It goes onto explain habit forming in more depth developing on the 'Habit Loop' made famous by Charles Duhigg. It's a technical book, explicitly made for product developers, to create and distribute exceptional products. I enjoy reading about habit formation, so this book gave me insights that I didn't know before. If you have the same curiosity in habit formation, especially in business, then I highly suggest you read this book. I rate it four stars.

In this weeks 5 Reason Friday, I will be describing the five reasons why you SHOULD read 'The Four Hour Work Week' by Tim Ferriss.