131–140 of 188 posts
Honorable mention to _How to Win Friends and Influence People_ (I agree with other comments that earlier editions are better) and _Getting Things Done_.
Thanks for starting this thread! Lots of good recommendations here.
"Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco. It's a book every manager should read about how, maybe, you can create a team that jells.
"The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker. Examines the necessities of knowledge work. What every manager and employee should read.
The Bible. Even if you don't care for it's spiritual implications, there is a rich history that is used by archaeologists, and many face-value lessons of cause and effect, and even recommendations on how to manage a business and employees. The beautiful non-spiritual message is that humans don't change, but we can still learn from histories mistakes.
I feel like I've got to read it eventually just so I can be up to speed on all the millions of references to it in other works of art. In a college class recently, we read beowulf, and I was confused what was meant when grendel was described as being from "cain's clan" - I was raised non-religiously by parents who had both been burned pretty bad by institutional religion, so it was pretty much only me and an asian im…
Genesis specifically is packed with common references, can be read in a few hours, and is fairly engaging and accessible as a coherent piece of literature in its own right.
Ecclesiastes is like five pages and possibly the most quoted thing across european cultures. So many literary references and even common idioms come from there.
After that any one synoptic gospel + john + acts will set you up to catch a lot of christianity-specific cultural references. And then revelation imagery comes up a ton in pop culture, music, film & tv.
All of what I mentioned is about the length of a medium-short novel and would set you up to catch probably the majority of allusions to the bible. You'd be missing some major stuff like moses, david & solomon, plus a bunch of misc but influential stories like jonah & the whale, samson etc. But for bang for your buck it would get you pretty far.
Growing up in a sheltered middle-class home, it was my first awakening to 'the real world'
The Bible. Even if you don't care for it's spiritual implications, there is a rich history that is used by archaeologists, and many face-value lessons of cause and effect, and even recommendations on how to manage a business and employees. The beautiful non-spiritual message is that humans don't change, but we can still learn from histories mistakes.
I feel like I've got to read it eventually just so I can be up to speed on all the millions of references to it in other works of art. In a college class recently, we read beowulf, and I was confused what was meant when grendel was described as being from "cain's clan" - I was raised non-religiously by parents who had both been burned pretty bad by institutional religion, so it was pretty much only me and an asian im…
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Has someone properly summarized Atomic Habits in an essay or perhaps a podcast episode? I'd rather just read an essay or listen to an episode repeatedly.
Funny you'd mention it; I write summaries of most non-fiction books I read and Atomic Habits stood out in particular in that its summary runs only about a single page. I reproduce it here, though you may want to copy it into something that can render markdown. (On a side note, I every so often mourn the fact that there seems to be no market for concise books. I think the publishers are right about this, padding reall…
I know you're anon, but I'd love to read the rest of your summaries.
- The Extended Circle - an Anthology of Humane Thought by Jon Wynne Tyson
- Letters from the Desert by Carlo Carretto
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Seems like a great idea/book, but I've never managed to make any of the advice work, despite trying pretty hard. I suspect this has something to do with having ADHD. In general there are a ton of productivity books out there that seem to be great advice, but are missing some steps that make it possible to implement for some people with ADHD. In the same category, I also love the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, but a…
Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg might be a better book for you. The key to building habits is to start with a habit that is ridiculously small and once you feel like you've got that locked in, you can add another ridiculously small habit on top of it. e.g. To build a flossing habit, floss just one tooth a day. Once you've got into the habit of pulling out floss and flossing just one tooth, you can move onto flossing two teeth…
A small habit isn't easier for me, because the difficulty of the task isn't the obstacle: I simply don't seem to have the part of the brain other people have, where they can choose what they are going to be doing.
It feels sort of like people are trying to tell me I could just walk through a doorway if I exercised a tiny bit to get in good enough shape to just walk a few feet like they do... but actually I have a brick wall where everyone else has a doorway, and I'm already 10 times stronger than they are from trying to push against a solid brick wall for years, but still can't walk through a brick wall.
Weizenbaum wrote the first AI chat program, Eliza, sixty years ago. I read his book shortly after it came out in 1976, and several times since, most recently last year after ChatGPT etc. arrived. I was impressed again how pertinent and prescient it is.
A fifty year old book about AI is still relevant because it is mostly about peoples' motivations for building and using AI, their expectations for it, and their responses to it. These haven't changed in fifty years and don't depend on the technology in the AI, or what it can actually do.
Weizenbaum recognizes that making and using computer technology has moral and ethical consequences and isn't afraid to say so. He argues that computers should not be used for some purposes, whether or not they can be made to work.