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Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

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Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#31

Post by edcastano »

shoo wrote: post #11

## Things I've been doing this year that's a change from last year: * switched jobs from full time permanent to better paying less interesting contract work * moved house to reduce expenses * growing vegetables * donating to crowd sourced environmental lobbying campaigns, attending the odd climate change rally ## Thinking that's influenced these actions + our civilisation is geared towards pursuing economic growth, t…

@shoo Have you seen http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/? Also, message me if you want to collaborate on an environmental advocacy platform. http://writegreen.org/ Unfortunately, it's not currently working because I need to migrate the app to Cedar 14 on Heroku. I haven't been hacking since 2011 (http://mbahacks.com/), so not feeling confident I could successfully migrate myself. Here is the old writegreen site that talks about the idea a bit more: https://writegreen.wordpress.com/problem/ . The Nature Conservancy and NRDC were interested in the tool, but I wasn't able to invest any more time into it at the time (I had a family to feed).

Anyhow, I'm looking to get back into trying to make a dent on this topic. Would love to connect with others to collaborate on something. Writegreen, or otherwise. I'd like to leave this world to my children better than I found it. Right now, it's not looking that way. You can message me directly via ed dot castano at gmail.com

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#32

Post by miraj »

Some of the books that made me think and look at things differently (from 2015 readings only):

- In the Light of What We Know

- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

- Bathing the Lion

- The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

- The Tears of Dark Water

- God Is Dead

- A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life

- The Water Knife

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#33

Post by kfnn »

Karen Horney - Neurosis and Human Growth

The book attempts to describe the complete process of neurotic personality development: how and why it starts, how it affects a person's behavior and life choices. It's full of references to real-life cases Horney encountered as a psychoanalyst.

Many concepts presented in this book where a revelation to me, and I believe it significantly deepened my understanding of myself and human psychology in general.

I think anyone could benefit from reading this, because even if you're not neurotic at all, you will inevitably meet someone who is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis_and_Human_Growth

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#34

Post by zeeed »

kfnn wrote: post #33

Karen Horney - Neurosis and Human Growth The book attempts to describe the complete process of neurotic personality development: how and why it starts, how it affects a person's behavior and life choices. It's full of references to real-life cases Horney encountered as a psychoanalyst. Many concepts presented in this book where a revelation to me, and I believe it significantly deepened my understanding of myself and…

Is this work still state-of-the-art, given that it has been written in 1950?

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#35

Post by kfnn »

zeeed wrote: post #34
kfnn wrote: post #33

Karen Horney - Neurosis and Human Growth The book attempts to describe the complete process of neurotic personality development: how and why it starts, how it affects a person's behavior and life choices. It's full of references to real-life cases Horney encountered as a psychoanalyst. Many concepts presented in this book where a revelation to me, and I believe it significantly deepened my understanding of myself and…

Is this work still state-of-the-art, given that it has been written in 1950?

I honestly have no idea. I did a quick search and I couldn't find any notable further works on neurosis in the field of psychoanalysis (perhaps E.Fromm, Adler? But this is the same generation). Surely other branches of psychology keep studying the subject.

To me personally, Horney's observations felt enough accurate and complete, so I wasn't really looking for other books on the subject.

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#36

Post by EliRivers »

krp wrote: post #25
lilcarlyung wrote: post #18

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Free Will by Sam Harris. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

How did Atlas Shrugged change your way of thinking? I've read The Fountainhead, but felt like Officer Barbrady when I started Atlas Shrugged many years ago. Maybe it's worth another shot?

While I'm not the OP, I'll answer anyway. It changed how I thought about Atlas Shrugged; previously, I thought it was some kind of political tract cum morality tale, but after reading it I thought it was a fairy tale and was slightly concerned at how seriously it was taken.

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#37

Post by tedmiston »

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

It's a short book with a bias toward action that's changed how I interact with my work and share it with others.

Key takeaways:

- good work doesn't market or promote itself [writing a great library doesn't matter if you don't have docs and examples to make it accessible to people]

- give people a convenient way to access your work [convince yourself that having a personal mailing list does not make you too self-important]

- share your side projects to create a feedback loop early [maybe they could help solve other people's problems too] / stop telling yourself "i'll ship this after i fix one more thing"

- let good ideas bubble up from "flow" to "stock" -- for example, a few well received tweets might lead to a blog post which might lead to a whole book

- reuse the things you create across projects and mediums

- life is messy and uncertain, but you choose how you crop and present your experiences [share the interesting parts!]

My full chapter-by-chapter notes: https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Show%20...

Re: Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think?

#38

Post by firebones »

tedmiston wrote: post #37

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon It's a short book with a bias toward action that's changed how I interact with my work and share it with others. Key takeaways: - good work doesn't market or promote itself [writing a great library doesn't matter if you don't have docs and examples to make it accessible to people] - give people a convenient way to access your work [convince yourself that having a personal mailing list…

Your notes repo is a great idea, and seems to flow from some of Kleon's principles.

A new 2016 resolution unlocked!

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