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Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
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Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#2[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#3Robert Greene's 33 Strategies of War.
Before that I'd avoid conflicts, especially by more aggressive people. After reading that book, I started actively finding ways do deal with conflicts. A good deal of the book is not simply 'combat' but also dealing with starting conflicts, extended conflict, unconventional strategies, when to withdraw, and so on.
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#4The goal by Goldratt. I read it last year and it completely changed the way I think about work and life. Once I have figured out the goal, the actual goal, not just deliver the project, stuff like speed up the app by 50% not "implement memorization" I realized nobody cares how I achieve the actual goal. It helps that I work with smart people who also understand this. Unless I am adding to the cost massively (like a few million dollars) all solutions are acceptable.
It also helps massively to figure out the goal first, because most of the time the goal is hidden in management speak or cryptic customer feedback due to language barriers or legal ones.
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#5Books by Tony Robbins prevented me doing something worn out. I have read his books a few times, and the way I get something else is always interesting for me ... Feels like I'm making things much easier.
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#61. Gödel,Escher and Bach: It made me love programming and recursion.
2.Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan: Made me love biology
3.Brief History of Time: Increased interest and self confidence in Science.
4. Phantoms in the Brain : How complex problems can be solved by out of the box thinking.
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#7History and Class Consciousness, György Lukács
I got it at a bookstore one day because the shelf note on it from one of the staff members made it seem interesting, didn't really know what I was getting into.
Apparently I had bought a book full of real Bolshevik philosophy essays from a Hungarian "Orthodox Marxist" philosopher, like what Zero to One would be in the USSR.
It was written in the 1920s before the whole Soviet project imploded, and what was fascinating about it for me was how precise it tried to be about the nature of how human processes and how they change. In hindsight, we know that the Soviet vision was bound by a ton of contradictions, but this book was like an inside view of a part of history I didn't really know much about, and kinda made me realize how easy it is to find some new wrinkle to history you had never considered before. Got me reading a lot more interesting histories of places.
Here's an excerpt from the book, the whole thing and all the essays are actually free online. On "Orthodox Marxism" (something I didn't even know could be classified that way lol)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/orthod...
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#8The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord.
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#9The goal by Goldratt. I read it last year and it completely changed the way I think about work and life. Once I have figured out the goal, the actual goal, not just deliver the project, stuff like speed up the app by 50% not "implement memorization" I realized nobody cares how I achieve the actual goal. It helps that I work with smart people who also understand this. Unless I am adding to the cost massively (like a f…
Hi, I would be interested in your approach to speed that app up - send me an email (see my profile) if you want to connect. I am doing a similar thing in a similar way - totally goal oriented -and would love to share notes.
Re: Ask HN: What book(s) changed your life?
#10The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord.
While these books can offer interesting perspectives, I'm now wondering how to find more modern works of philosophy, as this book is already 50 years old really.