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Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#171

Post by anthony_franco »

RikNieu wrote: post #107
anthony_franco wrote: post #26

The 4-Hour Workweek - made me quit my job and start a business. Since then I've been able to travel internationally for the first time in my life while working as much as I want.

I have been trying this since the book came out... I've never been able to get a successful low-maintenance business going, what kind of business did you start?

Start any business and just hire good people to run it for you.

I have a SaaS. I have a support person, product manager, and developer. Between them they handle 90% of the day to day tasks.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#172

Post by geogra4 »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #148
geogra4 wrote: post #43

The Toyota Way - one of the most important books I've read to help understand why companies are dysfunctional. I knew corporate America (and even many startups) were so dysfunctional, but I didn't know what could replace it. The Toyota Way shows a bright path to the ideal. And makes me realize how far we are from that.

Its not the tools its the ideology that matters is basically why many companies are dysfunctional, from what I remember reading about Toyota Way

Yep, culture eats process/tooling for breakfast.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#173

Post by hyeomans »

hyeomans wrote: post #90
superasn wrote: post #34

The divided mind / healing back pain - Books by John E. Sarno. To give you a background I have struggled with back pain all my life. After dozens of MRIs, X rays, physiotherapy, ayurveda, yoga, posture exercises, and spending almost 100,000 in the last 15 years on this, a simple book saved me. The effect was so powerful that I could feel the symptoms fading while I was reading it. It gave me my life back. A few weeks…

Thank you for this. I needed this

Just as a follow up, I had every symptom that the book describes. Last night I couldn’t put the book down, at the end tried its recommendation and lo and behold my pain from “herniated” disks went away. Thanks again for this.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#174

Post by seatdrummer »

mrfusion wrote: post #31
davidandgoliath wrote: post #28

`Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams` by Matthew Walker. Still in the midst of it actually, and it's had a huge impact. Runner-up would be `the end of religion` by Bruxy Cavey.

I’d be curious to hear abit more about those two.

The "Why we sleep" book is just full of facts about the difference between a good nights sleep and a lack of sleep. There are so many things that fall apart when a few hours are taken off and nobody can be conscious of it, even though they are very very measurable. He also discusses thing like how two groups of people get a night of good sleep, they learn something and get 3 days of quality sleep. Then one of the groups has their sleep limited by several (3/4?) hours. The following day they get full nights rest, and the next day they are tested on what they learned earlier in the week and there were significant deficits for the group that had that one night of bad sleep in the middle of the week.

After reading about it, I've learned a lot more about sleep, but the greatest effect is that I really appreciate sleep more, make lots of time to optimize length and quality. Knowing all the info in the book it would be difficult to justify using an alarm clock to force yourself to rise before your body is ready.

Really cool book.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#175

Post by amorphous »

superasn wrote: post #150
Franciscouzo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the book, but from watching the video it sounds like the main idea of it is to practice mindfulness.

Not sure if it is that simple. The main idea at least as per what I understood is that there is nothing wrong with your back or structure. People with multiple herniated discs, "pinched nerves", etc never have back pain yet people with no structural abnormality suffer from paralyzing pains. The reason is your mind. The logic being your brain tries to hide difficult emotions aka stress and most specifically repressed…

Can you explain a bit what the method is? If it is not mindfulness, what is it? Thanks

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#176

Post by superasn »

hyeomans wrote: post #173
hyeomans wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. I needed this

Just as a follow up, I had every symptom that the book describes. Last night I couldn’t put the book down, at the end tried its recommendation and lo and behold my pain from “herniated” disks went away. Thanks again for this.

That is awesome to hear. I have created a small mp3 file for the 12 reminders [1]. If you ever get the pain just play the mp3 file to remind yourself of it again. Good luck! :)

[1] https://clyp.it/chqx0dku#

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#177

Post by abdullahkhalids »

anthony_franco wrote: post #167
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't to find problem for which you can start a business. The problem is to find a problem for which you can start an automated business. That's much harder.

Every business can be automated. Just find good people to run it for you.

That's not the spirit of the 4HWW. The idea is to make a product that requires not much improvement, and people just buy it from your website, so essentially your 4 hours are spent doing accounting and basic customer support. You might have a part time guy to do server maintenance but that's about it. So essentially most of your revenue is profit for yourself, and you can run a "small" business with revenue in the 50-100K range.

If you start hiring full time workers, then your business has to scale a lot. Like revenue has to go to 500-1M range so you have enough to pay full time workers as well as money for yourself. That's just a completely different beast.

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#178

Post by superasn »

amorphous wrote: post #175
superasn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if it is that simple. The main idea at least as per what I understood is that there is nothing wrong with your back or structure. People with multiple herniated discs, "pinched nerves", etc never have back pain yet people with no structural abnormality suffer from paralyzing pains. The reason is your mind. The logic being your brain tries to hide difficult emotions aka stress and most specifically repressed…

Can you explain a bit what the method is? If it is not mindfulness, what is it? Thanks

The method is just to realize that the pain isn't due to any structural abnormality but rather due to suppressed emotions. I think the easiest way to learn more about it is to watch Dr. John Sarno's lecture on YouTube (its about 50 mins long and quite easy to grasp at 2X speeds)

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#179

Post by pier25 »

anthony_franco wrote: post #168
pier25 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go on...

I could write a whole book on what I’ve learned :) As can any other business owner I think. But I’d be happy to chat with anyone wanting advice.

Any tips on finding "automatable" problems?

Re: Ask HN: What was the one book that you read and it actually changed your life?

#180

Post by anthony_franco »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #177
anthony_franco wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every business can be automated. Just find good people to run it for you.

That's not the spirit of the 4HWW. The idea is to make a product that requires not much improvement, and people just buy it from your website, so essentially your 4 hours are spent doing accounting and basic customer support. You might have a part time guy to do server maintenance but that's about it. So essentially most of your revenue is profit for yourself, and you can run a "small" business with revenue in the 50…

500-1M USD? If you hire full-time US workers then that's probably the case.

For me I hired a few remote part-timers around the world. So it costs me an order of magnitude less. And they're all awesome, so I barely have to lift a finger.

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