Now that the decade is coming to a close, what where the most (personally) influential books you read? Which impacted you the most either personally or professionally? The ones you learned the most from?
Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
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Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#2https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...
Nonviolent Communication.
I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.
On the communication side, it has helped me put more structure around tough conversations, personally and professionally. It has helped me understand others more and vice versa. It's also helped me see toxic traits in others. Such as people who aren't interested in understanding or people who struggle to understand their own emotions.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#3https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif... Nonviolent Communication. I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.…
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Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#4https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif... Nonviolent Communication. I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.…
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Please don't copy/paste comments on HN.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#5I wrote a book on tmux, if you are interested in getting into the shell more: https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read (free to read online)
While it may not be the most important, if you've been meaning to up your terminal game and want a bit more dexterity when shuffling between panes, tmux and vim are a good area to invest time in [1]
Personality theories:
Textbooks in this area. Affordable on Amazon if you get them used, some are also on kindle but pricey.
An Introduction to Theories of Personality: 7th Edition by Robert B. Ewen is so good.
They can be used as sampler to springboard into areas of psychology you like. The material in this space - normally in paper books - is fantastic. It's totally normal to read through material from 50-70+ years ago.
[1] Not the configuration part, though. That's where the timesink is. Try to be basic as possible with vim configs. `vimtutor` is nice to play with.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#6Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#7Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#8https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif... Nonviolent Communication. I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.…
This book has also helped me connect better with others and accomplish what I think needs to be accomplished.
It almost feels like magic how effective it is as it seems to sort of ballet step away and around from conflict. I usually don’t care about conflict so it’s nice to just sort of leave behind all the distractions that come when people focus on the wrong parts of communication.
A recent example where this helped me...I was trying to figure out what tasks needed to be done to launch a product. At first I asked the project manager what tasks he defined and he started getting very defensive because perhaps I thought he sucked at his job. Just by rephrasing that I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to contribute to things that needed to happen and that I wanted to know what steps needed to be taken, the pm opened up. I felt like the book saved me 30 minutes of pointless arguing.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#9The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Literally destroyed left wing politics in my mind.
Re: Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade?
#10Less, by Andrew Sean Greer. A really wonderful, light-hearted, hilarious novel about self-worth. The writing reminds me of David Sedaris.