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This week I read Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, because I’m impatient and want to solve big problems. I think of the book as a mix of design thinking, agile sprints, usability testing and lean startup. Knapp has refined the sprint process through experimentation and this books serves as a step by step guide. The stories in the book were fresh to me since they were more recent examples and companies in Google Venture’s portfolio. Sprint The purpose of a sprint is to generate and test ideas to solve a problem before fully committing resources.
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This week I read Click: The Forces Behind How We Fully Engage with People, Work, and Everything We Do, because I need to learn how to connect with people quickly and effectively. It is easier to accomplish goals with other people than alone. The book is a quick read. Clicking
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This week I read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, because I was inspired to improve my drawing skills after finding out about 100 Days of Childhood Memories: The Book. Previously I read The Elements of Drawing, which also talks about drawing. At first I was going to finish the book in a week, but after going through the first part of the book, I need to stop reading it. To get the most value out of the book, you need to read the book and stop and do the exercises, which take about an hour each. Unless you do the exercises in the book, there isn’t a point to reading the book cover to cover. Drawing is not so much as creating art, but having the skill to see the world. Drawing is about seeing as much as it is about putting pencil to paper. Improving your drawing skill will help you notice things about the world that you missed before. I want to improve my drawing skill to better see the world and to better convey ideas to other people. Five Perceptual Skills Drawing can be broken down into 5 perceptual skills.
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This week I read What Women Want. Previously I’ve read The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, which talks about pickup artist (PUA) culture and the different techniques they use to seduce women. I don’t feel good about people using those techniques and people falling for them. For practical purposes of improving your odds at mating, What Women Want is written with that in mind. All you have to do is become a better person who is social and happy and women will mate with you. The previous title of the book was Mate. It gives advice based on science, but it doesn’t have to give any data or stories to back it. It just states things as fact, which is why they are able to fit so much good advice into the book. As I was reading, I thinking saying, “Oh, so that’s why, “. Lot of content, worth a read if you’re single. Choices
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This week, I read Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth, MacArthur grant winner and University of Pennsylvania professor. I thought the name was familiar, but I though it was just because she was a famous person. After I started reading the book, I found out why. She taught high school math. After reading the first part of the book, I didn’t like it, because she says that grit is a combination of passion and perseverance. I believe that passion is bullshit based on personal experience, reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You and listening to Ben Horowitz. I judged the book too soon. Duckworth goes on to describe passion in a later chapter that is consistent with Newport, Horowitz and the data she presents. Need to read the whole thing before passing judgement. The book is good, but some things are a little more nuanced. She starts with a simplification and handles the nuance later. If you’re a parent, she talks about how to teach your kids grit. Talent Versus Grit Talent versus grit was some of the initial thing I had issues with. One issue I had was using Lowell High School students as an example. This isn’t exactly a normal school. Students are already prefiltered with those who do well on standardized tests. Also the example of getting a 5 on an AP Calculus exam wasn’t really impressive. Students are taught by the person who writes the exam and usually everyone in the class gets a 5. Grit will always lose to talent plus grit. But I agree most people don’t persevere enough to hit the talent ceiling. There are cases where I’ve tried my best, but I still got demolished by others. She tries to make the point that Grit > Talent but it should be Grit + Talent > Grit > Talent Maybe I haven’t been a teacher and interacted with students who weren’t gritty. This book was focused on how to help those students who weren’t gritty and weren’t talented. They can at least be gritty and they will eventually do better than the talented ones. I’ve been on both sides. There were times where things were easy and I didn’t practice. There were also times where I sucked and I tried my hardest to get better. You can’t get awesome without lots of practice. I know that, but I guess other people don’t. They don’t think about Jerry Rice being the first to practice and the last to leave. They don’t know about him training on The Hill. When you see only the final result and not the path to get there, you think it is genius and something achievable.
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This week I read The End of Alchemy by Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, because he had a front row seat to the financial crisis. This is a very dense book, but it was worth taking my time going through the book to learn about money and banking. Money, paper money was created to be exchanged for gold. Banking transforms secure short-term deposits into long-term risky investments. That is a feat more impressive than changing lead into gold, the focus on traditional alchemy. This book talks about the end of alchemy, and the future of money and banking. There are four concepts that are central to the book.
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This week I read The Newbie’s Guide to Cannabis & The Industry, because … I forget. Previously I read Marijuana Gateway to Health about the medical side of cannabis. This book is a great introduction since it practically covers everything you could possibly want to ask about cannabis. There is always more to learn, but I can’t think of a better place to start. Cannabis Cannabis is from India. This is where the name indica comes from. Cannabis grown in this tropical climate is good for medicine. Then the Europeans took cannabis and it adapted to colder climates and grew longer with smaller flowers as sativa, making its fibers useful for rope. There are both female and male plants. Males are useless except for making seeds. For medicine, you want the resin, which is plentiful in the female flowers. The best of which is the cola, the central bud on a female plant that looks like a fox tail. Cannabis is an annual plant, but by manipulating environment, you can get 3-6 generations a year. 18-24 hours of light keeps females from blooming. Switch to a 12 / 12 split of light and darkness for flowering cycle. Keep the temperature between 70-85 F. The plant prefers a 6.5 pH, slightly acidic. When the plant is starting out you want 80-90% humidity for seedings and clones to root. Then switch to 60-70% humidity for growth phase. Finally 40-60% for blooming. History
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This week I read Effective C++ Second Edition, because it was on the bookshelf at work. This book was published in 1998, which was around the time I learned C++. I have about 20 years of programming experience. Wow, I’m old. After going through book, I realized I had a really good programming instructor, because most of these tips were ingrained into me by Mr. Simon. Although the book is good, you should probably read the newer edition of the book. I don’t think they program C++ now the same way they did in the 1990s. Some books describe a programming language. This book shows you best practices when using the language.
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This week I read The 10% Entrepreneur, because it is the in thing to give your classmates free copies of your book to read and if you don’t read it, I’ll do it for you. Patrick J. McGinnis, originator of FOMO (fear of messing out), got screwed by playing it safe in life. He did everything he was supposed to do, get a Harvard MBA and a job at a company that was too big to fail, AIG. The thing is we know we are supposed to diversify our stock portfolio, which is an investment of our assets, but working for one company doesn’t yield any diversification. Adding an little entrepreneurship to the mix is an insurance policy. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, lured by rags to riches origin stories. I’ve learned that these origin stories are written after the fact by marketing forces. In reality most of the work done for the Apple computer was in Wozniak’s cubicle at HP. I learned in Founder’s At Work that he explicitly got written approval from HP that there was no conflict of interest. This book is written for people with good jobs and good skills who are willing to invest a portion their financial and intellectual capital for long term gains. Not very helpful for someone who is poor and stupid, but I finished the book anyway. Being a 10% Entrepreneur is to make small investments that provide for long term growth personally, financially and professionally. 5 Reasons Not to be a Full-time Entrepreneur
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This week I read Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, because one day I hope to be rich enough to afford to be zero waste. This book has some tinges of the philosophy found in The Life Changing of Magic of Tidying Up, but it feels like Bea’s feelings of focus and uncluttering was a byproduct of her trying to achieve zero waste. This book is more about the tips to replace makeup, household cleaning supplies, grocery shopping, etc. Some are practical, some I find too extreme. I’m not going to bring jars to the fish counter, but I might try some of her vinegar based cleaning solutions. I learned that going commando is wasteful, because you need to wash your clothes more, so I should wear underwear and you should too. Bea admits her methods were a little extreme, like making her own butter, but even she had to relent on having video games in the home, because her children were spending more time at their friend’s place. The 5 Rs A zero waste lifestyle involves applying the 5 Rs to all aspects of your life.
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This week I read The Visual Handbook of Building and Remodeling, because the previous book on building a home didn’t have anything about electrical and plumbing. Notice how both books are visual in nature. Easier to look at pictures and point rather than trying to read text. This book talked more about design and regulations, which is a good thing. Regulations are important. They are there, because someone died. Kids so often want to remove themselves from the gene pool by sticking their heads between railings, climbing railings and falling from the third floor or dropping from a window. When you are remodeling a building, you need to be able to picture how people will interact with their surroundings when you’re finished. Sometimes it is easier to gut the place and remodel it. Especially if you have neighbors trying to throw a wrench into things.
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