Book Reviews and Summaries

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Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker

• There are a lot of opportunities around
• Know when to change course
• Manage yourself
• Know your strengths and weaknesses
• Value the feedback analysis
• Concentrate on your strengths
• Need to have manners
• Need for improvement in strengths
• Know that people work differently
• Understand how you learn - reading, listening, writing, doing, talking
• Work well with people or a loner
• Are you a decision-maker or advisor?
• Work best under stress or predictable environment
• Mirror test- what person do you want to see know your values
• Decide between values vs strengths
• Know where you belong
• What should my contribution be in life?
• What results do you want in the next 18 months?
• What is your relationships with others?
• Manage communication with others
• Manage the second half of your life - second career, parallel career, social venture
• Think and behave like a CEO

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

• The purpose of life is a life of purpose
• Happiness comes from achievement
• Goal setting is key
• Have Discipline
• Have a game plan for life
• Practice self discovery
• Find your passion in life
• Find your aim in life
• Filter only what is important
• Concentrate your mind

Five Points to Succeed

1. Have a clear mental picture
2. Positive pressure, e.g public pledge, pleasure, punishment
3. Goals with a time line (physical fitness, financial, personal, relationship, social and spiritual goals)
4. Magic rule of 21 (21 days in a row)
5. Laughter/love

• Have passion in something
• Kaizen - constant and never ending improvement, continuous self improvement
• The only limits on your life are those that you set yourself
• Self control/mind control
• Satori - instant awakening
• Know the importance of Time

10 steps /rituals for a radiant living (one hour a day)

1. Solitude (silence)
2. Physicality
3. Live nourishment/vegetarian
4. Abundant knowledge
5. Personal reflection
6. Early awakening
7. Music
8. Spoken word
9. Congruent character
10. Simplicity

• 20% rule- activities that count
• Random acts of kindness
• Living in the now
• Happiness is a journey, not a destination
• Heaven on earth

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

The 7 simple rules of money

1. Start thy purse to fattening: save money
2. Control thy expenditures: don't spend more than you need
3. Make thy gold multiply: invest wisely
4. Guard thy treasures from loss: avoid investments that sound too good to be true
5. Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment: own your home
6. Ensure a future income: protect yourself with life insurance
7. Improve thy ability to earn: strive to become wiser and more knowledgeable

The 5 Laws of Gold

1. Gold comes easily and in increasing quantity to the person who saves at least 1/10th of their earnings
2. Gold labours diligently and multiplies for the person who finds it profitable employment
3. Gold clings to the protection of the person who invests their gold with wise people
4. Gold slips away from the person who invests gold into purposes through which they are not familiar
5. Gold flees the person who tries to force it into impossible earnings

Book Summary

• Spend Less Than You Make. Save and Invest The Difference
• Use Saved Money To Make More Money
• Only Take Advice From People Skilled In That Field
• Only Invest Your Money In Industries and Skills You Are Very Familiar With Or You’ll Lose Your Money
• Don’t Wish For A Lump Sum of Cash. Work To Achieve A Consistent Cash Flow Instead
• You Will Lose Money If You Put It To Foolish Use
• Put Away 10% of your Earnings and You Won’t Even Notice A Difference in Quality of Living
• Invest in Your Ability To Earn More
• You Will Lose Money If You Let Greed Cloud Your Judgement
• What You Earn Is Not Yours To Keep Until You Invest It Properly

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

• Technology has eased business
• Need to have a side hustle
• The term 'real world' is just an excuse
• Other peoples mistakes are their mistakes
• Learn from your successes
• Plans are just guesses
• Business expansion is not always the best
• Overworking is not always the best
• Do something that matters
• Solve your problem approach
• Start something
• Spend your time right
• Stand for something
• Believe in your mission statement and live it
• Avoid borrowing money to start up a business
• Start small
• Have a commitment strategy, not an exit strategy
• Avoid "mass" to enable change of direction
• Get creative
• Cutting out stuff that is nearly good
• Start at the epicentre
• Ignore the details early on
• Trim your menu
• Focus on permanent features
• Sell your by-products
• Focus on your tune
• Know why you are doing something
• Evaluate what you are doing
• Is there an easier way to do things?
• Determine the real value about what you are about to do
• Avoid interruptions
• Have alone time
• Have short staff meetings
• Practice Judo solutions
• Don't wait too long to start something
• Enjoy small victories
• Break big things into small things
• Understand how things work, don't copy
• You can't be everything to everyone
• Create your audience
• Share everything you know
• Have a cookbook about your business
• Gauge employees with the cover letter not a cv
• Always apologize
• You don't create a culture it happens
• Policies are organizational scars
• When everything is a priority nothing is a priority
• Inspire others

Think Straight: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life Book by Darius Foroux

• We can control our thoughts and what we think
• Actions follow thoughts
• Use your mind to get what you want
• Clear thinking requires training
• Train your mind the way we train our body
• Not all thoughts are equal
• Question everything
• Write down what you are thinking about
• Life is not linear
• Have a backup plan
• Our brain is always active
• Filter your thoughts
• Always ask yourself what will the outcome of your decision affect the outcome of your life
• Stop overthinking
• We can’t control our consciousness
• We can only control what thoughts we follow through on
• The attentional bias states that our perceptions are affected by our thoughts

Two main types of useful thoughts

1. Thinking about how you can solve problems
2. Understanding knowledge

• The confirmation bias explains that the behaviour of confirming our preconceptions
• Avoid making decisions based on beliefs, obvious logic, and even science
• There are only good-informed and bad-informed decisions
• Discard all assumptions, and only look at facts
• Never waste your thoughts on other people’s ill-informed opinions and guesses
• It’s okay to say, “I don’t know.”
• Never make haste decisions
• Training your mind takes stages
• When you hit a wall take a break, rejuvenate, and let your mind recover
• Draw your thoughts
• Have self-knowledge
• Keep a journal

5 money rules

1. Don't buy shit you don't need
2. Save at least 10% of your income every month
3. Stay out of debt
4. Invest your money in things that have a return
5. Don't be stingy - its just money

• Invest in your skills
• Money is a replaceable resource, time is not
• Take time to relax
• Create a pros and cons list
• It’s not this or that in life. You can have this and that
• When you stop doing things the way they’re done, you’ll start doing things how you get it done

Three things learnt

1. Always double-check everything
2. Small things can become big things
3. And don’t play favours

• “The devil is in the detail.”
• If you want to grow (financially, spiritually, mentally) you must revisit the details all the time
• You don’t regret what you did in life, you regret what you didn’t do
• Some things in life you must experience to know what they’re like in reality

A few basic rules

1. Exercise at least 30 minutes a day
2. Don’t burn yourself out
3. Eat healthy
4. Don’t consume more calories than you burn
5. Keep track of what you eat and how much you exercise

• When we hold on to a lot of things in the past, they form an obstacle to living in the present
• We can only learn from the past
• Life happens now, don't spend too much time in your past
• Effective thoughts leads to effective actions
• Stop thinking and start feeling
• Go within yourself to find calm anytime you want

Secret Of Spiritual Strength by Andrew Murray

4 stages of a Christian life

1. Sad and troubled heart
2. Heart slow to believe
3. Burning heart
4. Satisfied heart

• Need to know Jesus
• Need to have the revelation of Christ
• Follow Christ
• Must be fully committed to Christ
• Unbelief our hindrance
• God being with us
• Be able to say "thy will be done"
• Be obedient - stick to your orders
• Have belief
• Have faith in His presence
• Give yourself up to Jesus
• Have daily fellowship with Christ
• Wait before the Lord
• Work for God
• What is in your heart, will be revealed in your life
• Power of the cross
• Deny yourself and take up the cross
• Total denial of self
• Be crucified in Christ
• Focus on Christ
• The cross is a mystery
• Draw near to God
• The way of the cross leads us to God
• The cross is a guiding principle for us and others
• Christ defeated our enemy - death
• The cross is a sign of victory
• Crucify the flesh has been done by the cross
• The work of the church is a war against the spirit and principalities
• The world has blinded the minds of people
• The cross will prove its power