Reading

My reviews and summaries of books that I've read. This is not exhaustive. Many books I read twice and that's when I do the summary. The idea of documenting summaries came to me from reading Derek Sivers. Here is his extremely large collection of books and detailed reviews on each. Wonderful resource.

The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch

Oct 30, 2024

Reading now ...

Atomic Habits by James Clear

This is an awesome little book that summarizes strategies of changing habits in easy digestible chunks. It reads really well and fast. Has some good stories to underscore some of the points that the author is making. While I learnt a lot from the book and was able to pick up some interesting strategies, I felt that the book could have gone deeper into human psychology and provide the scientific background of the suggestions. But, overall I think this is well worth a read. I will apply a lot of the strategies from this book on my own habits.

Atomic Habits Detailed Notes

Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman

May 29, 2024

Excellent book to understand how the mind work. System 1 is automatic action, while System 2 is for difficult things when more contemplation is required. This shapes our judgement and can also explain lot of our behaviours and tendencies. There are various biases that creep in due to these systems. Best quote from he book: "His System 1 constructed a story, and his System 2 believed it. It happens to all of us."

Thinking fast and slow detailed notes

Love Yourself Like your life depends on it by Kamal Ravikant

Short book with no frills. If there is a central theme it is about Loving yourself. When you love yourself - life loves you back. This is a simple though yet very powerful. Truth is succinct. The best way to get out of that lull, the darkenss is to dedicate on loving oneslef. The best self-help book with no length text. You can finish this book in less than an hour and gain a lot.

Love Yourself Detailed Notes

The Intelligence Trap by David Robson

This is a pretty interesting book. The whole premise is that smart people can still make dumb mistakes. It is all about understanding your biases. Robson digs into the psychology behind it all, these biases and stuff that can trip up even the brightest minds. It's kind of a wake-up call, I think. Need to read it multiple times to really understand

The Intelligence Trap detailed notes

The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

The main idea is that happiness isn't about avoiding negativity or striving for perfection. It's more about accepting life's ups and downs and figuring out what really matters to you. Manson talks about values and how important they are. He also says that it's okay to feel uncomfortable sometimes, even if it means stepping outside your comfort zone. And guess what? He's all for saying "no" to things that don't align with your goals. Some really good nuggets in there.

The subtle art of not giving a F*ck detailed notes

Happiness is a serious problem by Dennis Prager

Read this book many many years ago when I was in LA and driving hours on end from work to Glendale, CA. During those long commutes I really took to a talk show host - Dennis Prager. It opened my mind about how and why the society is breaking down and the absence of happiness. The broken moral compass. What I leant from there was how to respect happiness and work on it to maintain it. Human nature is to set unrealistic expectations and then negative things like envy, resentment and materialism further erodes happiness. Gratitude cuts through it all. Happiness requires conscious effort, self-discipline, and a commitment to gratitude and realistic expectations to achieve genuine peace and satisfaction.

Happiness is a serious problem detailed notes

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