[This just in… found out that the author was a student of my senior from high school days – Prabasaj-da – who incidentally is absolutely one of the smartest persons I ever had a chance to spend some time with]

About a month back, I was talking to Roger and he mentioned this book. Downloaded it and read it. It is a fairly easy and quick read. There are some good nuggets of wisdom from James Clear.

The underlying thesis of the book is to not focus on outcomes (“want to run a marathon”) and instead focus on the “identity” (“I want to be a runner”). It takes you thru the author’s framework of Cues-Craving-Response-Reward with respect to how to build new habits or break down old ones.

Some interesting observations that caught my eye:
(*) We want to first fit in a group and then we are accepted, we try to stand out
(*) Agriculture spread much faster in Europe and Asia than the Americas and Africa because Europe and Asia is spread left to right rather than top to bottom (think of the homogeneity of climate)
(*) The reason we stick to bad habits? Human brains have not evolved from the immediate-return environment (foraging leads to hunger satisfied now) to delayed-return environment (we invest now so we will be wealthy twenty years from now). Thus we smoke for immediate pleasure but we underestimate the danger in the future.
(*) We can be rational and logical only AFTER we have been emotional

You can read the book to pick up other nuggets yourself.

That was a quick read. Did not land up being a great fan of it. If you are a young person in twenties or thirties, you might like this – kind of a Ready Reckoner for Happiness. But, if you are somebody in my age group or at least have any reasonable level of reflections on life, you are probably going to find this book not having much depth. Perhaps, my disappointment is because I could not learn anything new.

Scott – who is a professor at NYU – where I have a daughter – starts by tying to be funny and some of the doodles will make you crack a smile. But the narration goes all over the place and I, at least, could not find a coherent path. Plus, it came across as more of a “mea culpa” on his life.

That said, there are a couple of things that caught my attention. First is his reference to the app 1 Second Everyday. Seems like an interesting idea (you take a second of video everyday and then look at the collection – often mashed up – much later to go thru reflections and recollections). I have downloaded it but not tried it yet!

Couple of the more memorable statements include:

“When times are bad, people look for gray hair for leadership. When times are good, people look for youth”. and

“Entrepreneurship is a sales job with negative commissions until you raise capital; they are profitable or go out of business – whichever comes first.”