This is a near 400 page book that is a must read, in my opinion, for every person. Young or old. One of the better books which takes a stab at trying to make sense of what is going on in the world. Not that the conclusions are going to be any less scary. But it frames all the changes in the world going on in a thoughtful framework.

Of the various systems – fascism, communism and liberalism, only the last had survived. First one died after Second World War. Second died with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But liberalism is also dying now. Ecological collapse and technological disruption (that brought globalization) has out sped liberalism. We know the system is not working but we do not know what the new system will be. Across the whole world, we are seeing this struggle against liberalism. While different people/country are taking different approaches all are agreed on good international relations and are equally against immigration.

The scariest prediction the author makes is that technology will concentrate wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer that will create massive new “useless” class. This will lead to social and political upheavals the likes of which we have never seen before.

We are looking at an era where technology changes will need people to continuously retool themselves. In theory, it sounds good. In practice, that is impossible. The emotional cost of realizing one does not have a job and skills are useless and needs to start re-learning… over and over again will give rise to mental issues that is going to throw the society into turmoils it has not seen.

The author gets into another controversial topic. It starts with the theory that democracy is a superior system because it gives everybody a choice to rationally decide what is best for them. And then goes to prove that the “rational” part is overblown. We are not rational at all and certainly most of us are not knowledgeable enough to know what is best for us. Richard Dawkins – the famous evolutionist – when asked about Brexit had asked the interviewer a head scratcher – “why are you asking me to vote? I am not an economist. I am not an expert on this. I want experts to tell me what is good for me.”. In the end, the author says, we vote the way we “feel” not what we “know” to be best for us.

One observation I am personally very aligned with the author is the fallacy in believing in what the media says. I get into regular debates with the TikTok generation on this. Media, as the author points out is not about truth. It is about getting your attention. Getting your eyeballs is what makes them money. The data they gather on you when you are paying attention to what they are saying is what is then sold to advertisers and others. You would do the same if owned a media channel (or were an influencer or had your podcast) – provided you wanted to make money off it.

The big question about AI and super accelerated technology is this… who gets to own “Big Data”? The author suggests both Big Tech and Government are extremely bad choices. Government slightly more so.

And this only concludes the first part of the five part book. If this has intrigued you, you will love the rest of the book too.

By: Geoff Smart, Randy Street and Alan Foster

A big thumbs down from me. The decision to present the book in a Q&A format was an extremely poor decision. The questions are not natural, at times seem extremely contrived, too frequent and severely interrupts the reading. (because those were not the questions that were going thru in my mind.)

I was hoping to pick up some aha moments in getting to understand the complex topic of talent, putting effective teams together and some of the challenges of building culture. These topics tend to be so complex that whenever you try to put a framework to it, they necessarily get dumbed down.

And that is what happened here in this book, to me. Took me less than an hour to finish.

At a high level, the mathematical formula proposed is

Power Score: PxWxR. Each rated 1-10 and the the required score should be higher than 729.
P = Priorities – Are they connected to the mission, are they correct, are they clear?
W = Who – Has the team been diagnosed? Has it been deployed? Has it been developed?
R = Relationships – Coordinated thru communication, Committed to mission and one another and Challenged to accomplish something bigger than themselves

I had picked up this book from a small bookstore in Riverside, CA on my way to Australia and New Zealand last month. Had not expected much but turned out to be a very interesting book. By the way, two weeks back, I was in Boston and while strolling thru Beacon Hill, chanced upon a cute little bookstore with a cafe. Went in and guess what – there were four of these books right there in front of me as I entered!! Never thought I would see another copy of this book.

Well, turns out this book has nothing to do with meditations. Not one word of it. What it is though is about how to make your time in life count. If you read this book, be prepared for a lot of contrarian thoughts. Including why Todo Lists, 4 quadrants and Streaks are actually detrimental to you…

Here are some interesting lines from the book…

1. Once you realize that you will never be able to go thru all your action items – there are indeed infinite of them – and you will never ever get done – a psychological shift happens where you unclench and get relaxed. Perhaps focus on what you are doing now more.

2. The real way to optimize your finite time is not task lists and prioritization schemes. Take the thing that inspires you most and just do it for some time. That which seems like a false step is just the next step.

3. There are no solutions. Only trade offs. You are free to do whatever you want. As long as you are okay paying for the consequences.

4. “One never notices what has been done; one can see what remains to be done” – Marie Curie. One interesting idea – maintain a “done list”

5. Resist the urge to stockpile knowledge. Read like the book/magazine is a flowing river. No need to finish it. Sometimes, it is ok to read just whatever seems fun.

6. “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”. Social media / news channels do not care about the news itself. They care about your attention. Most of us have started “living inside the news”.

7. Let the future be the future. Today is the tomorrow you were worrying about yesterday.

8. Driving in the night, you cannot see further than your headlights. And you can go thousands of miles just that way.

9. Every worthwhile goal is supposed to feel hard, unglamorous, unsexy at least some of the time you’re actually putting in the work.

10. “Dailyish” is the best frequency. Do not need to do everyday to grow a habit. You can ignore those apps that advertise “don’t break the chain”

11. Develop a taste for problems. “Beyond the mountains, more mountains” – Haitian proverb. Life is not a race to a state of no problems. Life IS an unending series of complications. Live it.

12. “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” – Chuck Close

13. “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”

14. Act on a generous impulse the moment it arises. Do not wait.

15. Everything that happens in life is either a good time or a good story. “It helps if you can realize that this part of the life when you don’t know what’s coming is often the part that people look back with the greatest affection.” – Ann Patchett

16. Fire your inner quality controller. Set quantity goals. Quality will flow someday from quantity.

17. Not enjoying the present moment in an endeavor to enjoy some future ones is akin to not enjoying time with your cat so that you can enjoy time with the cat’s kittens. Or the cat’s kittens’ kittens.

18. “To treat life as a pilgrimage to a future and better existence is to disown its present value” – W. Somerset Maugham

19. Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So, try not to compare your insides with their outsides.

20. You cannot hoard life. Enjoy the moment and let it pass.