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  • Risk Management - Apply Antifragility to make Entrepreneurship the Safest 21st Century Career and Surround yourself with a community that will foster success
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Tempo: timing, tactics and strategy in narrative-driven decision-making Summary

August 3, 2022 By

  Summary Tempo is a look at decision-making that focuses on narrative as opposed to a more traditional “calculative rationality” that you see in most decision making research. Rather than focusing on how to be more "rational," it acknowledges and embraces the idea that humans are not dispassionate calculators. Rather, we rely heavily on narrative and story to make decisions about a … [Read more...]

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The Origin of Wealth Book Summary (Or, An Introduction to Complexity Economics)

July 15, 2022 By

  Editorial Note: The majority of this post is copied and pasted directly from The Origin of Wealth. It got cumbersome and clunky to delineate exactly what was quoted and where I was making edits to clarify or explain points quotes without enough context. So, for attribution purposes, just assume everything intelligent and helpful is from the book and all errors and omissions are … [Read more...]

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Out of the Crisis Book Summary

May 25, 2022 By

  Buy Out of the Crisis on Amazon. Out of the Crisis is a classic of the quality movement that the Toyota Production System was borne out of. Deming was really one of the founders of that movement and one of the first people to somewhat intuitively grasp the complexity of modern businesses and what that required from management to adapt. Though this book (written in 1982) is … [Read more...]

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6 Keys to Innovative Thinking: The Innovator’s Dilemma Book Summary

November 19, 2021 By

Buy The Innovator's Dilemma on Amazon. The Innovator's Dilemma is a book about how innovation happens (or, more often, doesn’t happen). There are many such books and most of them are bad. This one is interesting because of Christensen's detailed research on various technologies (primarily computing) and because of a counter-narrative conclusion: successful companies are disrupted not … [Read more...]

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Best Practices for Operational Excellence

October 25, 2021 By

Buy The Best Practices for Operational Excellence on Amazon Summary There is not early enough written on how to be good at operations. It seems obvious but most companies are bad at it in a way that materially hampers the rest of the organization. There is a lot of focus on building and marketing the best product, but not enough on building an organization that can repeatedly produce … [Read more...]

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The War of Art Summary and Notes

July 16, 2021 By

Buy The War of Art on Amazon Summary Have you ever brought home an exercise bike and let it gather dust in the basement? Ever started and quit a diet? Do you have a project 80% of the way done that is sitting on your hard drive not doing you any favors? If you are, first, I welcome you to the club. I have done all of these things (multiple times)! Second, Steve Pressfield has a book … [Read more...]

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The Smartest Guys in the Room – Bethany McLean

July 2, 2021 By

Buy The Smartest Guys in the Room on Amazon Warren Buffett is famous for saying, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." With the exception of Q1 2020, markets have been in an unprecedented 10+ year "high tide" bull market. At some point, though who can say win, the tide will come out and we will see who has been swimming naked. Every recession tends to have … [Read more...]

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Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff

May 20, 2021 By

Buy Metaphors We Live By on Amazon Summary An Iranian student who moved to the U.S. to study chemistry. He noticed that he kept hearing people talking about the “solution of my problems.” Being a chemist, he understood the word “solution” to mean a liquid chemical solution, the kind you would have in a lab. The “solution of my problems,” as he understood … [Read more...]

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Systemantics by John Gall

May 6, 2021 By

Buy Systemantics on Amazon Summary Charlie Munger has the classic line “All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there”. Systemantics is in that vein, with the equally important, but probably less catchy angle of “All I want to know is how complex systems fail so I can avoid them.” Part of the reason this is less catchy is that the term "systems" just doesn't … [Read more...]

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Fail-Safe Investing by Harry Browne

April 28, 2021 By

Buy Fail-Safe Investing on Amazon This is my new go-to book recommendation when people ask me what the first book about investing they should read is. For one, it is only about 150 pages and it’s a light 150 pages at that so you can get through it in an afternoon. Second, it gets two very important thing right that nearly every investing book gets wrong. First, it tells you that … [Read more...]

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The Effective Executive Summary

January 27, 2021 By

I am a fan of Peter Drucker. If you have read a lot of business books, but never picked up a Peter Drucker book like The Effective Executive, you may find that reading Drucker sort of makes a lot of business books irrelevant. He is considered the godfather of a good deal of modern management and business theory for good reason. Drucker dedicated his career to one huge … [Read more...]

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Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business by Chet Richards

January 13, 2021 By

How do you win at business? One can go into the philosophical questions of what does “winning” mean anyway or is that even the point? But, let us take the question at face value: how does one company outcompete others to succeed in the marketplace? I think the somewhat abstract nature of this framing is important. Most business books tend to start off much more tactically, at a lower level … [Read more...]

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The Origins of Political Order Review and Summary

August 21, 2020 By

History is merely all the data we have so far. It’s important to emphasize both the "merely" and the "all" elements of that statement. It is merely all the data because history is a non-ergodic process. All that means is that we don’t know what the future holds, but we know it won’t look exactly like the past. As Vonnegut said, "History is merely a list … [Read more...]

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The Art of War Summary (and Quotes) by Sun Tzu

July 14, 2020 By

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a book nominally about, well, war. It’s kind of deceptively titled though. A more accurate title would be “The Art of Not Going to War Unless You Really Can’t Avoid It And Then Still Avoiding Fighting as Much as Possible.” That’s a bit of a mouthful, so probably best to stick the original, but you get the point. The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in … [Read more...]

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Book Notes – Breakthrough Advertising

June 23, 2020 By

Author: Eugene Schwartz I went through a stage maybe seven years ago where I got really into copywriting and read pretty much every classic book in the field: Scientific Advertising, Ogilvy on Advertising and The Boron Letters were all excellent. The one that stood out the most though was Eugene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising (copies go for $400 on Amazon now … [Read more...]

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Tit for Tat Strategy and The Evolution of Cooperation

June 15, 2020 By

  On the Western Front of WWI, the French soldiers had a very simple rule for engaging with the Germans: fire two shots, but never fire first. It was the French practice to “let sleeping dogs lie” when in a quiet sector and never be the first to attack, but to respond with two bullets for everyone that came over.  This simple rule was very effective for preventing casualties … [Read more...]

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The True Believer Summary (and Quotes) by Eric Hoffer

February 16, 2020 By

Summary The True Believer became widely read after then-president Dwight Eisenhower recommended it as an essential book. The book looks at the nature of mass movements: why they start, how they grow and how they end. It points out that mass movements grow out of frustration and boredom "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind … [Read more...]

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The Best Finance Books, Blogs, Podcasts, and Other Resources

August 28, 2019 By

A strong level of financial literacy— theory, understanding financial statements, budgeting and planning, corporate structure, how equity and debt markets work, what derivatives are—will be a huge boost for almost any career. Finance is a much more general and broadly applicable skill than most people think. Having financial skills will help you in your personal life, any nonprofit work you … [Read more...]

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Platform Power Summary

March 27, 2019 By

I picked up this book on a friend's recommendation after checking out the blog, Plaformed Thinking. You can Get the Book Here (click on the Hello Bar at the top and opt-in). More of an ebook/PDF than book book FYI. Read: November 28, 2014 Rating:  3/5 (Good) Summary In the future, all business will be tech businesses. Platform thinking is about redefining the rules and playing a … [Read more...]

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Influence by Robert Cialdini Book Notes

March 27, 2019 By

Key Concepts We're poorly adapted for the modern world and because of the overwhelming amount of stimuli and decisions that we face on a daily basis are forced to make decisions based on incomplete information. While the mechanism we've evolved for doing that are usually effective, they can be manipulated. The Six Principle Mechanisms of Influence: Reciprocity - We feel compelled to return … [Read more...]

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Finite and Infinite Games Summary and Quotes

December 31, 2018 By

Short Summary "There at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” Thus begins James Carse’s wonderful book Finite and Infinite Games. "A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." There is a … [Read more...]

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Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life Summary and Quotes

December 31, 2018 By

Short Summary On the Shortness of Life (De Brevitate Vitae) is an essay written by Seneca the Younger, a Roman Stoic philosopher, sometime around the year 49 AD, to his father-in-law Paulinus. Seneca’s main point is that nature gives people enough time to do what is really important and the individual must spend the time properly, but most people fret it away. In general, Seneca argues, time is … [Read more...]

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Man’s Search for Meaning Summary and Quotes

December 31, 2018 By

Short Summary Man’s Search for Meaning is part memoir of surviving a concentration camp and part explanation of what Jewish psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl learned from the experience, formalized in his theory of logotherapy.  While he was in a concentration camp, Frankl saw that everything can be taken from a human but one thing: the ability to choose one's attitude.  The prisoner’s that … [Read more...]

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What is Mimetic Theory? A Summary of Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World by Rene Girard

December 20, 2018 By

What is Mimetic Theory? A Short Summary Mimetic theory is a concept developed and advocated for by René Girard, 20th-century French anthropologist. Mimetic theory's key insight is that human desire is not an autonomous process, but a collective one. Said most simply: we want things because other people want them. As more and more people want something and that object remains scarce, this … [Read more...]

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Best Psychology Books

October 10, 2018 By

"The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several million human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. … [Read more...]

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The Best Biographies of All Time

October 1, 2018 By

Books in general are a vastly undervalued asset, as far as cost-to-utility are concerned. With a good book you can learn new skills, be entertained for hours, or even shift your perspective of the world. The best biographies seem to be the greatest value of all, as they condense the learnings of an entire human life into readable form. Biographies and autobiographies are also often written about … [Read more...]

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Best Self Help Books

September 28, 2018 By

The self improvement genre is both relatively recent and ancient. The role of much of written material throughout history has been to instruct, inform or teach us the path of right conduct and how to have more fulfilling lives. However, over the last century, a specific type of 'Self Help Books' have emerged that promises solutions for just about all of life's problems. While the more modern … [Read more...]

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Best Motivational Books of all Time

September 26, 2018 By

“Nothing happens until you decide.” ― William Hutchison Murray The importance of a motivating force can't be understated. How can we explain something as pivotal as the force of motivation? Though motivation sometimes seems like fodder for bargain-bin self help or pop psychology titles, it is a deeper and multifaceted concept when we stop to think about it. The best motivational books seem to tap … [Read more...]

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The Best History Books

September 19, 2018 By

“History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.” — Attributed to Mark Twain “History is merely all the data we have so far.” — Paul Graham There is no better way to understand our present than by understanding our past. History is the light which shines on the present day, revealing the origin and ethos of the forces that shape the world around us. While reading the newspaper or a magazine often … [Read more...]

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Impro: Improvisation and Theatre Summary and Notes

August 19, 2018 By

 Impro: Improvisation and Theatre Summary Ostensibly a book about how to teach Improvisational theatre, Impro is a fascinating and insightful look at human psychology. Starting with an amazing analaysis of how all human interaction boils down to status games and continuing through mask work, I found this book incredibly helpful for thinking about how to be "contrarian but correct" Buy a … [Read more...]

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The Bitcoin Standard Book Summary and Notes

August 13, 2018 By

The Bitcoin Standard Summary/Review One of the interesting side effects of the rise of Bitcoin is that suddenly a lot of people are interested in Austrian economics. In The Bitcoin Standard, Ammous offers a take on why Bitcoin is the best version of what Austrians call "sound money" and why he believes that makes it the only cryptocurrency worth paying attention to. Beginning with a history … [Read more...]

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The Black Swan Book Synopsis, Quotes and Notes

June 16, 2018 By

The Black Swan Synopsis Nassim Taleb looks at the impact and human psychology of extreme events. Broadly, it shows that humans tend to create environments where extreme events are more likely and then underestimate their probability. This results in everything from World Wars to major market meltdowns. It is impossible to avoid black swans, but it is possible to become robust to negative … [Read more...]

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The Essays of Warren Buffett Summary and Quotes

June 16, 2018 By

The Essays of Warren Buffett Summary Every year for nearly the last half century, Warren Buffet has written an annual letter to his shareholders sharing his views and thinking on markets and investing. This book is a curated collection of the best parts of those letters. It acts as a wonderfully distilled version of his investment philosophy. Buy the book on Amazon. Quotes The CEOs at … [Read more...]

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Market Mind Games by Denise Shull Summary and Quotes

June 16, 2018 By

Market Mind Games Summary This is a book about the mindset of trading. Conveniently, the author offers her own summary which I'll paraphrase with some adaptations Create physical energy - Don't trade when you are tired, hungry, etc. Read other people - Think about the emotional state of the market. Is it greedy or fearful? Get the risk management edge through knowing yourself and how … [Read more...]

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The 80/20 Investor by David Schneider

June 16, 2018 By

The 80/20 Investor Investing In An Uncertain and Complex World Summary The 80/20 Investor Investing In An Uncertain and Complex World is a helpful book on investing for small business owners. This book is for all people who are unsatisfied with their own work intensive and at times very complex investment strategies. It’s for individual investors and entrepreneurs who have day jobs and … [Read more...]

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The Most Important Thing Illuminated by Howard Marks Notes and Quotes

June 16, 2018 By

The Most Important Thing Illuminated Summary Howard Marks is one of the most well-respected living value investors. Since 1990, he has been writing a public memo every few months that is widely read by many investors. The Most Important Thing is a "best of" his letters with some additional color added. I found it imminently quotable and insightful. I would categorize Marks as a defensive value … [Read more...]

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Misbehavior of Markets Summary and Quotes

February 25, 2018 By

The Misbehavior of Markets Summary Mandelbrot was one of the founding thinkers of what has alternately been called Chaos and complexity science. The Misbehavior of Markets is his application of those principle to financial markets, and, in my opinion one of the best finance books ever written. At the core of much financial theory is a reliance on Newtonian physics. This sounds sort of weird, … [Read more...]

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Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber Summary and Quotes

January 10, 2018 By

Debt by David Graeber Summary Everyone that's taken an economics class has heard the story about how money was created: people used to barter with each other but it got really inefficient because what if I wanted to trade my shoes for bread, but the baker didn't need any new shoes so money was created to form a medium of exchange. Graeber, an anthropologist, provides convincing evidence that … [Read more...]

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Reasons and Persons Summary

January 9, 2018 By

Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit Derek Parfit was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This book is his most famous work. The first half of the book argues against self-interest theory, the idea that each person … [Read more...]

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Denial of Death Summary and Quotes

October 11, 2017 By

The Denial of Death Summary The winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize and the culmination of a career, The Denial of Death is a brilliant work. Becker argues, convincingly, that evolution has brought man to a point where he is trapped between his "creatureliness" and "symbolic self." Consciousness has made man aware of his own powers, but also of his miserable creatureliness and his destiny to … [Read more...]

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The Best Philosophy Books

August 10, 2017 By

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it." - Bertrand Russell Some of the greatest thinkers in world history have lived within the field of philosophy. By studying the best philosophy books we can try to understand the ways that cultures before us created … [Read more...]

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The Organization Man Quotes and Summary

June 17, 2017 By

Summary The Organization Man by William Whyte was published in 1956 and is considered among the most influential management books ever written. Whyte, a reporter at Fortune, did extensive interviews with CEOs and Executives at major American corporations like GE and Ford asking what they had seen change over the course of their careers Whyte argues that America has been overtaken by … [Read more...]

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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Book Review

March 23, 2015 By

  Buy the Book on Amazon Read: July 2012 Rating: 3/5 (Good)   Summary Blink was one of the first books I read that started me down the path of considering the role of the subconscious in decision making. I've always been struck in business context how the most successful entrepreneurs are able to make snap judgements with such confidence and accuracy and Blink starts to … [Read more...]

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Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths Book Review

March 23, 2015 By

Buy the Book on Amazon Read: September 2014 Rating: 4/5 (Great)   Summary Be Slightly Evil is one of three books currently published by Venkatesh Rao (Venkat) of RibbonFarm.com, my favorite blog on the Interwebz. Unlike dumbed down management books which try to present people in a nieve black/white light, Be Slightly Evil and Venkat's entire corpus are a more nuanced look at … [Read more...]

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Anything You Want Book Review

March 23, 2015 By

  Buy the Book on Amazon Read: July 2012 Rating: 4/5 (Good)   Summary Derek Sivers has long been one of my business philosophy inspirations and his blog, Sivers.org is one of the few I've been a subscriber to for years. In Anything You  Want, he distills his business philosophies of customer first and business as art down into bite sized chunks that I frequently … [Read more...]

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Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure Book Review

March 21, 2015 By

  Buy the Book on Amazon Read: July 2012 Rating: 3/5 (Good)   Summary Hartford chronicles, and does a good job of explaining in an accessible way, one of the meta trends facing our generation. Namely that "success" is increasingly based on our ability to operate effectively in a complex ecosystem where inputs are not clearly connected with outputs. Takeaways Success … [Read more...]

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How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World Book Review

December 9, 2014 By

Buy the Book on Amazon Read: December 2014 Rating: 4/5 (Great) Summary Ostensibly a book about Libertarian principles, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World is in more a case for radical honesty with both ourselves and others and letting come what may as a result. Browne takes very fundamental notions of liberty and sovereignty and reflects on years spent applying them on his his life. If … [Read more...]

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The ONE Thing Book Review

December 1, 2014 By

Buy the Book on Amazon Read: October 2014 Rating: 4/5 (Great) Summary Almost unnecessary, the title pretty much sums it up. It's about figuring out your One Thing and devoting everything to it. The Book is embodied with the question "What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?" Takeaways Honestly, I hated to love this book. But, … [Read more...]

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Platform Power Summary

November 28, 2014 By

I picked up this book on a friend's recommendation after checking out the blog, Plaformed Thinking. You can Get the Book Here (click on the Hello Bar at the top and opt-in). More of an ebook/PDF than book book FYI. Read: November 28, 2014 Rating:  3/5 (Good) Summary In the future, all business will be tech businesses. Platform thinking is about redefining the rules and playing a … [Read more...]

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Influence by Robert Cialdini Book Notes

August 18, 2013 By

Key Concepts We're poorly adapted for the modern world and because of the overwhelming amount of stimuli and decisions that we face on a daily basis are forced to make decisions based on incomplete information. While the mechanism we've evolved for doing that are usually effective, they can be manipulated. The Six Principle Mechanisms of Influence: Reciprocity - We feel compelled to return … [Read more...]

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