Sources can be videos, audios, recordings, essays, blogs, etc. Anything.
Secondly, here are some of my favorite influential material:
- Li Ka-Shing, Tips on Life. My takeaway: invest in yourself. https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/asias-richest-ma...
- Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture. My takeaway: don't limit yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7zzQpvoYcQ
- Guy Kawasaki, Make Meaning. Aimed for startups, but equally applicable in life. My takeaway: Have the proper motivations for doing things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQs6IpJQWXc
- Admiral William H. McRaven, Make your bed. My takeaway: if you want to change the world, start by changing yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70
- David Foster Wallace, This is Water. My takeaway: Take a big picture view, and don't sweat the small stuff. https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
- “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”― Rumi
- Man's Search for meaning. My takeaway: We make meaning. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4069.Man_s_Search_for_Me...
- "All the livin that you're saving, won't buy your dreams for you" - Townes Van Zandt
- Idiot wind by Bob Dylan My takeaway: Your reaction to things can be just as bad as the actual thing. https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/57330/
- Stoicism and Marcus Aurelius, Seneca. My takeaway: Focus on what matters. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5617966-a-guide-to-the-g... (read this one first for a good foundation) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97411.Letters_from_a_Sto... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30659.Meditations
- Buddhism. Our takeaway: Meditation is important, the doctrine of emptiness (not nihilism!) is super interesting. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104949.How_to_See_Yourse... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhammapada https://www.shambhala.com/the-pocket-dalai-lama-14965.html https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25942786-the-mind-illumi... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3346233-buddhism
- Leonardo Da Vinci My take away: There is a beautiful intersection between tech and art. Great things could not exist without a little of both. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34684622-leonardo-da-vin...
- The Alchemist My takeaway: It's not the destination it's the journey. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/865.The_Alchemist
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My takeaway: Seek out quality, whatever the hell that is! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/629.Zen_and_the_Art_of_M...
- Why we sleep. My takeaway: go the fuck to bed. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep
- Anti-Cancer Diet. My takeaway: don't eat shit. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1886829.Anticancer_A_New...
- Non-violent communication. My takeaway: You can (and should) communicate your needs respectfully. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560861.Non_Violent_Commu...
- Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela. My takeaway: There is a difference between institutionalized action and individual action. Forgiveness is the only path forward. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318431.Long_Walk_to_Free...
- A people's history of the US. My takeaway: Things are getting better. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767.A_People_s_History_...
Very eager to master Non Violent Communivation coz more often than not I find myself in loss for the right word.
Apart from the point to which you have replied, there’s one more I would like to add.
I am an Indian, and have a bit of an accent. Am trying to rub it off. I work for US clients and have observed that I can’t crack jokes as easily as they do, nor do I sound as natural in a friendly banter as well as they do. Also, in the excitement of the conversation, sometimes my American client mumble off something which I am unable to grasp, and which my Indian colleague is able to understand with surprising ease. (The fact that my Indian colleague is vernacular medium educated freaks me off even more)
Also, I am preparing for IELTS the second time (Band 8 in first attempt). I am particularly weak in listening. To remediate that, I listen to a BBC podcast everyday called “The Archers”. I miss out on at least 5 points in the podcast, unable to decipher what they meant. That’s one area I am trying to improve at.
The other one is speaking itself. To put in simple words, I am trying to make my speech as fluid as water. The person I am conversing with should be able to understand me effortlessly. Right now my speech is quite rigid and not that articulate. I scored band 8 in speaking in IELTS. To take things forward, I learnt about this shadowing technique from YouTube’s Emma’s channel and from someone on HackerNews. The bottom line of the shadow technique is, pick up a favorite show - and speak along with whatever the character says, do this for all episodes, and finish the series. One person on HN said that in order to perfect his Mandarin, he shadowed on Chinese TV series for 9 years straight.
In addition to this, I also record myself and speak on some random topic daily for 2 min(Topic is mostly from IELTS speaking tests). Go through the recording. Spot pronunciation / intonation/ articulation mistakes. Take one more go at the same topic. And see if there’s improvement.
Do you have any other ideas apart from these in your mind which can help me with improving my speech?
I am also planning to gobble up all books related to languages written by Steven Pinker.
If interested let me know and I’ll give you a free 20 min intro via zoom.
So I'll go with Steve Pavlina's [0] work instead.
Steve Pavlina's blog is a mix of solid personal development advice mixed with a journal of his self experimentation.
His most interesting work is on belief systems, and on deliberately installing new belief systems to improve your life.
An interesting note is that he has released most of his work into the public domain. I'm working on audio versions of his articles.
I haven't read his articles in a while, so maybe they are more sane now.
Now it seems Steve is all crazy stuff.
For example this is Timecube level thinking: https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2019/02/your-10-dimensiona...
Now I wouldn't be surprised if Steve made way more money than Joel.
Being an individualist I don't agree with his life advice one bit.
Those that are not looking to settle down to anything less than perfect in life I'd suggest looking up "Actual Freedom".
Without knowing much about him, my impression was such that he's a staunch individualist
Just for starters, allowing your well-being dependent on being above some level in some social hierarchy is hardly considered being self-reliant.
Bed of Procrustus by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a bunch of quick aphorisms that takes less than an hour to read and gives good insight into Taleb’s form of critical thinking.
Between the Devil and the Dragon by Eric Hoffer has essays from a self-educated, laborer philosopher and has helped me to understand much about how I think through things and why.
I like how you stated “I’ve never regretted the time spent reading him” as I don’t agree with many of his statements and sometimes his writings seem a bit self-involved or exegesis in need of a peer review, but I’ve found it valuable to read through and think the power of some of the ideas I keep, or just strongly disagree, are worth all the material I discard.
Some good stuff here:
If you're willing to entertain the idea for a brief moment that the Bible has any wisdom at all, his Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories is a must. I recommend them even if you aren't willing, in fact. They converted me, and i was a fairly nihilistic atheist for almost all of my thinking life.
I also don’t agree with his sexual-marketplace ideas about how women choose mates, and why it’s a good thing for women to choose men who behave badly towards them because they’ll change: “[female lobsters] identify the top guy quickly, and become irresistibly attracted to him. This is brilliant strategy, in my estimation. It’s also one used by females of many different species, including humans. ... His aggression has made him successful, so he’s likely to react [to the female] in a dominant, irritable manner. Furthermore, he’s large, healthy and powerful. It’s no easy task to switch his attention from fighting to mating. (If properly charmed, however, he will change his behaviour towards the female. This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time, and the eternal Beauty-and-the-Beast plot of archetypal romance. This is the pattern of behaviour continually represented in the sexually explicit literary fantasies that are as popular among women as provocative images of naked women are among men.)” Is this good advice or information for men or women? Personally, I don’t think so, but since it bears absolutely no relation to how I chose my partner, I suppose Peterson would say I am some kind of outlier or unusual female. Readers may make their own minds up about the quote.
For the lobster thing, I read it as neutral information. I took it as he was bringing up a similarity he has observed between the lobster behavior and popular plots in entertainment that seem to be popular with certain types of women. He's just presenting a connection for readers to make up their own minds about rather than stating some fact. However I also think most young men who read that will tend to agree with him quite easily, it definitely feels like it could partially be true (bad boy stereotype is a thing isn't it?). Also would you consider yourself in general to be a 'usual' female compared to the general population say personality wise or any other metric even? Just being on HN tells me you're already unusual, wouldn't you say?
You are getting that backwards. In reality, people think that way. They get angry with kids. They may even think violent thoughts. Tragically, they may actually be violent.
Any time you make a statement about what's weird about interactions between adults (especially parents) and kids, you should clarify that you do or do not have kids. So, I'll ask, do you have kids? I ask because we can be rational in an HN discussion. Dealing with kids tests that rationality.
> Is this good advice or information for men or women?
Men who are "alpha male" types get more selection. This may or may not be true. The "should" (rational decisions) is a different argument. JP is trying to explain how things ARE (and he could be wrong on that.) That's different from advice and the information is neither good or bad.
But we are also somewhat similar to pair bonding species. I would not describe it as an outlier or unusual, but rather two different biological strategies that is expressed through genes and culture. Researchers has even found some specific genes that is linked to predicting it, and women and men who has more of the pair-bonding associated genes have longer and happier relationships.
Being aware of both strategies and knowing there is a biological aspect to it is useful information, but strictly following one is foolish. We are human with human brains so individuals will behave uniquely even if there is a bias when averaged over a population.
There is something strange about that book being so popular.
I think one can argue that women have been socialized to want aggressive men so that becomes a common fantasy vs it's a biologically based phenomenon. I wonder if there is a way to compare how popular the book is in relation to how strongly stereotypical the education and culture is.
When he's hosting two prominent alt right figures as guests on his podcast [0], I think it's pretty fair to say that he has ties to the alt right.
[0]: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/11164318379565834...
- he says that there can be value in religion, and it for some reason triggers some people
- he's a critic of the "neo-Marxist post-modern left"
- he promotes emphasis on oneself before emphasis on collective, which in left's eyes is "reactionary". I.e. in his opinion, lots of people have vast room for personal improvement, which will in turn make their life better and easier - while in the left's eyes this is just a diversion, because the best way to life improvement is unionisation, political movements etc.
It would take a mere 10 seconds of googling to find the answer to that question as he is literally asked about it every few hours on twitter or in interviews. And every single time he explains it but it seems to fall on deaf ears.
> I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint
I personally don´t understand those people because they are not really listening to the argument. They are selectively hearing what they want to hear. In your "question" there is an embedded assumption that order (masculine) is "good" and chaos (feminine) is "bad". And that´s why people get offended; if they didn´t equate chaos with bad, there would be no reason to get offended. This happens because they are not _actually_ reading Peterson. They are reading what they _think_ someone like Peterson would say but in doing so they miss the point completely.
Peterson argues that chaos in literature is most often presented as feminine (mother nature for instance) and order is presented as masculine most often (God, the heavenly father for instance). At any point in time, order OR chaos can both take hold to varying extreme degrees, which is not good for society. Example: Totalitarian states (extreme order/masculine) are bad, but so is anarchy/chaos and the complete lack of order. Both extreme order and extreme chaos are bad he argues constantly.
Would it be any better if Peterson argued that chaos was masculine and order was feminine? not really, people would still get offended because that´s what people want to be. They don´t actually stop and listen to what is being said, which is unfortunate :/
Peterson is describing traditional mythological associations, not prescribing anything. Chaos is tradtionally associated with the feminine. Order is traditionally associated with the maculine. This is true historically. He's not saying anything should be any way on this topic.
To all people, who are downvoting Peterson, take some time to watch his classroom lectures on Youtube.
Edit: tense
In what way did the book help you a lot? What do you now do differently in life?
I think for starters is to realize there is a lot of contradicting life advice. Then the other thing is wether people follow the advice they give others.
There is a Carl Jung quote:
> Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.
Personally for me, understanding life is understanding the pros/cons of every scenario.
The pros and cons of short term thinking.
The pros and cons of long term thinking.
The trade offs between both. There are trade offs in everything we do. Understanding them, and accepting them is important.
One way to think of it is that reading advice puts you in the perspective of the advice-giver, instead of your own. Like, when you read a book titled "99 ways not to be a loser", you begin worrying if you're a loser and seeing everything through that lens. And then you read "35 ways to become a decent person" and suddenly being a loser isn't a problem anymore, now there's something else on your mind. And so on. It stops you from seeing your life on its own terms, from many angles and the actual weighting of each, which is very personal. It requires living, not reading.
(ps: I am a religious person and the content is heavily influenced by that, but I hope the concept, and present/future software, are amenable to about any worldview.)
I would start with his tweet storm: How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):
Anyhow, in order to be able to read this I had to use a third party service.
Link: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html
They went as far to create a lovely transcript of it, too: https://fs.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Naval-Ravikant-TK...
This is a nice analogy about how hard it is to understand what we live in every day. To know about 'water' I learned a lot from Thomas Eriksen -- Small Places, Large Issues. It's an introduction to cultural anthropology and it's a great academic read, but it also taught me a lot on a personal level; to clearly recognize different schools of thought and see their particular and universal value.
Good contextual knowledge of this sort tones down the general chaos of life for me. It just helps a lot to have a solid mental model of cultures and ideologies, know their overlaps and contradictions, and to have the ability to relate specific thinkers to this model.
For those that don't know: he interpreted a law that was passed in Canada as compelled speech law and decided that was a line that shall not be crossed, no matter the presumed benefit. That line happened to coincidentally involve trans people and, well, it's the late 2010s, so that speaks for itself. It takes about three minutes of listening to him talk on the subject to understand that his singular life's mission is to figure out what is necessary to prevent totalitarianism ever again. Compelled speech laws are something we ought to be on the defensive for in that regard. The fact that it involved trans people is irrelevant to him and should be irrelevant to us.
I spent some time listening to him, and that wasn't my impression. It struck me as a mixture of contrarianism, attention seeking behaviour and latent transphobia.
As an entrepreneur, I found the best way to learn about life is to read biographies of successful people, especially the ones that speak of the transformations.
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein - Walter Isaacson
Just wanted to second this. One of the few books that has actually changed the way I view everything in life, and led to a years long deep dive into eastern philosophy.
Never knew unhappiness after I read this. Highly recommended.
Another one is Méditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Lives by Plutarch if you have the patience.
It’s very easy to knock down others. But you haven’t lived his life, and you just cannot know how it was for him and what pushed him to take his own life.
Would someone put down any works by Ian Murdock (founder of Debian) because he also took his life?
I find these kind of criticisms, based on some actions of a person who otherwise contributed a lot, very silly and downright insulting in the meanest of ways.
Next time you want to write a disclaimer on Aaron Swartz, you could perhaps describe it as how the FBI and DoJ went too far and killed him in more ways than one.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy
Even when he was still alive, I already sometimes felt he is following an ideology that might end up hurting him. I feel the same way about many young people involved in politics. Unfortunately political movements have the tendency to swallow people, and make them give up their lives for the (presumed) greater good rather than their own benefit.
Just a warning, though: be prepared for thanatophobia while reading it, since it has "memento mori" written all over it.
This one-per-day, helps me absorb them in a slow and steady manner.
[1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Daily-Stoic-Meditations-Perseveranc...
(link is not associate)
You can learn best from the mistakes of others. It's a kind of wisdom of the crowds-approach.
(I don't work for Quora, nor do I participate in their partner program)
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
Not everyone is in the same place in their personal growth process, or has time to read as much as needed to find what is best and most applicable to them, but there are some best practices that can help us all, when we are ready for them. So the intent is to capture those, for any area of life (which I have grouped under mental, physical, spiritual, social/emotional).
I have posted much more at http://lukecall.net, under "Life lessons". (I think the site is lightweight/responsive, and skimmable.)
(ps: I am a religious person and the content explains why, and is heavily influenced by that. Also, I hope the concepts, and present/future software to help with it, can be helpful, given almost any worldview.)
The message is very subtle, but much closer to reality than most of the other suggestions here. The difficult part is that it requires letting go a lot of views to which we are very attached. Not your typical feel-good motivational book.
Don't tell me his meaning is the journey not the destination (end product book)
An extremely concise life advice book. Doesn't wander around ideas. Well-written.
Of all 'self-help' books I have read, this is the only I truely recommend.
Daily Reading Guide here: https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120612_1
I have learned a ton through playing poker. The game has a lot of carry-over into real life. Luck vs Skill. Variance. Take a look at the link for a great review on a great book about poker.
https://25iq.com/2018/10/13/lessons-from-annie-duke-author-o...
You can also subscribe to the fs blog or their podcast The Knowledge Project. They do a lot with mental models.
The book The Art of Thinking Clearly is another great book that covers biases of the mind in one to two pages each.
The Tim Ferris podcast surprisingly has some amazing guests filled with life advice. I just listened to one with Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. It was absolutely fantastic.
He writes on mastery, seriousness and the Truth.
His Twitter: https://twitter.com/KapilGuptaMD.
And some excerpts from his writings:
> "Cleverness and insincerity are loud. Seriousness is quiet"
> "The Mind does not assault man for his mistakes. It assaults him for the cover-up"
> "If there was one single thing that stands between man and his freedom, it is the belief that he has time"
> "What must be understood is that human beings’ lives harden into routines. They harden into a way of being. At some long-forgotten moment many moons ago, they settled. For things they swore they would not settle for...today's compromise is tomorrow's resentment”"
> "People are who they are. And they will do everything in their power to remain who they are. And the Mind will make certain of this"
> "The common man is afraid of “losing.” The Legend is afraid of not arriving at his ultimate capability. These are fundamentally different paths"
https://thefullertoninformer.com
www.YouTube.com/thefullertoninformer
In particular. Do new things often as it slows down the perception of time.
Books:
How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie
Taste testing:
PhilosophersNotes is like sparknotes for self-help books. Can be used as a way to discover / screen books you'd like.
Audio:
Psychology in Seattle's episodes regarding Attachment Theory (6 episodes). The reason why is it's a swiss army knife for understanding relationships and behavior. These episodes are paywalled though, but there are free episodes available if you use a Podcast app.
Like aphextron mentioned Socrates: Republic, Apology by Plato are really good. The one narrated by Ray Childs.
Audible for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (it's like a Socratic dialog about what Quality is)
A lot of stuff by The Teaching Company / Great Courses in general have been good quality (maybe I've been lucky).
- kapilguptamd.com
- He appeared in a few episodes on 33voices podcast
- two recent appearances in Crazy Wisdom podcast with Stewart Alsop
