Multipliers by Liz Wiseman

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Surprisingly good for a business book. Really changed the way I see the management and inspiration of people. It seems to have applications outside the business world- I'm about to try it on my kids this summer and will report back.

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Finish by Jon Acuff

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short and useful book. Here's what I got from it, but it might be worth a second read.

Pick a fun goal! And fun ways to achieve the goal.
Make the goal smaller than you originally want
Make the timeline to achieve your goal longer
Don't let "noble" prerequisites get in your way.
Don't let perfectionism stop you when you're almost done. (Actually usually for me, it's the opposite-- it's pessimism that gets me before I'm done.)
And you don't need to figure out what's next before you're done.

What are you getting from not finishing? (Fear of failure.)

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Atomic Habits by James Clear

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a summary of Nudge by Richard Thaler, who actually discovered a lot of this information, and Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Even though I've read a lot of the information before in other books, and I don't think it's particularly fair that Clear is just cashing in other people's work, nonetheless I think Clear did an especially good job of collecting the most relevant information to the topic and keeping the explanations of each point short. Not a lot of filler in this book and this is probably the book I'd be most likely to revisit on this topic.

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Deep Work by Cal Newport

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a totally decent mashup of books about mindfulness, flow, and the books about ditching your phone. I've been reading so many of these types of books lately, and it's usually either researchers who have dedicated their lives to studying a particular type of psychology now termed behavioral economics and, alternatively, guys who write about other people's research. I find the latter category kind of unfair but often they do better summaries of the research because they're not so personally invested.

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168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meh. Some good ideas, but it's extremely frustrating to read this account of a working mother who has 1) a flexible work schedule, 2) assistants at work, 3) many home helpers including a nanny.

Let's break down the title a second though: 168 hours is how many hours you have if you don't sleep and don't go to work. So let's say you sleep 7-8 hours a night (because you really should), then you actually have 112-119 hours a week. Do you shower most days? Eat 3 meals? Prepare dinner? 100-112. If you have set working hours, say 9-5 or 9-6, you just lost another 40-45, assuming you telework (or teleport there) and have no commute. 55-72. If you have some small commute: 50-67. Okay, now we're talking. What are you going to do with your precious 50-67 hours a week? That's still a lot. Of course, if you're a parent of young children without a lot of caregiver help, I'm still thinking the answer is not too much.

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Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Henry Cloud has been writing about this since the 1990s so it's not new or shocking information. I found that it was written better than Cloud's books though and therefore more interesting and inspiring.

Could have been a little shorter though! Ha!

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The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is an expert in neuroscience and statistics so the book was clearly going to be the kind that engages me. Tons of interesting and new information. My main problem was that chapter to chapter the topics didn’t feel cohesive. I felt like I was reading a series of essays about human neurology and psychology in the current era. There was not a driving thesis in the book, and even the self-help aspect ebbed and waned.

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Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt

Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think that if you like books in this goal-setting genre, this one is pretty good. I'll probably also buy a copy for reference. I have to admit, I really love the title (maybe to a bias-forming level). *Warning! This review is more like note-taking on the book than a real summary. It's definitely more valuable if you take some notes on it.

Some of my favorite parts of the book were in the first introductory chapter:
1. Starts with a story about the amazing results of resilience. "Stay in the game and keep pushing" even if you're behind, you can still achieve your goals.
2. Set more than a few goals. Imagine accomplishing ALL of your goals a year : Health: best health of your life, energy to spare. Relationship: deepen your relationship. Finance: Debt-free with deep savings, money leftover and protected from emergencies. Spiritual: Feeling a connection to something greater and feeling grateful every day.
3. Document your baseline in the 10 domains so you can see your progress.

Ten Domains: Spiritual, Intellectual, Emotional, Physical, Marital, Parental, Social (friends), Vocational (career), Avocational (hobbies), Financial. Although I notice that home management seems to be missing from his list.

Usually, I give my thoughts on the books instead of summaries, but I wanted to record this for myself. So here's my little summary.
1. Believe the possibility- overcome doubts, be positive and abandon scarcity thinking, what's lacking and imagine putting it there, don't limit your goal based on your resources
(A bit repetitive: a. Recognize the limiting belief, b. Record it in writing, c. Is this belief helpful? d. Reject or reframe the belief. e. Revise the belief turn into liberating truth, f. Implement the new way of thinking.)
2. Get closure on the past and develop gratitude. After action review- write it down: What happened, why it happened, and what you can do to improve. You can do this with last year's goals. Adjust your beliefs and behavior. Gratitude makes you resilient and reminds us that we have agency. (A little repetitive here.)
3. Set goals that really work (Chapter 7)- Specific and measurable, habit goals, but also risky goals that stretch and challenge you.
4. Find your motivation to achieve your goal (this was my least favorite part). Find an accountability group.
5. Make it happen (Chapter 13-14): a. Start with the easiest /smallest part first for big projects (instead of eating the frog)- warm-up and create a positive feedback loop, if you get stuck try something else. b. seek outside help. c. Fully commit and schedule parts on your calendar. d. Activation triggers or cues to make responses easier. (Brainstorm triggers that are easier than your goals, optimize your activation triggers by automating them or taking them out of your control, decide in advance what to do if you're blocked, revise your activation trigger if it's not working.) e. Regular review of our goals: Daily review of all your goals (7-10 goals)- look for daily 3 actions; Weekly review: look for next 3 big actions and check at next weekly review; Quarterly review: rejoice your milestones, recommit to your goal- reconnect to your "why," revise your strategy or goal if it's not working, or remove the goal if you decide it's not worthwhile. If you remove it you might want to add a new one.

Celebrate your wins- both the overall goal and the milestones.

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Getting Things Done by David Allen

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this as part of the GW alumni book club. It’s good advice, basically: write down everything you have to do and how you are going to do it. My inbox is at zero this morning and I have multiple project lists now. Let’s see how I feel about it in 6 months as Allen recommends.

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Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I appreciated her critique of the positive-thinking culture in culture and business. I find the former irritating and the latter oppressive. The research shows that pessimists make the best attorneys. I've always suspected that would be true in a number of other fields where anticipating and averting disaster would be beneficial to a cheery facade. But the demands on sick people to be positive and even to pray are exhausting. What are we to make of how we've treated both the most positive and religious people who die from cancer- not to mention the grumps and atheists we tortured with this advice right to the grave? I agree with the premise that there is a sinister intersect of religion, magic and the corporate world in all this victim-blaming.

That said, I think Ehrenreich wasn't very fair to the scientific study of happiness and positive psychology. (Says the person who is obsessed with Jonathan Haidt and his books.)

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Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like this one better than Duhigg's The Power of Habit, though there's still too much illustrative storytelling which waters down the research.

There is some interesting science regarding the locus of motivation in the brain, though the author misses the chance to philosophize on the importance of this. Additionally, feeling like you have control in a situation increases motivation. (Ch 1) Start hard things by starting with someone that makes you feel like you have control, and explain to yourself why you're doing something. (Ch 1, Appendix)

Being on a sensitive team that gives everyone a chance to weigh in, increases the performance of the team more than having exceptional people on the team. (Ch 2) Individuals on teams that won't hold mistakes against them are more likely to take positive risks and admit mistakes that can then be corrected. (Ch 1, Ch 5)

Make a long-term goal. Under it make stretch goals, under stretch: SMART goals- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timeline.

The book also contains a really interesting discussion on holding mental models in the brain and how to allow for new information or challenges to those models. (Ch 3) You should learn to make probabilistic predictions and base decisions on statistics. (Ch 6) View creativity as problem-solving. Don't become overly committed to your creative solutions. (Ch 7) Take notes by hand, write less, and listen more. (Ch 8)

The illustrative stories in this one are more compelling than in The Power of Habit, especially the two contrasting examples of plane emergencies. Super intense.

I'm dubious about the discussion of following instincts as that doesn't have scientific support in the book, nor am I aware of any other scientific evidence that supports instinct and I've read quite a few of these behavioral economics books.

The end of the book kind of peters out with an educational example I didn't totally see how to apply to real life. Overall, a good read to begin the year.

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