books in brief

Get key takeaways from essential reads in just a few minutes.

Daniel Pink

Drive

Like all extrinsic motivators, goals narrow our focus. That's one reason they can be effective; they concentrate the mind. But a narrowed focus exacts a cost. For complex or concep...

David Brooks

How to know a person

There are both Diminishers and Illuminators in society. This book helps people learn how to be an Illuminator. Brooks quotes the biographer of E.M. Forster, who claimed, “To speak ...

Daniel Goleman

Primal Leadership

Learning about how to set boundaries can be difficult work for those who didn’t learn boundary setting as a child. Learning to communicate your desires and to not take ownership of...

Kim Scott

Radical Candor

Caring personally is about finding time for real conversations; about getting to know each other at a human level; about learning what’s important to people; about sharing with one...

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Seven Rules of Power

Power is just a tool. It is neutral, with no moral definition. When you confuse how you feel about the use of power with power itself, you do yourself a disservice. You allow other...

Jared Diamond

The World Until Yesterday

The shift from hunting-gathering to farming began 11,000 years ago; the first metal tools were produced only about 7,000 years ago; and the first state government and the first wri...

Ha Joon Chang

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable. Low inflation has not made the world more stable and brutal anti-inflationary policies can easily do mor...

Todd Ross

The End Of Average

Our system of judging people according to their deviation from the mean (faster, slower, stronger, weaker) is smothering our talents. The sweeping generalizations of averagarians c...

Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson

Why Nations Fail

All failed states have one thing in common and that the rule is by an elite whose focus is on maintaining and/or expanding their own interests at the expense of the rest of the pop...

Aarti Kelshikar

How India Works

India exhibits a prevalent mindset rooted in hierarchy. This hierarchical structure extends beyond distinctions in job titles; it permeates across various domains, including caste,...

Timothy Ferris

Tribe Of Mentors: Short Life Advice From The Best In The World

Many people feel that when they are overwhelmed or lose focus, they need to retreat into themselves and shut out the world. That doesn’t work for me. I find myself, and activate my...

David Buss

Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science Of The Mind

Evolutionary psychology is the scientific study of the mind as a product of evolution. It seeks to understand how the human mind has been shaped by natural and sexual selection ove...

Ashley Merryman And Po Bronson

Top Dog: The Science Of Winning And Losing

When it comes to competition of any kind, people tend to fall into one of two categories: those who need to avoid stress to do well, and those who actually need stress to perform t...

Michael Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions enc...

Yuval Noah Harari

21 Lessons For The 21st Century

In trying to judge moral dilemmas people often resort to one of these four: downsize the issue, focus on a touching human story, weave conspiracy theories or create a dogma and put...

Dr Michael Greger

How Not To Die

Flexitarians appear to cut their rate of diabetes by 28 percent, good news for those who eat meat maybe once a week rather than every day. Those who cut out all meat except fish ap...

Johann Hari

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention

The huge rise in children being diagnosed with attention problems has coincided with several big changes in the way children live. Kids are now allowed to run around far less. Chil...

Luke Burgis

Wanting

Desire does not mean the drive for food or sex or shelter or security. Those things are better called needs—they’re hardwired into our bodies. Biological needs don’t rely on imitat...

Thomas Curran

The Perfection Trap

Societal change is needed to counter the rise of perfectionism. Ultimately, it will require policy changes and huge collective action, such as stricter regulations for advertising ...

Manuel Smith

When I Say No I Feel Guilty

The right to be the final judge of yourself is the prime assertive right which allows no one to manipulate you. It is the assertive right from which your other assertive rights are...

Paddy Upton

The Barefoot Coach

Of the many lessons, this time we heard that If dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough, that bettering yourself every day is not negotiable for someone wanting to live life...

Steven Bartlett

The Diary of a CEO

Making things easier isn’t necessarily the path to a psychological moonshot, sometimes you have to do the opposite e.g. Red Bull delivers on its psychological expectation of enhanc...

Amy Edmondson

Right Kind of Wrong

We observed that nurses confronted “process failure” often. Their responses fell into two categories. What we called “first order problem solving” was a work around to complete the...

Debra Fine

The Art of Small Talk

Assume the burden of making everyone else feel happy and comfortable. There is a certain tragedy of the commons in conversation: people often assume that someone else will handle m...

Hal Hershfield

Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today

When facing an overwhelming task, like a hefty debt, break it down into smaller, manageable payments. It’s a more approachable strategy and easier on your current self, while still...

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

The next step is reflective individualism. The person again turns inward, finding new grounds for authority and value within the self. He is no longer blindly conforming, but devel...

Dr. Nate Zinsser

The Confident Mind

Most of us were “socialized” by well-meaning teachers, coaches, and other authority figures who encouraged us to find our place in the world and comfortably fit in rather than buil...

Joe Dispenza

Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself

We are addicted to the problems and conditions of our lives that produce stress. No matter whether we’re in a bad job or a bad relationship, we hold our troubles close to us becaus...

Marshall Goldsmith

The Earned Life

That’s the risk that comes with the empathy of feeling. We can feel too much. We can reduce that risk a well-intended come and go strategy. By all means share the other persons fee...

Sheena Iyengar

The Art of Choosing

Every time you choose you might think that it is over, that you’ve chosen and that it will either be good or bad. But once we’ve made a choice, we must make other choices afterward...

Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren

Are You Thinking Clearly?

Despite what countless other books will tell you, positivity and optimism come with plenty of pitfalls – not least that they can make you overconfident, blinkered and gullible.

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