The Effective Executive - Summary Part 1

The effective exective is a classic book by Peter Drucker about being an effective knowledge worker. For a knowledge worker productivity cannot be simply measured as widgets produced/hour. So it is very important that the worker itself understand productivity and how to be more productive.

Effective executives do the five following things to get the RIGHT THINGS DONE instead of just getting THINGS done RIGHT.

1. They know their time. They know how their time is being spent and they will take control of the little time they can control and use it systematically.
2. They focus on OUTWARD CONTRIBUTION. They ask 'What is expected out of me?' before thinking of what to do an what tools are available.
3. They work with strengths. They make the best of themselves, their colleagues, their team etc. They do it from strengths not weaknesses.
4. They concentrate on few things that make a lot of difference. They set priorities and stick to them. Other things, they don't do at all.
5. Finally, the make the right decisions. They realize that decision making is a systematic process and it is not done through consensus but inspite of dissenting opinions. What are required are few fundamental decisions not many glitzy ones.

Book Reco - Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevellin

Charlie Munger (Photo credit: Nick J Webb)

I haven't written a post from lot of days. Its not that I didn't find anything worth writing about but nothing excited me so much so that I want to share..

But I would like to recommend a book to you all. It is Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevellin. The author has read a lot of books and distilled the wisdom into this book. It contains the wisdom from Darwin to Charlie Munger who is the one of the chief person in Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company's success.

For a detailed summary of the book go to Derek Sivers blog on Seeking Wisdom.

Surely you are joking Mr Feynmann - Review

Mr Feynmann is a nobel-prize winning physicist. He has written a book about his experiences in life called Surely you are joking Mr.Feynmann. Even though there is one single narrative through all those stories, the book is a absolute page turner. He talks about his childhood experiences, his student experiences, his experiences as a teacher. Each story is witty and you just want to completely read it. 


He is an absolutely versatile person and apart from being a full time physicist, he was a samba player, tumba drums player, lock picker, language learner and an accomplished painter. His life in an example of what you can achieve if you play with whatever you are passionate about. 


The book also contains learning moments about how to understand science, how to stand for your word and how to be passionate and witty. 


I am very very impressed with the stories that I completed them in one straight reading. It is a really amazing book which will surely increase your interest in science. If you are not interested, you will surely be left laughing. You will not be disappointed with this book at all. Happy reading.

Never Eat Alone - 1

This time, i will be back with the summary of the book - Never Eat Alone - by Keith Ferrazi. After How to Win Friends And Influence People, this is the most recommended book about building relationships. So he we go..

Being a part of the club: 
There is a separate mindset for people who are able to have better relationships. You should genuinely care about the other person. So the first part of the book is about the mindset. 

Reciprocity is the gussied-up word people use later in life to describe this ageless principle. I just knew the word as "care."

By being connected, you can ask for help, you can give help and help each other all the time. 

Until you become as willing to ask for help as you are to give it, however, you are only working half the equation.


Dont keep score:
 Don't expect these to be transactions. Just because you did something doesn't mean you should expect something from them. You will get help when needed.

Whats your mission:
Understand what you are trying to achieve. Then try to see who in your network can help you reach there soon.

Build before you need:
You cannot build something just when you need it. You have to build it before you need it.

Be Audacious:
The fact is everyone will feel embarrassed to ask. But you have to do it anyway to get what you want. And more often than not people are happy to help. Find a model whom you can learn from, learn speaking from toastmasters, get involved, get therapy ( talk about your negative emotions) and just do it.

Don't be a networking jerk:
 Don't schmooze or gossip, because one day or the other everyone will find out you are not trustworthy and will not tell anything important to you and then you will not have anything to gossip.
Be transparent, which helps people to contribute.
Treat people under you well. Have an opinion and say it. Share with the world what you have.
Don't be overly efficient. The author tells a story of how he used to hire helpers to sign and send new year greetings, and finally his friend telling him that he got three cards all signed by a different person.
So the aim is to make friends not just send letters or greetings.

If you're not making friends while connecting, best to resign yourself to dealing with people who don't care much about what happens to you.

How to live on 24 hours a day - Summary

An excellent short old book for making the most of the time for employed people with 9-5 type of schedule. Read online at manyread.net here

These are my notes from the book.

1. Time is limited for everyone.
2. We have equal time. We don't have credit and we can't have debts of it.
3. Simply begin. There is no waiting, just simply begin.

Let me principally warn you against your own ardour. Ardour in well-doing
is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment;
you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is eager to move
mountains and divert the course of rivers. It isn't content till it perspires.
And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, "I've had enough of this."

4.

If a man
makes two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which
admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully
and completely? He cannot.
One of the chief things which my
typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a
continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want
is change--not rest, except in sleep

5.
Audit your day for the time you are not in office and consider it as another day. Accept you are not that tired at that time and choose to do something at that time if not everyday atleast once in two days. Keep them sacred very very sacred.

6. Don't think it is easy so plan for the misgivings of human nature. But try to keep it. Train your mind because thoughts are the root of everything.  Read a passage of epictetus and marcus aurelius and meditate on it

9.Get interested in arts or reasoning or anything and follow it up daily. In other words, get interested in something out of your zone daily.

I have two general suggestions of a certain
importance. The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts.
Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say to
yourself: "I will know something about the French Revolution, or the rise
of railways, or the works of John Keats." And during a given period, to be
settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure
to be derived from being a specialist.

10. Beware of becoming a prig, or becoming a slave to your schedule or taking on too much or reading without digesting or reading something which you are not interested in.

Book Summary - The Switch - Part 4

This is the fourth in the book summary series of Switch. For more read part 1, part 2, part 3

We have seen two important methods of creating change - direct the rider and motivate the elephant. The next part of the puzzle is Shape the Path or changing the environment so that it is easy for us to create change.
First we can Tweak the environment to make change easier. There might be simple ways by tweaking the environment, we can create the change. The authors give an example where a manager who was termed as unapproachable change that impression by just making the chairs behind her so that when they came, they can face each other and not face the computer. That way, she will be responsive to the people. I have used it successfully by installing the 'StayFocused' extension so that I will not be distracted easily by wanting to look at twitter or news sites during work hours. Actually this can create a change very easily sometimes. If we want to eat healthy, just throw all the junk food outside. If you want to wake up at  6, try putting the alarm far from you, so that you have to wake up and walk to switch it off.
Next thing is to Build Habits,  encouraging the change. We can create some action triggers, like when I come here, first I will do this. Like when I wake up first thing, I will open my planner and plan the day or go and hit the gym. This will also help very much in creating change. Or just creating some checklists will also go a long way in helping create change.
Next is to Rally The Herd. Actually the authors write about a research finding where we are unconsciously influenced by our peers. When we are alone, we generally do what we feel is right, but when we are with others we tend to first see what the group is doing. This way we become the data for others whom we take as data. So we have to make sure we should make our behavior the acceptable behavior. So we have to highlight the data which is useful for us. Also if we don't have it, we have to apply social pressure so that they do what change we want to create. The authors give good examples of speeding up peer reviews by putting the review times up for everyone to see.

Related articles

• Book review: "Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath (venturebeat.com)
• Switch by Chip and Dan Heath (bhplnjbookgroup.blogspot.com)

Book Summary - Switch - Part 3

In the part 2 of this book we have seen that the rider should be directed by looking at the bright spots, reducing ambiguity by scripting the critical moves and pointing to the destination.
 But before even the rider can be directed, the elephant has to be motivated to move. So how to motivate the elephant?Elephant is a feeler, so you have to

Find the feeling : Let the people who have to change experience the consequences of not changing or the advantages of successfully doing the change. This brings in emotion to change. This may give a initial motivating boost which you get while reading a personal development book which quickly wanes, so what should be done is we should
Shrink the change: We have so make the big thing into small chunks so that the elephant will get a feeling of do-ability so that they don't get discouraged and altogether stop working. This can be done by identifying what exactly are your small victories so that you can celebrate it and get the high of getting it done, which in a virtuous cycle will bring in more celebrations.
Another helpful thing which can be done is to
Grow your people: The authors say that we make decisions in two ways - one is analytically, which appeals to the rider and other way is by identity which appeals to the elephant. When we cannot approach the problem analytically, we can do it by growing the identity for that in the people. What would a good citizen do in this situation - etc, by this identity questions, lot of change can be successfully enabled. 
There are two types of mentalities of people. One with fixed mindset and other called growth mindset - Fixed mindset people think that their talents and abilities are fixed and hence they cannot be cultivated. Whereas growth mindset people can think of everything as a learning and grow from it.
IDEO has a graph showing the project mood which has hope - > Insights -> Confidence in the order. When they fail they gather insights from that, so they are positively taking failure which is useful for growth.

In the next part, we will see what can be done to improve the environment, i.e shaping the path. Stay tuned.