High-Performance Lifestyle
Helen Keller once noted that life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Too many of us start out truly believing in this as we make plans for trips around the world (after graduation of course), and then we make plans for daring adventures (after we get a good job of course) and then we make plans to save up (for a nice house of course) and then we make plans for a funeral. [Read more…]
Describing a year’s worth of reading with one sentence is a proven way to distill the key ideas, main concepts, and major takeaways.
Incorporating this practice without notes reinforces the idea that knowledge without action is meaningless.
If you cannot summarize what you read, you cannot take action on that information. Then what you read is useless.
The path to success is massive, determined action. – Tony Robbins
The most important thing that comes from reading is learning how to navigate difficult things or times.
That is why a lot of people read before making a career transition — the path ahead is murky, mysterious, and scary as hell. So people read to help ease their transition.
How about when starting something new?
It is much more uncommon. People would more than likely walk into something fresh-faced and eager, but woefully unprepared. They might be willing to learn but would have done zero work prior to showing up. This small difference separates the best from the rest.
Starting new things is not easy and it may be more difficult to open up your mind to the idea of reading ahead or preparing before beginning. The difference is in the details, it is a slight edge. [Read more…]
Phil Knight, the founder of Nike and author of Shoe Dog, spoke of how he was constantly reading books about combat, war strategy, and generalship to help keep him focused during the early and turbulent days of Nike.
Many of his quests to Asia were also inspired by what he read. It was books that gave him the inspiration to stand among the ruins of Hiroshima. He stayed in the villa once occupied by General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines and was granted his request to the Republic of Vietnam to meet Vo Nguyen Giáp, their most prominent warrior of the Vietnam War. He was driven by the words of war.
Eventually, those quests to Asia opened the door for Nike’s production efforts in Japan and China and eventually Nike’s domination of the shoe game. Knight would say, Business is War. And Nike conquers all.
The one-sentence book summary is something that I learned from Ryan Holiday. His post on 42 books that will make you a better person used the technique to provide stratagems into some of the most important books he has ever read.
Using just one sentence to clearly convey the most important message of a book is a tough task. It is not always the thesis or the major point, sometimes it is a small detail that makes the biggest impact.
Either way, it required me to deeply reflect on each book from this past year. [Read more…]
