On Choking, Checklists, and Stumbling on Happiness
Books that changed my life
Hello all!
Here is your weekly dose of books that changed my life.
1. Peak performance
Choke: What Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To
Summary
I love studying all aspects of peak performance. This book focuses on why people choke. Remember Bill Buckner? This booked helped me better prepare for standardized exams. If you or anyone in your family is competing at anything, there are many useful principles to glean from this book.
Principle: When you teach someone who knows less than you, you end up learning the material better yourself.
Insight: Even practicing under mild levels of stress can prevent people from falling victim to choking when high levels of stress come around.
Quote: All unhappy performances resemble each other, but each is messed up in its own way -Tolstoy
Authors: Sian Beilock
Themes: Peak performance, Human psychology
My personal notes from the book
2. Productivity
The Checklist Manifesto
Summary
It seems so simple: checklists. But we rarely ever use them. Studies have shown that using checklists improves outcomes. The best use of checklists for me is with kids. Going away on a trip? Make a checklist so you don’t forget your bathing suit. Have a baseball game? Make a checklist so you don’t forget your cleats. As an emergency physician, we’d use checklists for procedures. Surgeons now do it all of the time. Which leg are we operating on? And pilots run through checklists before every flight no matter how many times they’ve flown the same plane. You’ll appreciate the insights this book has to offer and I’m sure you’ll find a way to add a checklist or two to your life.
Principle: Checklists improve outcome with no increase in skill.
Insight: Complicated problem: sending a rocket to the moon. Complex problem: raising a child.
Good checklists
Precise
Don’t spell everything out
Provide reminders of most critical steps
5 to 9 items
Focus on killer items
Author: Atul Gawande
Themes: Productivity, Work hygiene, Personal development, Running a business, Human psychology, Culture, Productivity
My personal notes from the book
3. Personal development
Stumbling on Happiness
Summary
Do you know what makes you happy? Daniel Gilbert would bet that you think you do, but you are most likely wrong. In this book, Gilbert reveals his take on how our minds work, and how the limitations of our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness is. If you are someone who wants to understand why we do things or why we feel a certain way, this book is right up your alley.
Principle: Experience is unobservable to everyone except the person who it happens to.
Insight: The greatest ability of the human brain is to imagine, to see the world as it has never been before.
Insight: One of the hallmarks of depression is that when depressed people think about future events they can't imagine liking them very much.
Imagination’s three shortcomings:
Imagination tends to add and remove details, but people do not realize that key details may be fabricated or missing from the imagined scenario.
Imagined futures (and pasts) are more like the present than they actually will be (or were).
Imagination fails to realize that things will feel different once they actually happen—most notably, the psychological immune system will make bad things feel not so bad as they are imagined to feel.
Author: Daniel Gilbert
Themes: Personal development, Living a full life, Human psychology
My personal notes from the book
That’s a wrap. Thanks for reading!
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Best,
Adam
P.S. Do you have a favorite book that changed your life? Please share it with me by replying to this email.
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Three great books... AGAIN! nice work 3BT