Tag: Books
-
Some Thoughts on Reading
I think it is more and more important for us professionals today to read classics and poetry and short stories and memoirs. Books about things other than our profession. A lot of things can be automated but not people’s wants and relationships. We can force systemic behavioral changes but for us to connect with others…
-
Is all value visible?
Is all value visible? When does value become invisible? And how long can invisible value keep you going? I finished reading Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis last week. I haven’t seen the film starring Anthony Quinn, but while reading, Zorba looked exactly like Quinn in my mind. Some characters do that. They move from…
-
Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
A few months ago, I listened to a podcast featuring John Green, where he spoke about his new book Everything Is Tuberculosis. My first reaction was an almost reflexive one: “Really? TB? Even now?” Like many of us, I’ve heard stories of tuberculosis somewhere in my family tree, distant, almost archival. For years, I hadn’t…
-
What should I read Next?
Last weekend I was in Dallas attending a literature festival, where I also had a short session titled “What Should Be the Next Book to Read?” The crux of my talk was simple: people who read regularly rarely ask this question because the next book usually finds them. Most often, this question comes from people…
-
I don’t know how to do it
Telling we don’t know how to do something is very important and it just helps us and the company we work for. It gets us the help we need to learn and do our job better. Now the question is does our company and our team and our manager give us that freedom to say…
-
Attention deficit, doom scrolling, reading and walking
Attention deficit and doom scrolling are two problems we face. It slowly grows in us to a point where we feel a kind of numbness that never existed. I recently watched a DW documentary called “How the internet warps our emotions”. A must watch for us all. You can search for it on YouTube. Recently…
-
Writing is not easy
I had a request from a publisher to write a book since May last year, and I even started writing it, only to find out how difficult it is. The sheer energy needed to bring your thoughts to words. I realized it was not for me. Last week the publisher reached out to me and…
-
How we spend our time
Today with so many options, there is so much that craves our time and attention and not all of them are useful to us. Some of them we know are useless and yet we do them. Some of them we only know the uselessness in hindsight. This also means we sometimes know how useful things…
-
Happiness of being used
In Ichiro Kishimi‘s ’The courage to be disliked‘ there is an interesting sentence that comes to me over and over. It goes something like this, or that is how I understood. “Happiness and self worth comes from being beneficial to the community, by being of use to someone else.” This is a profound and deep…
-
A look at books in 2024 and for 2025
As always this year I took a note of the books I have consumed. I say consumed because books are not just read anymore, they are listened to as well. It came to 36. 16 read and 20 listened. As the year is ending, the last book of the year is Hope for Cynics –…
Penpositive 