On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact. - Scott Adams
1. Alchemy
A marketing book that describes why feeling is more important than fact. Toothpaste doesn't need to have flavouring to work. Chicken flavour would be just as affective as mint, yet in our mind it's obvious that a minty toothpaste does a better job of cleaning our teeth. As for having fresh breath, mint flavour wins.
This book will show you just how important our feelings are when basing our decisions and how they often trump facts. Highly recumbent if you believe we live in a rational world.
2. Win Bigly
A book about persuasion. Once you understand the concepts from alchemy you'll understand the importance of changinghow people feel if you ever hope to change how they think and act. This book follows the master persuader himself, Donald Trump. No-one believed he would become president, yet he did. How? Read this book to find out.
Trump talked about building the wall, yet didn't talk about details. This allowed everyone to build their own wall in their minds and because we did the work and can see it (in our heads) we like the idea more.
If you want to see Trump in a new light and lean a few secrets of persuasion yourself, this book is for you.
3. Outliers
This book will teach you why some people are far more talented than others. This is the book that coined the 10,000 hour rule. Put simply if you train for 10,000 hours on anything you'll become one of the best in the world at said thing.
* I've not read this book in a while so the small details might be wrong, but the larger picture is correct.
Someone noticed that a team of professional hockey players all had birthdays in the same month. After a bit more research he released it wasn't just that team, it was the whole association. Loads of January birthdays and a gradual decline until next to no December birthdays, But why?
Trials for high school teams were in December, meaning the 10 year olds competing had vastly different physical and mental strength. Those who turned 10 at the start of the year could easily overpower those born at the end of the year and hence got onto the better teams, got better training through their teenage years and where in a far greater position to play professionally when they became adults. No matter how talented you where, if you were born in December it was next to impossible to ever become a professional.
This book will change how you see talent. It will change how you view hard work. It will change how you view tradition. If you're ready to see everything through new eyes this is a must read.
4. 80/20 Principle
The 80/20 Principle is a mathematical rule that seems to pop up everywhere.
20% of people commit 80% of crimes.
20% of drivers cause 80% of accidents.
20% of employees are responsible for 80% of results.
20% of crops produce 80% of food.
It's not always 80/20 sometimes it's 90/10, but the basic principle is the same a small percentage is responsible for most of the results.
You probably understand this concept well enough after this short post, but if it intrigues you and you'd like to learn more I highly recommend this book. Keep in mind though, 80% of it is useless.
5. Factfullness
This book teaches you the common ways we misread data and how to properly interoperate it. We all (Even positive people) think the world is in a far worst state than it really is. Factfullness shows us that we couldn't be more wrong the world, despite it's problems is better in almost every way that it has ever been.
This book is great not because it shows you just how much progress we have made in such a short time, but because it teaches you how to read data. If we can be fooled to believing that such progress is actually negative we can be fooled into believing anything. This book gives you the tools to fight back against this.
