On Mental Toughness, by Harvard Business Review

Loved this book. A must read for anyone.

: Crucibles of Leadership :

“Shotton had an insatiable appetite for feedback - a quality I have seen in all the top business performers I have worked with. They have a particularly strong need for instant, in the moment feedback. One top sales and marketing director I worked with told me that he would never have stayed at his current position if the CEO hadn’t given him relentless, sometimes brutally honest critiques” (pg 6).

“It takes supreme, almost unimaginable grit and courage to get back into the ring and fight to the bitter end” (pg 8).

“The skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make extraordinary leaders” (pg 9).

Leadership crucibles can take many forms. Some are violent, life-threatening events. Others are more prosaic episodes of self-doubt. But whatever the crucible’s nature, the people we spoke with were able to create a narrative around it, a story of how they were challenged, met the challenge, and became better leaders” (pg 12).

“Happiness . . . is not a function of your circumstances; it’s a function of your outlook on life” (pg 20).

“The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective” (pg 24).

“Hardiness is just what it sounds like - the perseverance and toughness that enable people to emerge from devastating circumstances without losing hope” (pg 24).

: Building Resilience :

“People who don’t give up have a habit of interpreting setbacks as temporary, local, and changeable” (pg. 27).

: Cognitive Fitness :

“Make a consistent, ongoing commitment to immersing yourself in new systems and ways of thinking. It cannot be an occasional event, because the point is to expose yourself to a variety of cases and situations that cumulatively encode rich experiences in your brain” (pg 46).

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” (pg 51).

: The Making of a Corporate Athlete :

“The best long-term performers tap into positive energy at all levels of the performance pyramid” (pg. 54).

“At lunch, her leaves the office - something he once would have found unthinkable - and walks outdoors for at least 15 minutes” (pg 65).

“Pause more to think, and to take a time out” (pg 66).

: Stress Can Be a Good Thing If You Know How to Use It :

“Stress have many wonderful attributes. It reminds us that we care” (pg 71).

: How to Bounce Back From Adversity :

Four lenses through which managers can view adverse events:

1. Control: When a crisis hits, do you look for what you can improve now rather than trying to identify all the factors - even those beyond your control - that caused it in the first place?

2. Impact: Can you sidestep the temptation to find the origins of the problem in yourself or others and focus instead on identifying what positive effects your personal actions might have?

3. Breadth: Do you assume that the underlying cause of the crisis is specific and can be contained, or do you worry that it might cast a long shadow over all aspects of your life

4. Duration: How long do you believe that the crisis and its repercussions might last?

: Rebounding from Career Setbacks :

“Even a dramatic career failure can become a springboard to success if you respond in the right way” (pg 90).

: Realizing What You’re Made of :

“Resilience is one of the key qualities desired in business leaders today, but many people confuse it with toughness . . . resilience . . . is not about deflecting challenges but about absorbing them and rebounding strong than before” (pg 98).

“Accepting adversity and moving on isn’t easy and can take time. You don't have to like or somehow justify what’s happened. You just have to decide that you can live with it” (pg 99).

Grade: A

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

I was told by many to read this book. That it would be a great read, a difficult read, and one worth my time.

It was okay, I thought. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth reading. If nothing else, these quotes - like nuggets found in the cold Northern rivers, were worth the effort to find.

“Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment” (pg 30).

“When I saw those toenails I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she’s a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom paining those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we’d been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I’d never thought of it that way” (pg. 91).

“Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white” (pg 97).

“The worst thing you can do to a sick person is close the door and forget about him” (pg 276).

Grade: C+

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Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard Thaler

“Research shows that whatever the default choices are, many people stick with them, even when the stakes are much higher than choosing the noise your phone makes when it rigns” (pg 8)

What is the default of our school?

When considering perspectives:

When considering the influence of Social Media:

pg 54

pg 57

“People are paying less attention to you than you believe. If you have a stain on your shirt, don’t worry, they probably won’t notice. But in part because people do think that everyone has their eyes fixed on them, they conform to what they think people expect” (pg 62).

“Many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the path of least resistance” (pg 85).

“If I do nothing, nothing changes” (pg 85).

“The best way to help Humans improve their performance is to provide feedback. Well-designed systems tell people whey they re doing well and when they are making mistakes” (pg 92).

Grade: A (for the first hundred pages. After that . . . meh.)

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The Art of Gathering: How we Meet and Why it Matters, by Priya Parker

Some of my favorite quotes/ideas:

Commit to a Gathering About Something:

“Does it stick its neck out a little bit? Does it take a stand? Is it willing to unsettle some of the guests (or maybe the host)? Does it refuse to be everything to everyone?” because “Gatherings that please everyone occur, but they rarely thrill. Gatherings that are willing to be alienating - which is different from being alienating - have a better chance to dazzle” (pg. 17).

But what re the ingredients for such a sharp, bold, “meaningful gathering”?

1. Specificity

2. Uniqueness
   ”Why is this gathering different from all my other gatherings? What is this that other gatherings are not?

3. Disputable purpose

Some practical tips on crafting your purpose:

Zoom out: get a bigger picture of why what your doing matters (pg. 21)

Drill, baby, drill: Keep asking why you’re doing what you’re doing until you hit a belief or value (pg 22).

Reverse Engineer an outcome: “Thing of what you want to be different because you gathered, and work backward from there” (pg 23).

When there really is no purpose: Cancel. Give people their time back.

The Morasses of Multitasking and Modesty:

A modest host is “related to a desire not to seem to seem like you care too much - a desire to project the appearance of being chill, cool, and relaxed about your gathering” when, in reality, having a focus can do your guests a favor by having a focus (pg 29).

Purpose is your Bouncer:

”The purpose of your gathering is more than an inspiring concept. It is a tool, a filter that helps you determine all the details, grand and trivial. To gather is to make choice after choice: place, time, food, forks, agenda, topics, speakers. VIrtually every choice will be easier to make when you know why you’re gathering, and especially when that why is particular, interesting, and even provocative.

Make purpose your bouncer. Let it decide what goes into your gathering and what stays out” (pg 31).

How to Exclude Well:

“The crux of excluding thoughtfully and intentionally is mustering the courage to keep away your Bobs. It is to shift your perception so that you understand that people who aren’t fulfilling the purpose of your gathering are detracting from it, even if they do nothing to detract from it. This is because once they are actually in your presence, you (and other considerate guests) will want to welcome and include them, which takes time and attention away from what (and who) you’re actually there for. Particularly in smaller gatherings, every single person affects the dynamics of a group. Excluding well and purposefully is reframing who and what you are being generous to- your guests and your purpose (pg. 43).

“What if you held your next college reunion in a cemetary, reminding your classmates, directly if morbidly, that time is of the essence for fulfilling the ideals they professed in their youth” (pg. 58).

The Wonders of Generous Authority:

“Sometimes generous authority demands a willingness to be disliked in order to make your guests have the best experience of your gathering” (pg 81). This can best be done with three goals in mind:

1. Protect your guests - “We usually feel bad saying no to somone. But it can become easier when we understand who and what we are protecting when we say no” (pg 83).

2. Equalize your guests

3. Connect your guests

Create A Temporary Alternative World:

“Sometimes you need to spice things up . . . How do I mix things up at my next gathering?” (pg. 111)

No Ideas, Please. We’re Gathering

“Many gatherings would be improved if people were simply asked for their stories” (pg. 210) because a story “is about a decision that you made. It’s not about what happens to you. And if you hit that and you get your vulnerability and you understand the stakes, and a few other things, people will intuitively find great stories to tell, and as soon as they do, we know them. We know them as human beings. This is no longer my boss’s colleague. This is a real person who had heartbreak. Oh, I know that” (pg. 212).

The Dark Theme

“If guests often bring their stump rather than sprout speeches to events, if they often talk of their theories rather than their experiences, then organizers can succumb to their own kind of phoniness. They insist on keeping gatherings positive, especially when choosing themes. The meaningful gatherer doesn’t fear negativity, though, and in fact creates space for the dark and the dangerous’ (pg. 212) . . .

“the best themes were not always the sweet ones, like happiness or romance, but rather the ones that had darker sides to them: fear, Them, borders, strangers. The ones that allowed for many interpretations. The ones that let people show sides of themselves that were weak, that were confused and unprocessed, that were morally complicated.

Sadly, themes like these are exiled from so many of our gatherings. Far too many of them, especially more professionally oriented ones, are run on a cult of positivity. Everything has to be about what’s going well, about collaboration, about hope and the future. There is no space for what our guests were telling us they wanted at the dinners: a chance to pause and consider what is not uplifting but thought- and heart-provoking” (pg 213)

The Invitation Matters

“If you want to try this type of gathering, centered on people’s real selves rather than their best selves, you need to warn them” (pg. 220).

Host, Reveal Thyself

“Early in the gathering, you, the host, need to go there yourself. You need to show them how” (pg 222).

Cause Good Controversy

Controversy “of the right kind, and in the hands of a good host, can add both energy and life to your gatherings as well as be clarifying. It can help you use gatherings to answer big questions: what you want to do, what you stand for, who you are. Good controversy can make a gathering matter” (pg. 225).

Good Controversy Doesn’t Just Happen

“Good controversy is the kind of contention that helps people look more closely at what they care about, when there is danger but also real benefit in doing so. To embrace good controversy is to embrace the idea that harmony is not necessarily the highest, and certainly not the only , value in gathering. Good controversy helps us re-examine what we hold dear: our values, priorities, nonnegotiables. Good controversy is generative rather than preservationist. It leads to something better than the status quo. It helps communities move forward in their thinking. It helps us grow. Good controversy can be messy in the midst of the brawling. But when it works, it is clarifying and cleansing - and a forceful antidote to bullshit” (pg. 233).

“What do you think is the most needed conversation for this group to have now?” (pg. 239).

Grade: A-

There is a lot of good stuff in here. A lot. There’s also some dragging on moments. But overall, as a father, friend who likes to host, and administrator, its a great and extremely purposeful read.

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My Father Gave Me Ireland, by Michael Brendan Dougherty

“A man who is a mere author is nothing. If there is anything good in anything I have written, it is the potentiality of adventure in me” - Thomas MacDonagh

“Telling a story at all changes your relationship to the events you are describing” (pg 47).

“Let’s grant for a moment that we are all revisionists now. That we all retell stories in light of our motives. The next question would be: What are your motives? What does this retold story do to the people hearing it, or to the person telling it? If we want noble things in life, we will pull those noble things out of our history and experience. If we are cynics, we will see plenty of justification for our cynicism . . . A false motive might produce a false history” (pg. 48).

“He was able to warn his compatriots against letting slogans do their thinking for them, and criticized those who were ‘really impelled by a sense of . . . fatalism, or by an instinct of satisfying their own emotions, or escaping from a difficult and complex and trying situation” (pg 54).

“We cannot help but bring our desires and our ambitions to our understandings, and so I think the only solution is to make sure we desire what is right and good” (pg. 55).

Grade: C

It was a bit heavy on the historical components that seemed forced. But that could just be me. When he talked about his actual life and experiences and hopes and struggles, I found it golden. Otherwise . . . meh.

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The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

An English teacher asked me to read this and let her know any thoughts I might have, since she will be teaching it next year. Here is what I wrote her:

Book cover:  

Cover it before handing out to students (if I’m a guy, I’m not interested). Plus, the cover does little justice, I think, for the book. So, have the students create a cover that catches the theme, mood, and important symbols of the book. Then, on the back, instead of a synopsis, write a brief explanation for why they designed the book cover the way they did, citing various scenes and/or quotes.  

You could then reveal the actual cover and have them analyze it’s portrayal of the book: Where does it work? Where doesn’t it?  

Possible connections: 

• Someday Never Comes, by Creedence Clearwater Revival 

• My Pappa’s Waltz, by Roethke 

• My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes (Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLhctg8j5kI) 

Favorite Quotes:  

• “Mom, however, thought it was one of the most beautiful trees she had ever seen” (pg 35). You can do almost an entire lesson on this opening paragraph: 

• Why does she find it so beautiful? What connections does she have with the tree? 

• How does the life of this tree relate to her life (continue this imagery throughout the rest of the book)? In the end, does she become a beautiful “Joshua tree” or something else? Explain. 

• Then, a few pages later, she says, “We gave them a little extra time on the planet, they should be grateful for that” (pg 37) . . . how is this sentiment very Joshua tree-ish?  
   

• “That was the thing to remember about all monsters, dad said: They love to frighten people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run. All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you’re not afraid” (pg 37). When I first read this I thought, “Damn. Dad is a complex character,” and as the story transpired, it became clear that he is also a man who cannot scare his own demons (his mother).  

• Yet, in the final pages, he says, “I must have done something right”, and Mountain Goat agrees, “Course you did” (pg 279). What is it? What did he do right?  
   

• “Something in all of us broke that day, and afterward, we no longer had the spirit for family gatherings” (pg 277). This is huge, I think. After all this family had been through, what did this event break the family? What is so special about it? So unique? And/or so devastating?  

Thoughts to Consider: 

• What makes a “good” parent? Is it simply provisions (house, clothing, education, etc.)? Can a parent provide all the things a child needs/wants and still be a bad parent? Can a child be raised in poverty, lacking the necessities of life, and still have good parents? What makes a good parent good and a bad parent bad? 

• What role does child trauma play on an adult’s life? Is the dad given a pass, or at least grace, because there is a very real chance he was abused by his own mother, or does that no longer matter, once he has children of his own? Explain. 

• (Sorry, this one is kind of a soapbox🙂) Do you know anything about how your parents were raised? If not, why not? If not, could you find out?  

  • We are all so quick to judge our parents, to point out where and how they failed us. Yet, what do we know about their parents? How they were raised? And what obstacles they’ve had to overcome, just to simply provide a roof over our heads? What was their childhood like?  

  • If we don’t know . . . could we ask?  

Grade: B-

I don’t know. I’ve read similar stories that were better told.

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Good to Great, by Jim Collins

That’s what makes death so hard - unsatisfied curiosity - Beryl Markham

“Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life” (pg 1).

“The good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing” . . . “they had no name, tag line, launch event, or program to signify their transformation” . . . because “greatness is not a function of circumstances. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice” (pg 11).

“Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be” (pg 13).

“When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls” (pg 13).

“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit” - Harry Truman

Never stop trying to become qualified for the job - pg 20

“Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce results. They will sell the mills or fire their brother, if that’s what it takes to make the company great again” (pg 30).

“Good-to-great leaders understand three simple truths:

1. Begin with who, rather than what

2. if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away

3. if you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant” (pg 42).

“Good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience” (pg 51).

Good-to-great companies are “not ruthless cultures, they’re rigorous cultures. And the distinction is crucial . . . To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. To be rigorous, not ruthless, means that the best people need not worry about their positions and can concentrate fully on their work” (pg 52).

“To deal with it right up front and let people get on with their lives - that is rigorous” (pg 53).

Good-to-great companies don’t compromise. They keep fighting until they get through it and find the right people (pg 55).

“Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people” (pg 56).

“Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems” (pg 58).

“You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts” (pg 70).

“There is nothing wrong with pursuing a vision for greatness. After all, the good-to-great companies also set out to create greatness. But, unlike comparison companies, the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality” (pg 71).

“The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse” (pg 72).

“Yes, leadership is about vision. But leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is head and the brutal facts confronted. There’s a huge difference between the opportunity to “have your say” and the opportunity to be heard. The good-to-great leaders understood this distinction, creating a culture wherein people had a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately for the truth to be heard” (pg 74).

“What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life” (pg 86).

Hedgehog Concept (pg 90)

What are you passionate about?
What can you be the best at?
What can you NOT be the best at?

You may not become the best, but you could - Joanne Colins, World’s Best Triathlete (pg 117).

Building a Culture of Discipline:

1. Build a culture around the idea of freedom and responsibility, within a framework

2. Fill that culture with self-disciplined people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities. They will “rinse their cottage cheese".”

3. Don’t confuse a culture of discipline with a tyrannical disciplinarian

4. Adhere with great consistency to the Hedgehog Concept” (pg 124).

“The real question is, once you know the right thing, do you have the discipline to do the right thing and, equally important, to stop doing the wrong things?” (pg 141).

“Good to great comes about by a cumulative process - step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel - that adds up to sustained and spectacular results . . . good-to-great executives simply could not pinpoint a single key event or moment in time that exemplified transition . . . it was a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done to create the best future results and then simply taking those steps, one after the other, turn by turn of the flywheel (pg 165-167).

“Good-to-great executives simply could not pinpoint a single key event or moment in time that exemplified the transition . . . it was a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done to create the best future results and then simply taking those steps, one after the other, turn by turn of the flywheel” (pg 168-169).

“The other frequently observed doom loop pattern is that of new leaders who stepped in, stopped an already spinning flywheel, and threw it in an entirely new direction” (pg 181). The flywheel is two things: consistent and coherent (pg 182).

Walt Disney “installed a remarkable constancy of purpose that permeated every new Disney venture - namely, to bring happiness to millions, especially children” (pg 196).

Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions that Matter the Most, by Steven Johnson

“Think about the long list of skills we teach high school students: how to factor quadratic equations; how to diagram the cell cycle; how to write a good topic sentence. Or we teach skills with a more vocational goal: computer programming, or some kind of mechanical expertise. Yet you will almost never see a course devoted to the art of and science of decision-making, despite the fact that the ability to make informed and creative decisions is a skill that applies to every aspect of our lives” (pg 13).

“When we look back at the tragectory of our lives, and of history itself, I think most of us would agree that the decisions that ultimately matter the most do no - or at least should not - rely heavily on instincts and intuition to do their calculations. They’re decisions that require slow thinking, not fast. While they are no doubt influenced by the emotional shortcuts of our gut reactions, they rely on deliberative thought, not instant responses” (pg 15).

Complex decisions . . .

force us to predict the future
often involve conflicting objectives
harbor undiscovered options
are vulnerable to failures of collective intelligence (pg 26-28)

“Our minds naturally gravitate to narrowband interpretations, compressing the full spectrum down into one dominant slice. Cognitive scientists sometimes call the anchoring. When facing a decision that involves multiple, independent variables, people have a tendency to pick one “anchor” variable and make their decision based on that element” (pg 44).

“The power of diversity is so strong that it appears to apply even when the diverse perspectives being added to the group have no relevant exprtise to the case at hand . . . Just the presence of difference appears to make a difference . . . diversity trumps ability” (pg 53).

“Storytellers suffer from confirmation bias and overconfidence just like the rest of us. Our brains naturally project outcomes that conform to the way we think the world words. To avoid those pitfalls, you need to trick your mind into entertaining alternative narratives, plot lines that might undermine your assumptions, not confirm them” (pg 118).

“Hard choices are often hard because they impact other people’s lives in meaningful ways, and so our ability to imagine that impact - to think through the emotional and material consequences from someone else’s perspective - turns out to be an essential talent” (pg 122).

Grade: B

At times I had to remind myself to keep reading, that not all information worth learning is entertaining, and that there should be at least a few nuggets available. And indeed there were. I just wish it was a bit more inspirational in the process.