Curiosity
by Harvard Business Review Press
Suffice it to say, I was curious about this anthology of 11 short articles about curiosity. Topics include creativity and exploration, managing complexity, professional relationships, listening, and corporate culture.
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Life’s Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way
by Fred Rogers (1928-2003)
And now a Thanksgiving palette cleanser.
Fred Rogers was the creator and host of the children’s television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from 1968 to 2001. This short book is a posthumously published collection of his writing for adults.
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Freeing Yourself from Anxiety: 4 Simple Steps to Overcome Worry and Create the Life You Want
by Tamar E. Chansky, Ph.D.
2020 has been a mentally-draining year. In this 287-page book, psychologist Tamar Chansky explains why our minds get overwhelmed with worry and she offers advice on how to deal with it. Here are some highlights.
Anxiety is “the first-reaction of a sensitive system that is wired to keep us alert to danger and protected from harm… But today, with our best interests in mind, anxiety sometimes makes mistakes, overshooting… grabbing your attention from what you need to focus on and insisting that you instead grapple with worst-case scenarios.”
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Beyond the Blue: Artwork and Writing from the Prison Arts Collective
This book is a catalog produced in conjunction with an exhibition of artwork created in California prisons. I attended an opening of this traveling exhibition as well as a panel discussion with former participants, teaching artists, and the deputy director of the Prison Arts Collective (PAC). This book is atypical of those normally featured on this site, but I feel it deserves some attention because it presents a perspective from a corner of humanity where voices are normally out of earshot, which may offer some insights into the bigger picture of some of society’s toughest challenges.
I will start with excerpts from the book before making some of my own observations.
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The Road to Character
by David Brooks
New York Times columnist David Brooks frames character as eulogy virtues as opposed to résumé virtues. “Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character.”
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Humans are Underrated: What High Achievers Know that Brilliant Machines Never Will
by Geoff Colvin
“The number of people who wrongly believed they could never be replaced by a computer keeps growing.” So what are the skills in which humans can maintain a competitive advantage over machines?
“Skills of interaction are becoming the key to success… Now, as technology drives forward more powerfully every year, the transition to the newly valuable skills of empathizing, collaborating, creating, leading, and building relationships is happening faster than corporations, governments, education systems, or most human psyches can keep up with.”
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The Non-Designer’s Guide to Design Thinking: What a Marketer Learned in Design School
by Kunitake Saso
“The design thinking process is not a collection of steps… [It] is characterized by switching between four different modes as needed, and advancing work through short cycles… You go back and forth between the phases again and again, slowly raising the quality of your output; therefore, it is better to think of it as a compass than as a map.”
The Four Modes of Design Thinking:
The author says that 80% of the value is created in the synthesis and prototyping stages.
RESEARCH. The subjects of design research interviews are often “extreme users with strong preferences, or experts in the field and very familiar with the trends” rather than average users.
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Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct
by P.M. Forni
Choosing Civility is about counteracting the “coarsening of America.” It was published in 2002, but is more relevant than ever.
“Being civil means being constantly aware of others and weaving restraint, respect, and consideration into the fabric of this awareness… When we approach others assuming that they are good, honest, and sensitive, we often encourage them to be just that.”
“Every act of kindness is, first of all, an act of attention… When we relate to the world as if we were on automatic pilot, we can hardly be at our best in our encounters with our fellow human beings.”
“Restraint is our inner designated driver. We all have it, and we all can learn to summon it whenever we need it… Restraint is an infusion of thinking—and thoughtfulness—into everything we do.”
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Congratulations, By the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness
by George Saunders
This book is an expanded version of a commencement speech to the Syracuse University class of 2013.
“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”
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Be Nobody
by Lama Marut
Lama Marut, aka Brian K. Smith, was a professor of comparative religion, he studied Hinduism and Sanskrit in India, he was a Buddhist monk, and he is the son of a Baptist preacher. So he presents a well-informed viewpoint rather than a myopic dogma. Fortunately, you don’t need to climb a mountain to be enlightened by this wise man; he imparts wisdom in his book, Be Nobody.
Marut writes about living in the iEra. “Our contemporary culture of consumerism, materialism, narcissism, and the worship of fame encourages the idea that we will be happy only when we become exceptional. But maybe we’ve got it wrong—exactly wrong. Maybe our deepest and most authentic happiness will be found only when we finally lay down this heavy burden of trying to be a somebody… Maybe true fulfillment in life requires an emptying, not a filling.”
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The Key Point 