Understand the severity of the housing bubble and avoid making a mistake that would impair your finances for years, even for the rest of your life. The Psychology of Bubbles A bubble involves a degree of excessive speculation, inflated prices, and a subsequent crash, along with widespread public involvement and fascination. It's a ment...

Problems • Projects go on and on, without sight • Unable to think strategically about the product What is Shape Up? Cyclical weeks. A week is long enough to build something meaningful start-to-finish and short to use it wisely and not squander. Shaping the work. Define the key elements of a project/problem and the solution before takin...

Get out of a red ocean of bloody competition and into a blue ocean of uncontested market space characterized by new demand and strong profitable growth. What is the Blue Ocean Strategy? “A shift from competing to creating new market space and hence making the competition irrelevant. ” • Competition should not occupy the center of strat...

The thesis of this book is that there are many blocks to creativity, but there are active steps we can take to protect the creative process. My aim at Pixar - To enable our people to do their best work. We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute. Finally, we try to identify those impediments and f...

“Nobody wants to be sold to, but everybody wants to buy. ” Most people don’t think about your product or service if it doesn’t address a problem they have. When something’s not working, the struggling moment occurs. It forces people to stop and ask themselves a question. It’s those questions that spur demand. When you study how people ...

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one's plans. Calculate the odds with you and ...

“Marketing a useful book is the easiest thing in the world. ” Write a book so startlingly useful that readers can't stop talking about it. Write a book that can grow organically via reader recommendations for many years, without relying on either heavy marketing or a large author platform. This book offers a different way to plan, writ...

A classic text on problem-solving by Jerry Weinberg. The book is short but packed with wisdom. Especially useful if you are a software developer trying to build yet another feature for your application. A problem is a difference between things as desired and things as perceived. We often try to come up with solutions before taking the ...

The book covers a broad range of topics from philosophy, spirituality, literature, psychology, and neuroscience for common ideas on fulfillment and happiness. It then investigates how easy or difficult it might be to apply such strategies in contemporary life, amplified by a culture of high expectations, conspicuous consumption, shallo...

You can be the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. All in one. You don't have to be an employee or have employees. You can be the one-person business that does and enjoys all three roles. You can enjoy being an entrepreneur, a manager, and a technician. If you plan accordingly, this can be a very satisfying and independent l...

John McPhee shares his advice on the process of writing. I really liked this essay as it emphasizes the importance of re-writing. As with refactoring in programming, re-writing tremendously improves your writing. What follows is the author's advice for his niece. When Jenny was a senior at Princeton High School and much put out by the ...

“Transform your business by being remarkable. ” The essence of this book is that your product or service must be remarkable. It's about the why, the what, and the how of remarkable. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, bu...

Consulting is the art of influencing people at their request. It's always been a mysterious profession, at least for me. This book takes you behind the scenes, explaining why consulting seems so irrational. It also provides practical actions to make yourself more successful as a consultant. Though an excellent guide for consultants, th...

This is the classic text on writing. It offers practical, highly useful advice on improving your writing. Whether you're a professional writer or an amateur, this book will help you communicate more effectively and in a simple, concise way. I find the guidelines in the book very useful, acting as reminders when writing. Surprisingly, m...

“The first rule is, Face Reality.” This book is less about outdoor survival and more about life. Its lessons go far beyond the wilderness and help you not only survive, but thrive with the challenges that life throws at you. It's really well-written. Make sure you read it before you go for your next adrenaline-filled adventure. Getting...

No matter what you do, effective writing is a skill that everyone should learn. Copywriting is a specific form of writing with the purpose of compelling the reader to take a specific action. This book will teach you how to communicate clearly and write well so that people buy whatever it's that you're selling, be it a product, service,...

“Your customers are the heroes of the story, not you or your brand.” Humans love good stories. This book is about effective marketing via storytelling. It explains the essential elements of a good story and relates them to your business, positioning your customers as heroes of their stories and your brand as a guide. Storytelling “Stor...

What is Marketing? Marketing is the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, like you, and trust you enough to become a customer. “Focus on the specific problems of a specific niche and aim to solve these problems with education and specific solutions. ” Many business owners fool themselves into thinking that ...

This book offers a simple framework for making investment decisions. It doesn't delve into maths, complex formulas, or guilt you into saving money on lattes. Instead, it focuses on simplicity, discipline, patience, prioritizing the long term, and sticking to the fundamentals. Here are some of the big ideas from this book. Less is more....