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Monday, April 15, 2019

A Short Guide to a Happy Life summary

 


This is my book summary of A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

  • The only thing you have that nobody else has is control of your life. You job, your day, your heart, your spirit. You are the only one in control of that.
  • “Show up. Listen. Try to laugh.”
  • “You cannot be really good at your work if your work is all you are.”
  • “Get a life, a real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion.”
  • “Turn off your cell phone. Keep still. Be present.”
  • “Get a life in which you are generous.”
  • “All of us want to do well, but if we do not do good too then doing well will never be enough.”
  • “Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God gives us.” It is so easy to exist rather than to live… Unless you know a clock is ticking.
  • We live in more luxury today than ever before. The things we have today our ancestors thought existed for just the wealthy. And yet, somehow, we are rarely grateful for all this wealth.
  • The hardest thing of all is to learn to love the journey, not the destination.
  • “This is not a dress rehearsal. Today is the only guarantee you get.”
  • “Think of life as a terminal illness.”
  • “School never ends. The classroom is everywhere.”

Focus Summary

 
1-Sentence-Summary: Focus shows you that attention is the thing that makes life worth living and helps you develop more of it to become focused in every area of life: work, relationships and your own attitude towards life and the planet.

We’re almost a decade into the rise of the smartphone empire and among many great benefits, we suffer one phenomenal loss as a result – our attention goes out the window.

If your life feels like a series of quick hits and dopamine fixes, it’s time to put the smartphone on airplane mode for a while. Relying on these devices more than on our minds has left us with an attention span that’s less than that of a goldfish. Now that’s something to worry about.

Daniel Goleman aims to give you some of it back with Focus, and calls it the hidden driver of excellence. It is a book about mindfulness, willpower, leadership, empathy and success.

Here are 3 lessons to help you zone in on what’s important:
  1. Once your brain feels fried, just let your thoughts wander.
  2. You can’t do anything better for your willpower than work on something you love.
  3. Think of distant problems as immediate to better plan for the future.
Do you feel focused? If not, we’re about to fix it!

Studies have recently found that the psychological component of willpower is a lot bigger than we thought, meaning most of it actually comes from your mind, not your body. The reason your willpower gets stronger if you do something you love then, is that if your work reflects your goals, it becomes effortless.

Late nights, confronting big obstacles and the patience you need until you see it through come a lot easier when you’re 100% convinced that what you’re doing is the exact right thing for you to do.

As an example Goleman mentions George Lucas, who, when creating the original Star Wars, went rogue and split from his production company – an incredibly difficult move at the time – because he was afraid his creative vision would be compromised. In the end, because he believed in his idea, he did everything that was necessary to make it a success.

I bet you have a dream. A crazy one. Something no one really cares about, but you. And even before you knew that working on it might boost your willpower, I’m sure you wanted to. But you didn’t.

It’s the first 10 pages of your manuscript that are sitting inside your desk drawer since 2012. The scaffold that collects dust in your attic. The high school reunion party you never threw. These things make life worth living, and are what we all want to accomplish in that short time we’re here – yet we keep procrastinating on them, because they don’t have deadlines.

The regret of having had a shitty life is too far away to cause you to panic now, because it’ll only come when you’re too old to change it.





But Goleman says if you imagine these problems as serious, immediate threats (for example climate change, same thing) right now, then you can stop choosing what makes you happy in the short-term, but doesn’t solve the problem.


Flow Summary

 
1-Sentence-Summary: Flow explains why we seek happiness in externals and what’s wrong with it, where you can really find enjoyment in life, and how you can truly become happy by creating your own meaning of life.

This summary has been sitting in my library forever. I’ve been meaning to pick it up ever since I read The Happiness Hypothesis, as the concept of flow is mentioned there.

Flow is a simple title for a book the author’s name I can’t pronounce to save my life, you do it: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (apparently it’s mi-ha-yee cheeks-sent-me-high). Published in 1990, Mihaly digs into “the state of effortless work”, where challenges and skills align perfectly and time seems to fly.

Here are my 3 take-aways:
  1. Pleasure and enjoyment are two different things.
  2. Flow is where challenges and skills match.
  3. Life goals are irrelevant, so set a life goal.

Lesson 1: Pleasure and enjoyment are not the same thing.

This is a really cool differentiation. Pleasure is what most people nowadays confuse with happiness. It comes from sensory experiences, like eating a pizza, getting a massage, or having sex and takes away your control of your attention.

When you’re busy munching on a tasty slice of chicken supreme, you can’t really control what you pay attention too, because all of it is taken up by your sense of taste.

Enjoyment, on the other hand, comes from concentrating and consciously focusing, which gives you back your control over your attention.

This is where true happiness lies, as enjoyment allows you to work towards your most important goals and to go beyond the limitations of your genes.
Many people opt for pleasure instead of enjoyment, which the world makes easy, as we seem to live in instant gratification-land now, which is also why many people are so miserable.

But how can you find enjoyment? By trying to spend a lot of time in flow.

Lesson 2: Flow is the state where challenges and skills match, so that time flies by.

Flow is what’s behind every good video game. It is the state where you are so immersed in the activity you’re doing, that you’re completely forgetting about all your worries and anxieties, and you look up after hours, wondering where time went.

How can you trigger it?

2 things:
  1. Pick an activity you find rewarding, something that’s meaningful to you, without any external incentive (like money or fame).
  2. Make sure the challenge of the activity matches your skill level.
The first part is straight forward. It means you should have fun. Plant a tree, draw a comic, write an article about the Minions, whatever you think is meaningful to you.

There can’t be any money involved. Don’t do it for fame, wealth, or even religion. Just because you think it’s awesome.

Part 2 is a bit harder. Flow is triggered when the challenge isn’t so hard you’ll get frustrated, while your skills aren’t so good already that you get bored.
It’s right in between.

If you decide to pick up chess, play on an easy setting against your computer first. Then, get a friend to play against you who’s slightly better than you. Once you consistently beat her, you can move to the next level.

Basically, flow is where your life feels like the perfect game: you just want to keep on going and going and going.

So make some time for your hobbies or take up a fun project – you never know what the skills might be good for.

Lesson 3: Life goals are irrelevant, so set a life goal.

I love this. The summary says you can create your own meaning of life. To do so, you simply have to set an ultimate goal for your life.

Here’s the best part: It doesn’t matter what that goal is, as long as it keeps getting you into flow without caring what other people think.
This is the best thing a book could tell you.

It’s all you want to hear.

Go set some crazy goal and tell others to get lost if they tell you it’s stupid. If it keeps you challenged so your skills keep growing and gets more complex as you go along, you’re golden.

This is exactly what I’m doing with Four Minute Books. I make sure I read and write every day, no matter if no one reads it. I do share it, so people can benefit, but I’m doing it for the sake of itself.

I have a hunch that the more you do of that, the more successful you’ll be





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First Things First Summary

 
1-Sentence-Summary: First Things First shows you how to stop looking at the clock and start looking at the compass, by figuring out what’s important, prioritizing those things in your life, developing a vision for the future, building the right relationships and becoming a strong leader wherever you go.

Another book from the “old but gold” category. Published in 1994, First Things First went against the even then popular “get more done in less time” approach and took a look at how you can work on what matters without burning yourself out.
Most of us live our lives by the clock. Appointments, to-do’s, urgent events and deadlines have us rushing from one thing to the next, while never getting to what actually matters, nor even stopping to think about what that is for us. This book will help you exchange the clock for a compass, that holds your values and principles, so you can be sure you’re facing true north at all times – because direction matters a lot more than how fast you’re going.
Here are 3 lessons to help you put first things first:
  1. Forget what’s urgent and focus only on what’s important.
  2. Imagine your 80th birthday to make decision-making a piece of cake.
  3. Accept that success comes from interdependence and cooperation, not independence and competition.


Lesson 1: Ditch the status symbol of urgency and attend to things by importance.


The battle of urgent vs. important is a recurring theme in Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s work (remember the Eisenhower matrix from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?) and is the foundation of the principles in this book.
Our lives would be pretty easy if everything that was important to us was also urgent, but most of the time these things are vastly different. Dinner with your family, exercising and finding meaningful work are all important, but they’re not as urgent as the client who’s expecting to hear from you or the deadline at work.
There are two reasons we often choose what’s urgent over what’s important:
  1. Urgency is a status symbol, especially in the Western world. If you’re not busy, you must be lazy, that’s the assumption.
  2. Checking items off a long to-do list gives you a rush of adrenaline and dopamine, and therefore satisfies your biological needs.
In the long run, this leads to regret, but is actually something that’s preventable. When you’ve committed to a night of board games with your kids, don’t let your boss’s sudden dinner invitation get you off schedule. Say no to urgent things whenever you can. You can’t always skip work dinners, but you sure can prevent the distrust and disappointment in your family by sticking to the commitments you’ve made more often than not.

Lesson 2: Imagine your 80th birthday to make decision-making a piece of cake.

Have you ever met someone who found it really easy to make decisions and envied them? Chances are they had a strong vision for the future. Knowing where you want to be in 5 or 10 years makes aligning today’s decisions with the future a much easier task than when you’re just drifting around. Sometimes you might have to take a slight curve, but you’ll always know how to get back on track.
For example, when Gandhi first started leading people, he was shy and a really bad and constantly nervous public speaker. But his vision of a society in which all people are equal made it easy to decide and practice speaking every chance he got, in spite of his fear, and become the person he needed to be to make his vision a reality.
Here’s a great question to ask yourself and instantly make deciding a lot easier: What would my ideal 80th birthday look like?
Do you see a lot of friends and family at a charity dinner? Your business partners and staff? Or just the one person you love the most on a remote beach in Asia?
The goals you want to see yourself have accomplished when you look back when you’re 80 are the goals you need to start on working right now.

Lesson 3: Switch from an independence and competition mindset to an attitude of interdependence and cooperation.

The lifestyle of urgency and rushing around is mostly a result of seeing ourselves as independent and in constant competition with everyone else. The only way to overcome it is to realize that we all depend on one another and can only succeed if we cooperate.
For example, even at Apple, there is no one person who can build an entire Macbook by themselves – or even a mouse. Not even Steve Jobs could. Only by coming together and cooperating as a team the people who build the processors can help those who build the case, and eventually combine everything into a great product.
Whether you’re trying to build a business, improve your love life, learn more, leave a legacy or even just survive, you need other people to help you out along the way. Ditching the competition mindset will allow you to look for win-win solutions, instead of pushing people out of the way, resulting in both short-term and long-term benefits on your way to keeping your first things at the top of your priority list.

First Things First Review

Back when I first read this summary on Blinkist I remember thinking it was one of the best ones I’ve read so far, and that’s still true. All time management tactics are only as good as the goals you want to achieve with them, so this really addresses the root of the problem, instead of just scratching the surface.
The summary gets you quite far, but after you’ve read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I suggest you get First Things First next, especially if you like Dr. Covey’s work.

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do Summary

 
1-Sentence-Summary: 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do started as a personal reminder to not give in to bad habits in the face of adversity, but turned into a psychological guidebook to help you improve your mental strength and emotional resilience.

Favorite quote from the author:



When I started Four Minute Books, I decided to go through all the summaries I’d already read on Blinkist and write posts for those. This is the third to last of them. Two more, and it’ll be all uncharted territory from there. There’s a reason I waited that long for 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. Knowing the history of how it came about, I wasn’t sure if I could deliver a lot of value with this summary. In hindsight, I’m stupid for even questioning it (you’ll see). 

The book expands on Amy’s famous article on Lifehack, has become a bestseller and was translated into more than 20 languages. After finally reading the blinks again, I’m happy to say that I can deliver the extra lesson or two (or three) that go way beyond what you can get from the article:
  1. Complaining that you’re not getting something you think you deserve is a waste of your energy.
  2. Eradicate your Facebook news feed and stop the comparison madness.
  3. Finally learn to be alone.
Number 4 on Amy’s original list was not wasting energy on things that are outside of your control. This not only means not trying to change the weather, other people’s behavior, or the fact that you just got fired, but also not wasting energy complaining about it.

Every complaint is a serious waste of your breath and it’s a topic that keeps resurfacing in books again and again and again for a reason. Even if you think you really really deserve something (and you might), the world doesn’t owe you anything. The minute you believe it does, you’re setting yourself up for anger, frustration and bitterness.

For example, if you get a divorce and your spouse gets custody of your daughter, she might end up showering her with expensive gifts you can’t afford. You can complain about it, but it’ll only make you focus on the bad parts and try to control your ex-wife’s behavior. If you instead took that time to just spend it with your daughter and show her you love her, she would never turn against you. But if you’re busy fighting with your ex-wife and neglect her, you’ll probably indeed damage the relationship.

Speaking of content, there’s another thing Facebook can’t teach you. It’s okay to be alone. When was the last time you just sat on your chair, alone in your room, and did nothing? No phone, no reading, no TV, no music. Because that’s what being a human is.

Just being. We’ve completely forgotten how to do that, largely because our society condemns it. If you’re not active, you must be lazy. That’s why we’re terrified of being alone and turn to watching Youtube videos while eating, permanently listening to music, or texting 50 people the second we realize we’re about to run out of “buzz”.

I’m guilty of this. Only recently have I stopped watching shows while eating and started taking long walks without having my earbuds popped in. But being alone like that teaches you that the world doesn’t collapse when it happens and that you actually don’t need anything more.

12 Rules For Life Summary

 
1-Sentence-Summary: 12 Rules For Life is a stern, story-based, entertaining self-help manual for young people, that lays out a set of simple principles, which can help us become more disciplined, behave better, act with integrity, and balance our lives while enjoying them as much as we can.

Favorite quote from the author:


 Four words every writer is dying to hear at least once in life: “One million copies sold.” But you wouldn’t expect to hear them four months after the publication of your second book. Then again, Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life isn’t just a book. As for his first one, Peterson spent years collecting and refining the ideas that would create a sort of blueprint for a good life. This time, however, the book didn’t flop and sell less than 500 copies.

Since its publication in January and Peterson’s accompanying world tour, 12 Rules For Life completely exploded, dominating bestseller lists around the globe. Suddenly, millions view, listen to, and follow Peterson on social media, he’s racked up over $60,000 in monthly donations through Patreon, and, of course, one million copies sold.

Whether he’s just struck the right nerve at the right time or put his finger on true significance and meaning, only time will tell, but with thousands of people messaging him how the book’s changed their lives, chances are good it’s the latter. Let’s look at 3 of his 12 rules to begin to find out:
  1. Sweep in front of your own door before pointing out the street is dirty.
  2. Treat yourself like a child you’re responsible for.
  3. Aim to do what is meaningful, not convenient.
Life isn’t fair. We all learn that one way or other. Some of us sooner, some later, some in small ways, some from terrifying blows. But we all realize it eventually. Like the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who, in his short, philosophical piece, A Confession, concluded there are only four reasonable responses to the absurdity of life:
  1. Ignorance, like a child refusing to accept reality.
  2. Pleasure, like an addict on the hedonic treadmill.
  3. Suicide.
  4. Holding on, despite everything.
 Balancing your light and your dark side can take many different forms. Sometimes, it may be staying in bed to get healthy, even though you want to work. Other times, it might mean staying late at work on a Friday. However it looks like, it always involves choosing meaning by making a sacrifice, rather than temporary happiness by choosing pleasure.

 

10% Happier Summary

 

1-Sentence-Summary: 10% Happier gives skeptics an easy “in” to meditation, by taking a very non-fluffy approach to the science behind this mindfulness practice and showing you how and why letting go of your ego is important for living a stress-free life.

Favorite quote from the author:


Life as a ABC News correspondent must feel pretty good right? The pay is great, millions of people know your face and name, and you get to tell everyone what’s important. But for some, the pressure can become too much – and they crack.

This happened to Dan Harris 12 years ago and his voice broke in a live, on-air panic attack on national television. Convinced that it was time to do some digging into his self and life, he started a long journey into the science of stress and eventually, mindfulness. Originally a skeptic himself, Dan eventually learned to tame his ego with the power of meditation, and shared his lessons in this 2014 bestseller.

Here are 3 lessons to show you why your ego causes problems, that letting it go won’t make you lose your touch and how meditation helps with this process:
  1. The problem with your ego is that it’s never satisfied.
  2. Be simple, not a simpleton – why letting go of your ego won’t make you a pushover.
  3. Meditation increases your mindfulness and compassion by giving you a fourth habitual response.
It makes us more mindful and helps us live in the moment, as well as act more compassionately towards others. Meditation achieves this by giving you a fourth habitual response. According to ancient Buddhist wisdom, we usually exhibit three characteristic habitual responses to all of our experiences:
  1. We want it. Ever passed by a hamburger place when you were hungry? Yeah. That.
  2. We reject it. Did a spider ever land on your hand? You probably instantly threw it off.
  3. We zone out. I bet you always listen to the flight attendant’s safety instructions all the way to the end too. Yeah, right.

10% Happier Review

I’m skeptic about meditation. If you are too, this book is perfect for you. It does away with all the mumbo-jumbo flower power hippie stuff and takes a purely scientific, down-to-earth approach to mindfulness.
I like that this book spends more time on convincing you to give it a try, than it does on explaining the process, because it’s really simple: sit and focus on your breath. If your thoughts wander off, bring them back. That’s all there is to it. 10% Happier explains that and then focuses on the benefits, which are much more important for beginners than nailing the technique.
It takes a lot of guts to write a book about one of your most embarrassing moments in life – Dan’s boldness sure paid off!




 
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