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I published a new review on Medium.com:  https://medium.com/@krzychukula/book-review-influence-by-robert-b-cialdini-f4575b6786a4#.55i8vpylc

This is must read for all introverts and all who interact with them. In the world so focused on extroversion it's reassuring to hear that introversion is normal and have its own strengths. I'm not exactly shy and introvert person all the time but I learned a lot. In my opinion, everyone can learn something from it. Solitude can be something that not only introverts can benefit from. The most important idea for introverts is to embrace your strengths. Instead of feeling guilty you're not social and cheerful all the time you should use your observational and listening skills. Picking only a couple of close friends over many acquaintances might be better for you as well. Even when everyone around you creates social pressure to talk it doesn't mean that you have to do it. Quiet gives you more confidence in who you are and how you can live your life your own way. It turns out that an introvert can fake extroversion, but it's easier if it's important because...

I was curious what this book is about, and what it might be to think like a freak. Unfortunately, I knew most of the stories or they were ordinary. I liked them, but they were not what I expected. The story about Takeru Kobayashi  is the only one about real life freak and how he thinks, this one was great. Most of the ideas were about overcoming cognitive biases and using data to make decisions. Thinking small and having fun are important to keep you motivated. All in all it was my first audiobook - I have enjoyed listening to it - unfortunately it ended too soon - it's really short one. Rating: 6/10

Book that I probably should have read much earlier. The model of communication without judgement, but with observations, emotions, needs and request changed the way I think about communication in my everyday situations. I am far from using it all the time but I think that it can really help. Best thing is that it was first time I have any idea how to constructively talk about bad emotions like frustration or anger. I have a plan to read this one in Polish as well and maybe red one of additional books about this method in a couple of months as a rehearsal. Rating: 9/10

After reading 4-hour work week I think more about myth of Entrepreneur and Status of all those stories I have read in the book. I don't have anything specific yet on my mind but I have a nice list of articles that I am thinking about right now. Status Malfunction Idea here is that we spend most of our time thinking about Status and comparing ourselves to others. Unfortunately we all do it all the time and there is no easy way out of it. I am not sure if I agree with Josh Kaufman about your own business being a good way out... I start to think that it's just the same thing but giving you status among other people. How to use it? Ask yourself: If no one would appreciate it, would I still do it? Is it fun in itself? Working for the man ain’t so bad. For some reason I notice those kinds of articles a lot, maybe I am just afraid of starting my own business and looking for excuses but if you consider how many startups fail I think it's just more logical. For example it...

This book was recommended to me but after reading the table of contents I was convinced it was useless as it was contradicting itself even in the names of the chapters. Unfortunately from time to time my way of thinking and interacting with people gets me into trouble. I am not alone it this, read: Well, Actually . Of course review of " How to Win Friends and Influence People " helped but I wanted to read more about the interactions with people around me to keep thinking about it. I got back to The 48 Laws of Power not to learn those laws - I don't really believe in them but to gain more knowledge about people. What I appreciate about the book are the stories that the author uses to convince you of his ideas. They are picked and sorted to match the laws so something that worked for one person dooms someone else later, but they are really good stories nonetheless. Unfortunately, I am not sure if there is anything I can use in real life. The advices and laws are rea...

This is one of the best books I have read in a while. It is stuffed with business, psychology and advices how to deal with people. Short and easy to comprehend chapters help with reading it when you only have a couple of minutes. I certainly want to read it agin at some time in the future. Of course, it is not perfect - some chapters are a little too shallow and sometimes it was hard for me to get the bigger idea from those short chapters, but in my opinion those are minor concerns that may just be the result of my reading schedule more than the book. I don't like the 'must read' term, but the book is really close to it. Certainly I have learned a lot. Rating: 10/10

Great video about procrastination, decision avoidance and how to deal with them yourself.

You can probably see that I do a lot of things lately and my plans for next month are always long and ambitious.  I commit publicly to them so that I feel accountable but recently more important for me is following my Priority List during the day. What is a Priority List? I want to start from the beginning. My interests go from programming and reading books to learning to play guitar and how to draw. How do I make progress in any of them? I have a strong feeling of  stretching too thin and doing too many things at the same time. There are days when I can do them all and days when I hardly have time for one or two. Am I making any progress? Am I wasting my time? I strongly believe in Habits that Leo Babauta writes on his blog  http://zenhabits.net/ . The idea is to not think about what I should do, just follow the good habits. When I have to think consciously I often fail and do something stupid like read 'news' or facebook. I want to fight with that. I have re...

I have finished the "Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects by Dr. Barbara Oakley, Dr. Terrence Sejnowski"  and I can assure you that it is great! I really hope that everyone else watch videos from the course. My own TLDR: When you read or learn - user recall. It is super effective! Use Pomodoro to focus Use Pomodoro breaks to go to diffusive mode to make more creative connections in the brain. Exercise - it helps your neurons survive and learn. It is good to trigger diffusive mode as well. Create your own metaphors and analogies (especially visual ones) Test yourself, reading everything like a novel is not enough (at least use recall). It is ok to learn something, drop it and go back to it after some time. Next time it will be easier.  Process over Product Two biggest takeaways from the course are: Stop reading books like novels, at least use recall after each page or chapter. I was reading books without re...

One idea from Creativity Inc.  was with me most of the time I was reading Mastery. Notice advices that are general and make sense the moment you hear them. There is a good chance that they are useless. I have also heard a term TBU which means True, But Useless that is connected somehow to being more critical about general ideas and advices. In my opinion, there is a reason why I was thinking about them so much while reading. Stories of master are really interesting and most of them are inspiring but advises that you get sound good but it is really hard to decide what to do with them. Book is strongly influenced by 10k hours of deliberate practice rule, but I am not so sure if it really is true. There is an interesting article that can give you more context how this 10k hours rule is just average and you can learn things faster or longer  http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practic...

Really good book for startups and designers of everyday applications and services. Nir Eyal created model for creating habitual use of your service: Trigger (first external, then internal) Action (make sure it is easy to do) Variable Reward (just like in casino) Investment (ask user to make your service better for him) Model is pretty easy and you can map it to our everyday activities. Email, Facebook, Twitter all of those are using this model. Of course every website has its own value so every one of them manifests those steps differently. Book is pretty short and to my surprise I really liked two last chapters. One about morality of using such techniques and second one about startups.  One of great quotes from this chapter is Paul Graham: Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" From Want to start a startup?  Overall: 6/10 This rating for me is a bit lower than wh...

Another book that I pick because of the recommendation. I have already knew many of the ideas and experiments but still I got huge amount of useful stories and ideas about habits and change. I think most important thing this book reminded me about is the idea of mindset . There are two kinds of mindsets: growth mindset  and fixed mindset . Only one is the good  one unfortunately. Fixed mindset can be seen is sentences like "You are so smart", "You have talent for this". Growth mindset is all about accepting that we are horrible and we do not have talent. You are going to be horrible at everything you start doing but with practice and time every one of us can do much better. This single change in how we think makes big difference. When you start learning something new and you make errors and you think of yourself as a fool you should accept this as natural part of learning! No one is born with all the knowledge. We all need to learn it and it is expected to fa...

The book recommended by a friend and at the same time rated by him 5/5 on shelfari. It created really high expectations, fortunately I was not even close to how much I would learn from it. I am not going to write long review as you can find them easily . Just a couple of notes to myself: For insights keep in mind ARIA model: Attention Reflection Insight Action To better understand yourself and others in social situations remember about SCARF model: Status Certainty Autonomy Relatedness Fairness I have learned a lot and book is gripping, fun to read and just fun. Strongly recommended. Rating: 10/10

I have picket Decisive because of recommendation. As I have some important decisions to make it was good idea to finally read it. Book is (as title suggest) about making decisions. What is really good about this book is WRAP process it introduces and stories which support it. As "Made to Stick" it was gripping and fun to read. Two ideas that worked really well for me: Consider what you would do if you could not pick your initial decision? Consider cost of alternative (what this decision will stop you from doing)? These are form W (Widen your options). It is first part of the process and first part of the book but it is most important one. We all really tend to ask ourselves questions "whether to do it or not". It is basic mistake. There are other options out there for sure, just use the process to discover them. Full WRAP process: Widen your options. Reality-test your assumptions. Attain distance before deciding. Prepare to be wrong. I ...

As I have mentioned in last post  this book was referenced in many books I have already read. Most of them were really inspired by concept of "Flow" so it was natural for me to eventually read it. Book is a lot about happiness and what it really mens. Author in his studies discovered that what we mostly think will make us happy is not working. What he discovered is one of most happy experiences is what he called "Flow". It is a deep concentration on a doable task what we immerse ourselves into. There is a list of things that are necessary for "optimal experience": challenging task (but one that can be done) concentration clear goal immediate feedback deep involvement - concentration only on the task (no worries or frustrations) sense of control over task and actions feeling of self disappears (and appears stronger afterwards) sense of time changes Some activities are more likely to generate "Flow" and for example Yoga practice...

Friend recommended me this book and it turn out to be great decision to finally read it. "Made to Stick" really changed the way how I think about convincing anyone. How I think about presentations and things I read. It may be impossible for me to remember precisely everything but one most important thing that I learned is the power of stories. Turns out hearing a story is single best thing just after having your own experience. It's even proven that stories activate the same brain areas as if you actually do the thing you hear about. That's big. That alone is biggest reason to use stories instead of arguments and data. Rating: 10/10

How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the art and science of persuasion and motivation by Susan Weinschenk Short and concise book about motivation. If you haven't read much about motivation and psychology then, it's really good. Unfortunately for me it was more like review. I got two ideas from this book that I have already forgotten. Use nouns if you are trying to influence someone. For example: "Are you a voter?" instead of "Are you going to vote?". Make people (or yourself) ask questions starting with "Will I...". It's proven that it makes a big difference in how many people do this thing later! "Will I read one book a week?" instead of "I will read one book a week." Book is really short and practical. Last chapter is all about real questions and how to influence for example your mother to exercise. Practical and easy to follow. Recommended. Rating: 8/10

At the last "ReadingClub" I heard really good review of this book and it convinced me to read it right away. It was a really good idea, because there is so much you can learn from that book. One of the most important things that I have learned, was that, success is not happiness, and we are wired to strive for success and not happiness. What is considered success for person, group or humans as a species is not making us happy. It's not that easy to notice it in our culture. Author created the metaphor of elephant and it's rider that is now well-know. I have even stumbled upon it a couple of times, but it was still good to read the full story as there is much more to it that I thought. One of interesting things is that the elephant is not only our body and 'animal' part of our brain. It's also the 'self' part that gives us flow of thoughts, so it's normal to have ridiculous thoughts. This hypothesis fits nicely to "The Power of Hab...

This is list of 100 articles about people, subjects from psychology and UX, UI design. Really impressive. http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/articles/ After reading a couple of them I can confirm that this series is great.