Books and Podcasts March & April

Hi everyone, it’s already May so here is the post about the things I read or listened to in the last two months. I hope you enjoy this short listing of books and podcasts.

Make Time, a book by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky is about tips to break out the time to do things that really have value for someone. The book is more or less a collection of tips to turn that wish into reality. It’s a framework which is split into 4 parts. First is the Highlight section. The activity one really wants to do that day. Then there is the ‚laser‘ phase so the phase of focused work. For example, they present the idea of the distraction-free phone where almost all apps got deleted. Who doesn’t know the desire to check the phone to see what’s new on Instagram, even when the last time was only two minutes ago? The book gives advice to prevent those distractions. There is also the Energize part which is connected directly with the laser phase. It is about getting the energy to do those laser phases. The last part is the reflection phase. Like the name says it is about reflecting the chosen tactics and how good or bad they worked.
The book has a lot of great tactics to make time and focus on valuable things. This was definitely a book I enjoyed and I had a lot of joy reading it also because of the style of writing.

Everything I know

Everything I know is written by Paul Jarvis about the things he learned about businesses while being a freelancer. Really interesting points which give great insight into his business history. He also talks about examples of other people who work for themselves. For example, a woman who gives yoga classes but had to fight with depressions at the same time. She made her problems really public with her clients and still she’s in high demand. Being vulnerable and not ‚perfect‘ is most of the time better than pretending to be a perfect person without any mistakes. Jarvis underlines that everyone should build his own adventure and don’t walk the way many people did before someone. One of the most striking quotes was:

My best advice? Fuck advice and listen to yourself. Trust in your journey and learn as much as possible through first-hand experiments

Atomic Habits

Atomic Habits written by James Clear describes the way to build up good habits and ways to stop bad ones. It’s a lot about how human psychology works and how habits can be built. I caught myself multiple times when reading that some descriptions of habits fit with my own. It’s really important to realize which habits one has and decide if that particular one is good or bad. Clear groups every habit into 4 laws: „Make it obvious“, „Make it attractive“, „Make it easy“ and „Make it satisfying“. Every law brings its own tips to build up a habit. For example, everyone has habits which one does every day. So why not linking the new to learn habit with the ones one already does? You want to work out more? Place your work out clothes directly in sight when you come home. James Clear built an incredible framework of building habits with his book and it was awesome reading it to learn a little bit more about oneself.

Podcasts

The Dropout

The dropout is a podcast by ABC about the medical firm Theranos and it’s founder Elizabeth Holmes who went from being the perfect founder example in Silicon Valley to being the ‚fallen star‘. The podcast interviews the people who were involved in developing those blood tests.

Blackout

Blackout with Ramy Malek is a scripted podcast that is about a sudden blackout in the whole US. Malek is a radio DJ from Berlin, New Hampshire who wants to find out about the real cause of the blackout. Extremely fascinating and good produced. I have been a huge fand of Malek since his role in Mr. Robot.

We are Netflix

Probably everyone knows Netflix and We are Netflix is about the inner structures of Netflix. For example how design thinking is handled or what Netflix means with chaos engineering.

These are the books I read and new podcasts that really stood out for me in the last two months. I hope you liked this short overview.
Thank you for reading,
Niklas