Readings in Isolation - First half of 2020

"I don't know how you get time to read!", my friend said as we were having dinner after months of isolation now that the restaurants have re-opened in Sydney. "Ever since we have been working from home, it's just meetings all day - everyday. It seems like my work hours have doubled!" she said.

This trend is real, and it worries me. In March I shared my thoughts on how we have more time while we work from home and don't commute during the months of isolation. Now, instead of investing those hours on ourselves, many are spending that time to do more meetings. I appreciate that circumstances are different for each of us, but please do make time for yourselves too.

I continued my reading at the two-books-a-month pace. This year I am splitting my reading reviews into two sets instead of a single post for the year. A big Thank you to everyone who provided such positive responses to my reading lists from 2018 and 2019. One of the more consistent requests was for me to share my readings more frequently as opposed to waiting for a year for the annual post. To be frank, personally I found the end of December - early January downtime a good time to gather my thoughts for the year and type out the blog. Nevertheless, moving forward, I will break them into two posts a year.

Looking at my past six months of reading, I feel privileged to have spent my time with some amazing thinkers, authors, business leaders and storytellers.

In order of sequence of reading, my last twelve books from January to June 2020 were:

1. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Sinek, Simon 
2. Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change by Benioff, Marc
3. Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by Carse, James P.
4. The Infinite Game by Sinek, Simon
5. How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Johnson, Steven 
6. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Brynjolfsson, Erik
7. Outliers: The Story of Success by Gladwell, Malcolm
8. The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness by Puddicombe, Andy
9. The Rosie Effect (Don Tillman, #2) by Simsion, Graeme 
10. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Pink, Daniel H.
11. Sam Walton: Made In America by Walton, Sam
12. Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance by Cameron, Kim S.

As always, each book was excellent and mind-expanding in its own ways, but a few really stood out for me and changed me hopefully for the better. Here are the five that really stayed with me after I finished the book.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action: This was my first book by Simon Sinek, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I did find it repetitive in trying to make its points. If you don't have the time to read the book, please do watch the TED Talk that Sinek did on the same topic. The book presents a framework that "starts with why" and then looks at the "how" and then the "what" of anything we do. You might wonder why am I calling it out as one of my favourites given that I did not find the writing as excellent as the rest. Well, the writing might be repetitive but the message is fantastic. In our day to day business dealings, we get so caught up with the "what" we do and "how" we do it, we forget the "why" we are actually doing it in the first place - our just cause. I found the book a great reminder to always go back to our Just Cause and I have found myself asking that question a lot more in my work and life interactions.

The Infinite Game, also written by Simon Sinek was an excellent follow on read for me. The idea of the Infinite Game came from a book by James Carse in the 80's, something Sinek references clearly, but makes his book a more accessible read (I found Carse's book more academic) with a current context wrapper to it and a framework to work with. The book talks to the two types of games that are played - Finite games where the games have accepted rules and are played to win and Infinite games where there are no defined rules and are played to keep the games in play. I read Carse's book first and then read Sinek's take on it, and found them both valid reads. If you are not a purist and would read only one of them, I would recommend Sinek's book due to its adaptability in current business and societal context. This book is extremely relevant in today's world of short term, win/lose style and rhetoric of leaders. The more I delved into the book, the more I realised that leaders who have inspired me through my career almost always had an infinite mindset. Again, like the previous Sinek book, if you don't have time to go through the book, please take time to watch this keynote Sinek did on the topic.

I loved Sam Walton: Made In America. I live in Australia, so, really I don't shop at a Walmart - but I absolutely know who they are. What I didn't know is how they became who they are and what an amazing leader the author, Sam Walton was. Reading the story of how a single store grew into the largest retail house in America is truly an inspiring story - told by the very person who made it all happen. There is so much to learn from Sam Walton - humility, leadership, ambition, sheer guts, love for the vision and the people who are helping him make it all happen - his customers.

What motivates us? Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink is a well thought out and easy read answer to that question. The book looks at about forty years of research on human motivation and calls out the mismatch today in what science says motivates people and what businesses actually do to motivate employees. The answer lies in these questions: Why do people spend hours contributing to Wikipedia for free? Why do people help build Open Source products when there is no monetary benefit? Why do I spend hours volunteering to help students? Pink suggests three essential elements to motivation - Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. He specifically calls out against the current ways financial motivators are used in businesses today. It's a great read and has lots of good pointers to consider in our businesses.

10,000 hours. Yes, that's how long it takes to master something. When Malcolm Gladwell says master, he means Olympic Gold medallist level master - not athletic teacher level master (which is amazing too of course). I found Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell a truly eye-opening book, and I wish I had read it twenty years earlier. Gladwell's research basically calls out that to be a true master in your field is not just about genes, the month you are born (yes, really!) or talent - but rather, at least 10,000 hours of hard work. Oh, and there is luck. Gladwell spends a fair bit of time talking about how most successful people who did their 10,000 hours were also very lucky to be at the right place, at the right time, in the right family, with the right teacher and school etc. to get a chance to have a go. Beyond the text itself, what I liked about the book is that it brings to the foreground the huge efforts that have gone to each success story we hear. We are so enamored with the symptom of success, we often forget to go into the cause of that symptom which is often years of sacrifice. Sam Walton also alludes to the same thought as Gladwell in his book. Walton laments that people often think he just got lucky when he opened the first Walmart store when he was well into his forties. What the nay-sayers discount is the twenty years of retail background, failures and successes that led to the first Walmart.

Before I sign off, I do want to make a special mention of The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness by Andy Puddicombe. I enjoyed reading it and loved how it makes meditation so accessible to everyone. It was interesting to read Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change by Marc Benioff and how Benioff has been influenced by Asian spiritual leaders and how he uses meditation as part of his life too.

Well that's a wrap for the last six months folks! I do hope you find the list and reviews useful. If you are on Goodreads, you can find me on my profile and track my readings there.

To end where I began, please do take care of yourselves in the crazy times we are living in and happy readings to you!