The founder of Behance covers the journey towards product market fit. It's where most startup's fail and yet very little has been written about that part of the software entrepreneurs journey.
I just finished Can't Hurt Me, it was a solid read though not quite the kind of thing I usually go for. I can't say I want to follow Goggins-level suffering by his example, but reading about his commitment to self-improvement and accomplishment really drove home just how far one can push on sheer willpower and hard work. I've certainly taken some actionable learnings. I hope you're enjoying the book.
I loved the book. Totally agree with you. It’s not about being like him; it about finding your own limits and hopefully in the process do more that you could have ever imagined.
I'm reading a book called "じょうぶな子どもをつくる基本食": Joubuna Kodomo-o Tsukuru Kihonshoku. ("Base Diet for making Strong/Healthy Kids").
It's a book about child nutrition that disparages all foreign influences in Japanese eating and encourages everything traditional. Steamed rice, miso soup, tsukemono and so on. Plus various parenting advice around food as well as not.
Non-traditional foods influenced by foreign cultures, in particular Europe and America, are blamed for all sorts of ills and ailments of the skin, bowel and whatnot, not to mention cancer.
Interesting. Reminds me of the life story of a safety inspector that was born and lived in Okinawa. He basically went through a period where rice was mostly for the rich and then through WWII as a child to which americans prescribed a ration of milk and cheese to kids to improve nutritian. He was fairly short in stature and said he regretted not taking the milk and cheese as he though it would have helped him grow taller. Okinawans were famed for living a really long time though. I think the running theory at the time was due to pork and that pickle looking vegetable (can't think of the name).
Ironically I started that one but never managed to finish it.
I still got something out of it though, so I suppose that's one way to read a book.
The basic advice I took from it is to treat a book like it's an artifact that you're investigating, almost like a city. You start by looking at the map to get an overview, then you can visit some of the major attractions, and then you can start to spend more time really getting to know some neighborhoods.
So with a book you familiarize yourself with the table of contents to know roughly how the argument or presentation proceeds; then you might for example skim the conclusion to see more clearly what the author is trying to accomplish; then you can pick a particular chapter or section that's of definite interest to you; and so on.
(This is all centered on reading for learning, not for pleasure.)
It's a lot like how to read a program. A book is presented much more linearly than a program, but actually nothing is really linear. Narrative plots may be, but you don't have to follow the plot of a monograph.
It makes me weirdly excited to think about book-length arguments as being programs, or functions in a kind of stoner misreading of the Curry-Howard isomorphism. So maybe you can even make an analysis of the "data structures" and "algorithms" used by a certain book. You might see one book as resembling a compiler, another as resembling a compression program. This may stretch the analogy too far.
But certainly books refer in a similar way that programs do. They make calls out to external sources, hopefully unambiguously declared and semantically versioned. Sometimes it's crucial to actually check those references. Truly reading a book might be a larger project than just reading one particular book.
I think there could be a deeper argument about relating the freedom of thought in the public sphere of literacy to the free software movement, which you can see a glimpse of in Richard Stallman's essay The Right to Read...
I am still early on in the book, but I agree I have gotten something out of it already. I always read the preface and the dust cover, but I never thought to look at the table of contents.
The part I am most interested in is in regards to the analytical reading and discerning the structure of the arguments.
City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 -> Great insight into the history of New Orleans, and how the diverse culture from its beginning has shaped the city we love today.
and
A Confederacy of Dunces -> Hilarious yet well-written book.
31 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 70.8 ms ] threadThe most cogent survey of the existential risk posed by superintelligent AGI that I’ve come across.
The founder of Behance covers the journey towards product market fit. It's where most startup's fail and yet very little has been written about that part of the software entrepreneurs journey.
A planet becomes extinct due to climate change and a team of archaelogists are sent to study its civilisation.
#LifeChanging
It's a book about child nutrition that disparages all foreign influences in Japanese eating and encourages everything traditional. Steamed rice, miso soup, tsukemono and so on. Plus various parenting advice around food as well as not.
Non-traditional foods influenced by foreign cultures, in particular Europe and America, are blamed for all sorts of ills and ailments of the skin, bowel and whatnot, not to mention cancer.
Quite entertaining.
https://www.amazon.co.JP/じょうぶな子どもをつくる基本食-幕内-秀夫/dp/4072292281
Great readable book with lots of experiments, results and conclusions. It also made me stop drinking coffee after ~2 pm
This is an eye opener for me as a SaaS newbie. A must read for anyone trying to build a startup.
Its a practical book
I still got something out of it though, so I suppose that's one way to read a book.
The basic advice I took from it is to treat a book like it's an artifact that you're investigating, almost like a city. You start by looking at the map to get an overview, then you can visit some of the major attractions, and then you can start to spend more time really getting to know some neighborhoods.
So with a book you familiarize yourself with the table of contents to know roughly how the argument or presentation proceeds; then you might for example skim the conclusion to see more clearly what the author is trying to accomplish; then you can pick a particular chapter or section that's of definite interest to you; and so on.
(This is all centered on reading for learning, not for pleasure.)
It's a lot like how to read a program. A book is presented much more linearly than a program, but actually nothing is really linear. Narrative plots may be, but you don't have to follow the plot of a monograph.
It makes me weirdly excited to think about book-length arguments as being programs, or functions in a kind of stoner misreading of the Curry-Howard isomorphism. So maybe you can even make an analysis of the "data structures" and "algorithms" used by a certain book. You might see one book as resembling a compiler, another as resembling a compression program. This may stretch the analogy too far.
But certainly books refer in a similar way that programs do. They make calls out to external sources, hopefully unambiguously declared and semantically versioned. Sometimes it's crucial to actually check those references. Truly reading a book might be a larger project than just reading one particular book.
I think there could be a deeper argument about relating the freedom of thought in the public sphere of literacy to the free software movement, which you can see a glimpse of in Richard Stallman's essay The Right to Read...
The part I am most interested in is in regards to the analytical reading and discerning the structure of the arguments.
and
A Confederacy of Dunces -> Hilarious yet well-written book.
Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst - explaing human behavior from many points of view, well written and mind blowing.