The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef A lot of psychological research has shown how we’re prone to cognitive biases, although less has been written about how to overcome them. Many of these biases result from deciding on some opinion and holding onto it, even with contrary…
Category: Self-Help / Career
Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier (8.4/10)
Book for new and aspiring software engineering managers about how to do the job effectively. Unlike an individual contributor, your output as a manager is basically the output of your team (plus others that you influence), so the job is less about your individual output, and mostly about getting others to achieve their full potential….
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson (8.0/10)
Jordan Peterson’s sequel to 12 Rules for Life, written after a lengthy break due to medical issues. The content is similar to his first book and there is a lot of overlap with the similar messages of being truthful to yourself and others, taking responsibility for your own life, confronting problems when they arise instead…
Good Work If You Can Get It by Jason Brennan (8.2/10)
Book by an economics professor on how to succeed in academia and become a professor. Faculty positions are extremely competitive, and the nature of job depends on what tier of university you end up, and whether you’re in tenure track. Top-tier research (R1) universities have professors doing research and only a bit of teaching, but…
Atomic Habits by James Clear (6.5/10)
Habits are actions that seem insignificant in the moment, but whose effects compound so that the long-term effect is significant. If you become 1% better every day, you will be very good after a year. The habit loop is subconscious and consists of four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward, thus you should target one…
TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson (7.0/10)
I got this book in an effort to improve my public speaking. It provides a bunch of tips on giving talks; the majority of it was either too vague to be useful or very obvious, but some of it was interesting, like the chapters on visuals and stage setup. The problem is this book teaches…
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (7.7/10)
Book that discusses various aspects of how habits work. On a high level, habits have three components: cue, routine, and reward. The cue is a set of conditions, such that you automatically perform a routine in order to get a reward. After a while, you will crave the reward when given the cue, and perform…
12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson (8.2/10)
Jordan Peterson’s new book that quickly hit #1 on the bestsellers lists after being released this year. He’s famous around UofT for speaking out against social justice warriors, but [redacted] told me that he’s got a lot of interesting videos on philosophy of how to live your life. This book summarizes a lot of these…
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport (7.0/10)
Life and career advice book by Cal Newport, the guy that writes study blog. He offers a few pieces of advice, kind of similar to Larry Smith’s book: Don’t pursue your passion, because most people don’t have any passion that can be turned into a career Focus on career capital, that is, increase your value…
No Fears, No Excuses by Larry Smith (7.3/10)
Larry Smith is famous in Waterloo for being a really good Economics professor who also has a TED talk advocating for the importance of pursuing your passion. This book starts off kind of the same way, basically saying that in order to really excel you need to be passionate in your subject, and gives some…