In his book “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill summarizes the traits shared by rich people.
The author worked on this book with an assignment by steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie. The latter one wanted to find the secret of getting rich and assigned Napoleon Hill to find out. Hill spent 20 years interviewing the most wealthy people of his time to find out what they have in common. This book was the result.
My quite old German version of “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill
What is “Think and Grow Rich” about?
With the book’s development in mind, you might expect a book with lots of interviews put loosely together. Quite the contrary is the case. The author structures his insights well and he uses examples only now and then to add some color. Meanwhile, he proposes thirteen steps as wealth’s foundation: Continue reading Think and Grow Rich – a PhD student’s review
This book by Carol Dweck is about mindsets and how they affect your life. Basically, it differs between “fixed” and the “growth” mindset and illustrates how each one defines your actions, especially your handling of mistakes.
The fixed mindset can be really bad and it’s very common. Society unfortunately nurtures this mindset: Good results which did not need any effort are prefered to good results for which you had to work your ass off. The problem is you don’t learn from your mistakes and might even hide them.
German version of the 4-Hour Workweek: Post-its indicate stuff I have to read again
The book “The 4-hour workweek” written by Timothy Ferris is a classic when it comes to achieving freedom to do what you want to do.
What’s the book about?
The book is about finding a muse business that allows you to spend your time with fulfilling activities. Timothy Ferris describes possible steps to build such a business which pays off enough so you only spend four hours per week with inconvenient work. It is subdivided into four parts, i.e. Continue reading The 4-hour workweek – a PhD student’s review
Thinking, Fast and Slow summarizes the main research results of its author. He investigated how the human mind works, especially when it comes to imperfections during decision-making.
In the beginning the short descriptions of the so-called system 1 (responsible for fast, effortless thinking) and system 2 (responsible for concentrated and effortful thinking) are introduced. Kahneman also describes some triggers he found for those systems (apparently, blood glucose levels influence the availability of system 2).
The remaining parts do not have such a defined topic as the first part. They focus on prediction fallacies, different biases and the heuristics which leading there. There are also chapters discussing the differences between Homo economicus and Homo sapiens: For example, for a Homo economicus, the risk aversion does not depend on the prospect of gain or loss. For us as real humans, it is important: Facing a potential loss, we tend to be risk seeking and facing a potential gain, we tend to be risk averse.
The book closes with a print of the original scientific papers. To be honest: I did not read those 80 pages because the small printing made reading quite tiring 😉
So, why is this book worth reading?
This book can change the way how you perceive other people and their actions. Example tasks show how everybody is prone to biases and imperfect decision-making. If you read of all of those cognitive shortcuts and flaws, you hopefully will be less judging towards the people around you.
