The 12 things (with my notes in bold and italic)

1. EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. – The most important chapter.  Short version – if you exercise your brain will be smarter and it won’t get dementia.  I’ve put this to the test, and I am more focused with exercise than without.
2. SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too. – Not that memorable, good background information.
3. WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.- Not that memorable, good background information.
4. ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.- Intuitive,  and general background information
5. SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember. – Important, counter intuitive info on memory.
6. LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.- Important, counter intuitive info on memory.
7. SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well. – The second most informative chapter.  I had always thought of sleep as a time of rest, it turns out to be a very active process for the brain.   Sleep is when the brain cleans and restocks itself.
8. STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. – I had no idea that stress was the physical reaction that it is.  This is the third most important chapter.
9. SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses. – Good advice for graphic designers.
10. VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses. –  mostly background information.
11. GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different . – we knew this already, but Medina tells us how male and female brains differ.
12. EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers. –  mostly background information.

From this book I have made the following changes in life

• I am distance cycling again
• I sleep eight hours or more per night
• I structure presentations differently (in accordance with the memory chapters).
• When I do graphic and information design I use more graphics and less text

After reading this book I life a more positive, more effective, and less stressful life.  Thank you Dr Medina.

photo credit: laszlo-photo

Usually I just hang up on these people, but for fun I tried negotiating with them using the various Jim Camp “No” methods.  To my pleasure I was able to easily redirect questions and build need on my adversary’s part.    I was able to decrease the price (on average) 25% and got several freebies as well, if I ever decided to go through with any of the offers.

photo credit: Unfurled

Recommended reading and listening.  I find it to be  10 out of 10 so far.

I imagine I will wind up buying his later book for highlighting and checklist purposes.

photo credit: pawpaw67

With no further ado – here are the books I recommend to start out.

1. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss – while it sounds like a scam, Ferriss actually write about how to say no to almost everything and focusing on a few things
2. Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson – more manifesto than tutorial, but manifestos are important.  There is a bit of method involved, but it is mostly manifesto.
3. Growing a Business by Paul Hawken – As you might expect, a nice book on growing a business.  Worth reading – over time I’ve felt the gardening metaphor to be apt.
4. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi – pretty much the classic on networking.
5. Ignore Everybody  by Hugh MacLeod – More motivation than method, but motivation is usually more important.  Whatever you do consistently defines you, and motivation is the biggest piece of consistency.
6. The Art of Profitability  by Adrian Slywotzky – Changes how you look at business methods, and helps define your goals.
7. Certain to Win by Chet Richards – The thinking of John Boyd applied to business.  I maintain that this book is the best introduction to the thinking of John Boyd and the OODA loop.
8. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath – a handy checklist to use when evaluating ideas.
9. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie – the all time classic on working with, for, and around people.  Everyone would be far better off if reading this book was mandatory.  One of the inspirations for Stronico.
10. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Michael Gerber – The classic book on how to systematize your business.  It helps you make the shift from owning a job to owning a company.

For another list, arguable much better, check out Derek Sivers’ list of worthwhile books.

photo credit: gadl

I recently picked up a copy of The Power of Less by Leo Babauta (I was using a gift certificate and that was the only interesting thing Barnes and Noble had in stock).  Babauta blogs as www.zenhabits.net and I imagine most of the content originally appeared there.  It is an easy, fast read.

The book boils down to these points:

1. Start small, in fact below your personal capacity at whatever it is you are trying to do
2. Move in small increments
3. Announce your goals
4. Clean and organize
5. Eliminate the non-essential
6. Come up with 3 “Most important things” to do each day.  Do nothing until those things are done
7. Break down goals, plans and tasks into specific increments
8. Single task

That’s pretty much all there is to the book.  I would have ranked it a bit lower, except for all of the points are true and accurate. Point 6 is a good and useful tool to make sure that tasks actually get done and never slip.  Beyond that it’s all well written, but generic and unneccesary.  I do intend to get Babauta’s other book Zen To Done, which is his implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.  Perhaps that will be a bit more up my alley.

Now what should I call it?  At the moment I’m thinking of the following 6 choices.

The Title Choices

1. Flying Car Syndrome and Other Business Maladies – Client Management for the Self-Diagnosed Aspie
2. Let Them Choke Somebody Else – Client Management for the Self-Diagnosed Aspie
3. Looking Up At The Balloon – Client Management for the Self-Diagnosed Aspie
4. Carbon Based Units and Other Business Maladies – Client Management for the Self-Diagnosed Aspie
5. Flying Cars, Teleporters and Other Business Maladies – Client Management for the Self-Diagnosed Aspie
6. Client Management for the Self-Diagnosed Aspie

You may ask, what does that have to do with Stronico, the world’s first Visual Contact Manager?  Directly, not much.  Indirectly, lots.  Stronico is designed to fix many of the problems I have remembering names, faces, and connections and the target market for Stronico is people with similar traits and problems.  The book is an elaboration of many of the problems that come from those personality quirks, so this is a good (and helpful to the end user) way to establish credibility and a rapport with our target market.

Please let me know in the comments which title you think best sums up lessons learned in seven years of introverted small business experience.

The first book I purchased on my new Kindle was Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. I bought it based on this review by Derek Sivers. On the whole, I liked it very much. In fact, I read it in one sitting. Here are my thoughts:

What the book is not:

• A step by step manual for doing anything
• A specific guide to doing anything
• Case studies

What the book is:

• A collection of generalized lessons learned from 20 odd years in the creative business
• Extremely well written
• Largely a collection of aphorisms, similar to the work of Eric Hoffer
• Highly motivational

I think I’ll just let the items I highlighted tell the story of the book (thank you Kindle) -I recommend it to everyone.

My Highlights

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking, but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed.

So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.d3665701B0026NBZFI

I think one of the main reasons I stayed in advertising for so many years is simply because hearing “Change that ad” ticks me off a lot less than “Change that cartoon.”d3665701B0026NBZFI

We think we’re “Providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “Helping America to really taste Freshness.” In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn’t.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Every form of media is a set of fundamental compromises; one is not “higher” than the others.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Well, a cartoon only needs one person to make it. Same with a piece of writing. No Big Group Hug required. So all this sex-fueled socialism was rather alien to me, even if parts of it seemed very appealing.d3665701B0026NBZFI

It’s hard to sell out if nobody has bought in.d3665701B0026NBZFI

MAKING A BIG DEAL OVER YOUR CREATIVE shtick to other people is the kiss of death.d3665701B0026NBZFI

To me, it’s not about whether Tom Clancy sells truckloads of books or a Nobel Prize winner sells diddly-squat. Those are just ciphers, external distractions. To me, it’s about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.d3665701B0026NBZFI

PEOPLE ARE FOND OF SPOUTING OUT THE OLD cliché about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is merit in utter failure. Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.d3665701B0026NBZFI

There’s a famous old quip: “A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”d3665701B0026NBZFI

THE LATE BRITISH BILLIONAIRE JAMES GOLD-SMITH once quipped, “When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.”

Upon reading over this, MacLeod really is a lot like Eric Hoffer. Anyway, go get it and read it.

As a self-diagnosed Aspie – I was particularly fascinated by the part about degrees of difference, mainly that some people can appreciate/perceive some things, music, food, books, etc, to a far higher degree than others. I thought I would create some lists for future reference.

High degree of perception list

• Music written in pentatonic scales
• Word choice
• Barbecue
• Written History
• Driving pattens (I can predict what people in front of me will do)
• Boxing
• Speeches and internal messaging
• Verbal tone
• Dogs

Low degree of perception list

• Classical music
• Jazz
• Sushi
• Body language
• Basketball
• Poetry
• Cats

What does all this have to do with Stronico? I’m not sure, but I was inspired to make several changes to the app after reading the book, though I find the reasons to do so unclear.

Brief Thoughts

• The Venture capital chapter was quite informative, and reinforced my thought of “Are you sure you need this” regarding VC funding.
• The Social Media marketing chapter was excellent, and I have sent the link to the book to many of my friends in the advertising and marketing biz to help them get a handle on how to handle FaceBook, Twitter, and the rest
• For the most part the interviews were useful and informative, particularly Joel Spolsky’s interview. For my purposes, a couple of them could have been removed with no damage doen to the book, but I imagine they applied to someone.
• The interview with David Allen was informative as well. Conversations about the GTD methodology tend to resemble Ayn Rand discussions on philosophy too much, but this interview worked for it’s purposes

I recommend this book to everyone starting an ISV (like me!), or thinking about starting one. My only quibble is that there was no central guide to the links mentioned in the book, either as an appendix to the book or online. There were numerous mentions of useful websites, but it is easy to lose them as they are spread out all over the book. This is a minor quibble though. If you’re reading this, and this applies to you, go ahead and buy it. You’ll be glad you did.

Cross posted at the Digital Tool Factory blog.