2016Q1 Book Review

My reading list for 2016 Quarter one. Every quarter I like to read a mix of genres skipping around fantasy, business, and self development

Doing Good Better

How effective Altruism can help you make a difference. This book had a great content and has changed the way I think about charity and making a difference. The Author William MacAskill has a framework of his five questions to ask before donating.

The five Questions

How many people benefit, and by how much?
Is this the most effective thing you can do?
Is this area neglected?
What would have happened otherwise?
What are the chances of success, and how good would success be?

Using the quality-adjusted life year metric on where to give the most effectively. I made a donation of 50 nets to the AMF againstmalaria.com to help prevent malaria in Africa. A takeaway I enjoyed from this book is earning to give as a great way to impact the world compared to working at a non profit. My personal charitable practice is 10% of my post tax income to charity, with the bulk going to a local synagogue, then charities that have a 100x Multiplier effect.

Flashboys

Heard a lot about Michael Lewis and this is the first book I read by him. I enjoy his story telling and the way he structured his chapters. Flashboys takes you into the world of High Frequency trading,

Great read, didn’t know much about HFT before. Could have been better by being more balanced instead of an all out attack on HFT.

“The world clings to its old mental picture of the stock market because it’s comforting; because it’s so hard to draw a picture of what has replaced it; and because the few people able to draw it for you have no interest in doing so.”

“Once very smart people are paid huge sums of money to exploit the flaws in the financial system, they have the spectacularly destructive incentive to screw the system up further, or to remain silent as they watch it being screwed up by others. The cost, in the end, is a tangled-up financial system. Untangling it requires acts of commercial heroism—and even then the fix might not work. There was simply too much more easy money to be made by elites if the system worked badly than if it worked well. The whole culture had to want to change. “We know how to cure this,” as Brad had put it. “It’s just a matter of whether the patient wants to be treated.”
― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys

The Magician

Every Quarter I like to read at least one fantasy book. This is the second book in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel Series. This was a quick and fun read to get me out of my head. I am a big fan of mythologies and this series is worth reading.

Jewish Meditation

I’ve been hearing more and more about mediation these past few years, and bought a 12 month subscription to Headspace in 2015. I did get some benefit from the guided meditation but felt I was ready for an unguided experience. This book is filled with applicable and useful techniques for people that are interested in learning about meditation.

Impact from this book

Mantra Meditation: nearly every day for 30 days
More mindful while praying

This is a book I’ll be revisiting from time to time.

Zero to One

Kept hearing about this book on the Tim Ferris podcasts, the library didn’t have this book available in the kindle format and I thought it was worth the purchase.

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.

Questions Thiel says “Every business must answer:”

The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business?
The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
The People Question Do you have the right team?
The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

Ended up being worth the purchase and would recommend to any entrepreneur

2016Q1 Book Review