THE CHAOS THEORY

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

This is a story of a disturbing dystopia, set in the year 632 AF (After Ford – their messianic figure), the equivalent of the year 2540 in our Gregorian Calendar, at a place called the World State.

It is a world where advance science can engineer a human embryo to create a perfect human being, where babies aren’t born through mothers anymore, they are raised in state conditioning centres instead of by their parents, and they are programmed from childhood not to feel strong emotions but rather to obey orders.

In World State, there are no countries or borders, no individual or private home, no religion, no heaven, no parliament, no democracy, while Polish, French, and German have become dead languages as everybody now speaks the same language. In the spirit of unison even monogamy, romance, and family are prohibited, as “everyone belongs to everyone else.”

Ending is better than mending, as they also often say in this society, as they immediately throw away old stuffs and encourage consumerism over brand new things. You see, they thrive on efficiencies. But they should not fear of being discarded themselves, because thanks to the advances of science ageing does not occur anymore.

The society in the World State is organized through caste system that divide people into 5 classes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. All judged based on intelligence. And this is where the problem lies, as a lot of humans are engineered to be born and conditioned into a pre-designated caste. Because not everyone can become an Alpha since the world still needs someone to do the hard labour, which is the lower caste, as proven in the failed experiment of an all-Alpha society in Cyprus a while ago.

Indeed, the brilliance of this book is that it shows the flaws of attempting perfection, where this advanced society is trying to eradicate hardship, unhappiness, inefficiencies, violence, and inconveniences, but ended up oppressing people in the journey towards their utopian dream. In truth, life becomes dull without the struggles and people become less human and increasingly naïve as they lack the necessary experience of hardship to contrast evil with kindness, discomfort with comfort, failure with winning.

It is in this environment that the story of our protagonists is set. They do so firstly by being exposed to the “ordinary world” when they travel outside the World State to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico, one of the only places left that has not been influenced by the World State.

Over there, they observe for the first time natural birth, ageing process, disease, other languages, religious lifestyle, and all the spectrum of emotions including lust and love. And the novel witnesses their progress of embracing all the flaws, messiness and struggles to become human once again.

The narrative itself is intriguing, filled with twist and turn and drama, but as always with fiction work – whose strong point is in the story – I will not spill any further. The audible version in particular, narrated by Michael York, gives an additional creep to it, thanks to his brilliant expressions at reading it.

All in all, the book is so disturbing, it’s so good. And it’s astonishing how our real-life modern society is progressing towards this fictitious world, a world that was already cautioned by Aldous Huxley back in 1932.

“Fire and Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin

I love history. And I love the Game of Thrones series, all 7 seasons of it. While it’s been years later, I’m still mending my utter disappointment for season 8, which I heard could’ve been stretched for 6 seasons until season 13.

So when the series House of Dragon came out, I hesitated. But then a certain self-proclaimed Game of Thrones walking dictionary (he has read every GoT books) suggested me to read this book instead.

And in a way it’s perfect, as I understand the world of GoT well enough having watched the series twice in a row. And reading this book is like reading a history book over a familiar current affairs issues, which is what I’m used to.

Not going to spoil anything from the book, but in a nutshell, let me just say it’s so astonishing that a book can have an unbelievable scale of imagination with all the richness of the backgrounds and legends about the Targaryen Dynasty, considering that this is a work of fiction. All of the human greed, emotions, injustice, political in-fightings, conspiracies, sibling rivalries, the barbarity of peasants, even plagues, are all felt so real, not unlike the real events occurring in world history.

I’ve never read fiction in this kind of porpotion before, and never read any of George RR Martin’s book before. Now I understands my friends’ obsession with the books. Very well done.

“Hemingway’s France: Images of the Lost Generation” by Winston Conrad

Once upon a time, not long after World War 1 ended, several Americans lingered and stayed on in Europe. Among them, many chose Paris as their new base because of the laissez-faire attitude of the society towards art, politics and sexuality, which was the perfect environment for creativity.

It is in the flourishing cultural scenery, the 50,000 restaurants across the city, the quality of the food. It is also the cheap exchange rate in relative to US Dollar, and perhaps most crucially, it is in the availability of alcohol while Prohibition was still ongoing back in the US.

It is no wonder that the unofficial title of cultural capital of Europe moved from Vienna to Paris, and that so many talented artists and writers reside there during the 1920s, from Pablo Picasso, to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and of course the main focus of the book, Ernest Hemingway.

This is a short book about that time Hemingway lived in Paris. It tells the tale of the growth that he experienced in the vibrant city, his daily habits, the influences that shaped him, the books he read, and the cafes where he spent his time writing on.

And of course it also tells the drama that he brings into the expat social circle, a group of people filled with jealousy and wounded pride as well as comradery, which was so dramatic that it would later became the inspiration for his novel “Sun Also Rises.”

Yes, it is fitting that Hemingway’s larger-than-life character was shaped and molded in this kind of environment, a place full with extravagances. And that the experiences that he gets from this era in Paris will forever be imprinted in his behaviour until old age. Or As the author Winston Conrad remarks, it is where Hemingway became Hemingway.

“The Almanack of Naval Ravikant” by Eric Jorgenson

Naval Ravikant is an angel investor who has invested in more than 100 companies from their early stage, including in Twitter, Uber, FourSquare, and Stack Overflow. He has also ventured into several other investment types, including a cryptocurrency hedge fund in the early days of 2014 before the big rally.

Apart from his investment credentials he is famous for being a wise philosopher of life, with insights at par with those of Buffett’s and Munger’s. In fact, this book – co-written with Eric Jorgenson – is styled in a manner similar like Charlie Munger’s Poor Charlie’s almanack.

It gathers all of Naval’s thoughts from twitter, essays, and podcasts over the past decade, and provides the blueprint for the way of thinking that makes Naval successful as an investor, a technologist, and an overall well-rounded human being.

And in it, he talks about a lot of things in life, from start-up, investing, wealth, to values, judgements, the importance of time, the state of the world, math, science, to health, meditation, habits, happiness, even the meaning of life.

Here are some of my favourites:

• Happiness = health + wealth + good relationship.
• Health = exercise + diet + sleep.
• All greatness comes from suffering.
• Love is given, not received.
• If you can’t decide, the answer is no.
• When solving problems: the older the problem, the older the solution.
• When everyone is sick, we no longer consider it a disease.
• Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.
• There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.
• If you are a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term-thinking dealmaker, when other people want to do deals but don’t know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal just because of the integrity and reputation you’ve built up.
• If someone is talking a lot about how honest they are, they’re probably dishonest. That is just a little telltale indicator I’ve learned. When someone spends too much time talking about their own values or they’re talking themselves up, they’re covering for something.
• The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level. I would rather understand the basics really well than memorize all kinds of complicated concepts I can’t stitch together and can’t rederive from the basics. If you can’t rederive concepts from the basics as you need them, you’re lost. You’re just memorizing.
• What we wish to be true clouds our perception of what is true. Suffering is the moment when we can no longer deny reality.
• What you feel tells you nothing about the facts—it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.
• When you’re reading a book and you’re confused, that confusion is similar to the pain you get in the gym when you’re working out. But you’re building mental muscles instead of physical muscles. Learn how to learn and read the books.
• I have people in my life I consider to be very well-read who aren’t very smart. The reason is because even though they’re very well-read, they read the wrong things in the wrong order. They started out reading a set of false or just weakly true things, and those formed the axioms of the foundation for their worldview. Then, when new things come, they judge the new idea based on a foundation they already built. Your foundation is critical.
• The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.
• Every positive thought essentially holds within it a negative thought. It is a contrast to something negative. The Tao Te Ching says this more articulately than I ever could, but it’s all duality and polarity. If I say I’m happy, that means I was sad at some point. If I say he’s attractive, then somebody else is unattractive. Every positive thought even has a seed of a negative thought within it and vice versa, which is why a lot of greatness in life comes out of suffering. You have to view the negative before you can aspire to and appreciate the positive.
• The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality is neutral. Reality has no judgments. To a tree, there is no concept of right or wrong, good or bad. You’re born, you have a whole set of sensory experiences and stimulations (lights, colors, and sounds), and then you die. How you choose to interpret them is up to you—you have that choice.
• When you’re young, you have time. You have health, but you have no money. When you’re middle-aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once.
• At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.
• If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.
• The most important trick to being happy is to realize happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles. It’s just like losing weight. It’s just like succeeding at your job. It’s just like learning calculus.
• First, you know it. Then, you understand it. Then, you can explain it. Then, you can feel it. Finally, you are it.
• In any situation in life, you always have three choices: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it.
• We don’t always get what we want, but sometimes what is happening is for the best. The sooner you can accept it as a reality, the sooner you can adapt to it.
• When your mind quiets, you stop taking everything around you for granted. You start to notice the details.
• The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself.
• Life is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. There will be some good and some bad. Most of it is actually just up to your interpretation. You’re born, you have a set of sensory experiences, and then you die. How you choose to interpret those experiences is up to you, and different people interpret them in different ways.
• If there’s something you want to do later, do it now. There is no “later.”
• I think that’s why the smartest and the most successful people I know started out as losers. If you view yourself as a loser, as someone who was cast out by society and has no role in normal society, then you will do your own thing and you’re much more likely to find a winning path. It helps to start out by saying, “I’m never going to be popular. I’m never going to be accepted. I’m already a loser. I’m not going to get what all the other kids have. I’ve just got to be happy being me.”
• Be aware there are no “adults.” Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it.
• Don’t spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It’s not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy. If you’re happy, other people will ask you how you became happy and they might learn from it, but you are not responsible for making other people happy.
• All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities, or habits. I only want to be around people I know I’m going to be around for the rest of my life. I only want to work on things I know have long-term payout.
• I always spent money on books. I never viewed that as an expense. That’s an investment to me.
• And my personal favourite: A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought, they must be earned.

All in all, this a unique book as Naval does not earn any money from it, and instead the entire project of the book is run on donations and it is actually available for free to download at navalmanack.com. In terms of return for value, it can’t get any better than this.

“The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley” by Jimmy Soni

This is a story about a bunch of misfit geniuses that came together in the early days of the internet between 1998-2002 and founded what would later becomes PayPal.

The book took 5 years in the making, which includes interviews with hundreds of PayPal’s pre-IPO former employees within those 4 years, all the original 10 co-founders and most of their board members and early investors, as well as the agencies and advisors that they consulted with, not to mention the many books, podcasts, articles, and academic papers that the author, Jimmy Soni, found on PayPal.

And it immediately shows in the depth and detailed nature of the story. It demonstrates that PayPal is not only the likes of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and Reid Hoffman, but it’s also the other backbone of the company such as David Jaques, David Johnson, Sandeep Lal, David Sacks, and Jamie Templeton.

There’s no one able-all maverick but it’s the engineers, UX designers, database administrators, network architects, product specialists, fraud fighters, and support personnels. And perhaps quite pivotal in the story, it’s also shaped by names such as Roelof Botcha, the financial wizard that puts every cash flow into perspective and discovered the grave financial error that almost put the company into bankruptcy.

Indeed, PayPal is the collective effort of many individuals – many of whom are immigrants – that join forces together like the soldiers in the Band of Brothers and create something remarkable amidst the utter chaos of the world of start ups in 1990s Silicon Valley, during which the dot.com bubble was happening.

As Soni remarks “PayPal’s story is a four-year odyssey of near-failure followed by near-failure.” And in the book you can feel the craziness of that period of time, through the everyday headaches such as the engineering and systems dilemma, and the growing sophistication of fraudsters and international hackers along with the growth of the company.

It was visible during the time when the company’s burn rate left it with only months of funding left. It was also notable during the naming debate between PayPal and x.com, in the post-merger environment, and throughout the many nasty infightings and even board member coup.

But as the book illustrates, those 4 years were also watershed experience that influenced these people’s approach to leadership, strategy, and technology. It was in the company culture, the puzzle-solving spirit, the culture of sleeping on the floor, it’s about implementing a revolutionary idea into a very uncertain environment. It is also in the office pranks, executives wearing oversized sumo suit and wrestled in an oversized ring, which made the story colourful.

The conclusion of the book is one of the best I’ve read, which will make the title of the book (with the focus on the founders) more make sense. While the entirety of the book is about the story of PayPal, the conclusion knits all the stories together into a perspective from what these individual geniuses brought into the collective force of the company.

And how fitting it is as a Silicon Valley folklore that after a relatively brief few years together they all went to their separate ways to make their own marks in the world, with the likes of YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Kiva, Affirm, Palantir Technologies, Slide, SpaceX and Tesla, as well as the numerous companies that they invested in.

Make sure to read on until the epilogue, where Soni tells the story about Chris and Stephen and the PayPal Mafia that became an unlikely inspiration for prison inmates.

“Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be” by Steven Pressfield

This is a fun little book about grit, about the drive and passion to pursue our goals.

As the title suggests, we need to put our ass where our heart wants to be. And this includes packing up everything and move our ass to the epicenter of what we want to do. Want to be a country singer? Move to Nashville. Want to be a Broadway actor? Move to New York. Not only that we will be present in the environment, but there’s where the peers and mentors are residing, as well as the opportunities.

“Magic happens when we put our ass in the same space with other dreamers that already put their asses there” says Pressfield, “these are our peers.”

He gives a delightful list of examples for this, from Hemingway in Paris trading writing tips with other writers, John Lennon in London sharing stages with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, Arnold Schwarzenegger moving from Austria to California to chase his Hollywood dream, none of whom would be as successful had they stay at their respective homes.

Now of course “being there” could also means being presence in the state or mind or even virtually, but it doesn’t matter whether we’re there physically or mentally, once our ass is there we have to work our ass off, so to speak. That’s where the part of “never take no for an answer” comes, taking one rejection after another without losing our optimism and spirit, while still giving our all to the process.

In fact, Pressfield argues that self reinforcement is a character trait that is more important than talent, as there are plenty of talented people who didn’t succeed because they have given up halfway the battle.

The book has the feel of what Enchiridion did for Stoicism, it’s the very essence of Steven Pressfield’s philosophy (i.e. the War of Art) re-written to accommodate and elaborate one specific part (the ass kicking part). And it’s so pleasant to read, where we can just feel that the author also enjoyed writing it.

“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character” by Richard P. Feynman

This is a fun and witty memoir by an immensely curious person that sees life from a child’s adventurous eyes. It is filled with crazy self-experiments to answer his queries, from many physics problems, to animal behaviour, unlocking the Mayan codex, debunking a “mind reader”, performing magic himself, how to smell people like dogs do, his weird obsession in breaking a safe, experimenting with mysticism and hallucination, to the more serious matters such as the Manhattan Project that he was a part of.

Throughout the book Richard Feynman seems to be able to demonstrate a quick understanding of anything he’s focusing on at that time, and he can then makes the complicated things into more simplistic and efficient. He also shows a consistent display of integrity as the fundamental part of his carefree attitude, that he can live life without burden because he’s always honest and never breaks his values. In fact, if there’s something out of line and conflicting with his values, he will just quit (like what happened in his role in approving physics textbook for schools).

And if there’s only one key lesson that we can take away from his life, it is this: to never take data at face value, even opinions by the many experts, and instead question everything and test it yourself. And more often than not he defies the common consensus and prevailes as the logical winner. That’s why he stands out from the rest of the pack and can create so many breakthroughs.

While he is undoubtedly one of the greatest physics minds that have ever lived, and a solid role model for living with integrity, the appeal of the book is actually not the achievements of Feynman. But instead, it is his lighter human side that makes it so enjoyable to read. He hanged out in Vegas to learn about gambling, learned to pick up women in a strip bar in Arizona, volunteered to work for the army, self-taught himself engineering, went to Brazil and join a bongo group and performed with them at a carnival, how he ended having his name on a patent for a nuclear-powered rocket propelled airplanes, that one time he almost got beaten up in a bar in Buffalo, picking up a hobby of nude drawing, failing a mental health test, and the list goes on.

It is quite surprising to find the genius man – who won the Nobel Prize in physics and rub elbows with the likes of Einstein, Bohr and Oppenheimer – is such a goofy character enjoying his curious life. I especially love the way he dismisses the Nobel Prize as something menial and unimportant (he even considered refusing the award) and looks more enthusiastic on, for example, the way the Watusi tribe in Belgium Congo play their drums. And this it what makes this scrappy diary a truly entertaining one.

“The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers” by Richard McGregor

Richard McGregor is the bureau chief for the Financial Times in Washington DC. But a lifetime ago he was once its China bureau chief, where he has reported from north Asia for nearly 2 decades and had a unique first-hand access and experience in one of the world’s most mysterious countries.

And decades of reporting and building network there have culminated in the writing of this book, a some kind of behind the scene account of the secret world of China’s communist rulers. And it is an eye opener.

The book shows how the Communist Party creeps into every fabric of Chinese society, it provides the structure and the personnels of the Party, the politics inside the Party, the business environment in the country, the delicate balance between profitable enterprise and meeting the Party’s political objective, its long and bloodied history (including the dark days of the famine that killed 35 million people), and the ever present cult-like worship of Mao Zedong.

The book also confirms some of the well known allegations towards the Party. Such as heavy censorship over its dark past, the omitted names and events from record, the massive cover up over things that are happening (such as the denial of SARS epidemic before a foreign media blow it up), the nasty treatment over outspoken journalists or whistleblowers, how the propaganda department controls the media, even the proof of half-truths or blatant lies published by the Party to eliminate competing narratives.

It also addresses the deep corruption inside the Party, and the ironic inequalities where a contrast of extreme poverty and mega riches exist inside the supposedly socialist country.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the name dropping of some of the lesser known personnels of the Party, but equally as instrumental as Deng Xiaoping in being the architects of modern China. Names such as Chen Yun (long-serving economic planner), Chen Yuan (the man behind China inc’s move into Africa), Zhu Rongji (the corruption eradicator who was indispensable in China’s overhaul of the banking system and its entry to the WTO), as well as the oppositions such as He Weifang (the idealist university professor) and Yang Jisheng (a journalist critical towards the Party).

All in all, the book is so well written as an exposé it astonishes me how McGregor can possibly published it without getting into any trouble. But he’s still alive and free, and get to tell the truth about the Party to the world. A crucial read to really understand the puzzle piece of modern China.

“The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music” by Dave Grohl

This is quite possibly the most intriguing autobiography that I’ve ever read. It tells the tale of Dave Grohl’s life, from childhood to 1/3rd of Nirvana to the lead singer of Foo Fighters, and many more in between, including trips to the ER, cramped vans, freakin ghosts, his beautiful relationship with his mom, the KFC-champagne pairing, fatherhood and the many star-studded cameo appearances in his life.

The memoir really does matches Dave’s very likable personality and his maestro-like ability in mashing up words together to create an art. It’s amusing, weirdly wise, and funny as hell. It’s like the cherry on top of an already delicious – 16-time Grammy-winning – cake.

And the audible version, with Dave himself as the comical narrator, makes the book even harder to put down once you begin reading/listening to it (with all the attempts of Swedish accent or the poorly disguise references to obvious songs to avoid paying licensing free, the audible version provides even more hilarious edge).

Now, I’m not going to spoil out anything more, because the strengths of the book are in the stories, the plot twists, the jokes, and the poetic way that it is written. But let me just share 2 of the examples:

Dave on his goal to grow old until he looks worn out and don’t give a fuck anymore about his appearance: “Not everything needs a shine, after all. If you leave a Pelham Blue Gibson Trini Lopez guitar in the case for fifty years, it will look like it was just delivered from the factory. But if you take it in your hands, show it to the sun, let it breathe, sweat on it, and fucking PLAY it, over time the finish will turn a unique shade. And each instrument ages entirely differently. To me, that is beauty. Not the gleam of prefabricated perfection, but the road-worn beauty of individuality, time, and wisdom.”

And a glimpse of the kind of poetic jokes that are scattered throughout the book: “Like a weepy Hallmark moment, the kind those hyperemotional Super Bowl commercials are made of (the ones that would leave even the hardest monster truck enthusiast crying in their buffalo chicken dip), this is a memory that I will cherish forever.”

“The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is where it all started for me, the concierge of knowledge. One day I began reading Tools of Titans and it led me to his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, the first podcast I’ve ever listened to. And now few years later all the podcasts and book recommendations that began from Ferriss and his guests have contributed into a healthier, happier, and more mindful lifestyle for me.

Along the way, I read the Tools of Titans twice, read Tribe of Mentors, listened to a shitload of his podcast episodes, listened to many more podcasts that interviewed him (the one on Cal Fussman’s podcast is my favourite), and I of course subscribed to his 5-bullet Friday. But I’ve never read this book yet, the OG of Tim Ferriss’ philosophy. Until now.

As Ferriss himself admitted in one of his many interviews, he has since evolved away from some of the ideas in this book. He said that some points even become irrelevant and obnoxiously wrong (although for the life of me, I cannot tell which ones).

But still, it’s the last (or to be exact, first) piece to complete Ferriss’ jigsaw puzzle of philosophy. It provides the big picture on everything that he believes in and his tools and methods to do them. Funny how his first book is the last one that I read but somehow can neatly summarized everything that he’s been doing for so many years. Now that’s consistency.

So what’s the book really about? In a sentence: eliminate, simplify, automate, and delegate.

It is a fun, weird, witty and very informative book, written in an unmissable Tim Ferriss signature approach: having out-of-the-box hypotheses, test them himself (the ultimate human guinea pig), and then he provides us with references for links, types of gadgets or devices used, and many other list of stuffs that work out.

The book is also full of tips and tricks with plenty of real-life stories and case studies, to assist us in so many things in life – from minimalism, to organising our day, to building a business – in a pretty detailed manner that makes the book a true guidebook for a lot of practical things.

But it is not one of those “get rich quick and retire young” kind of scam, as the title of the book might implies. But instead, it’s about making our work efficient and automated in order to free up time for us to pursue other things, such as our bucket list or simply to live a relaxed life. This, is the core premise (or the goal) of the book.

Indeed, contrary to most personal finance books, the goal of this book is not necessarily to get rich monetarily. As Ferriss remarks, “Gold is getting old. The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.” That’s right, the goal is instead to have an abundance amount of the most precious commodity: time.

One of the ideas that Ferriss advocates is to have “mini retirements” spread out over our lifetime, rather than having a big finale at the end of our lives (when we’re already old and not in our prime physical years) or to retire young (which is an unrealistic option for a lot of people). And as Ferriss shows in the book, mini retirements doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and we can still do it while still functioning and doing an efficient work.

Another idea that stands out from the book is the way Ferriss approaches any goal in low-risk attainable steps. For example, we can micro testing our product before launching to get the immediate feedback, or borrowing the puppy before we committed to adopt, or postponing our education rather than dropping out entirely (or the work equivalent for it) so that if things don’t work out we can always go back.

Because “Reality is negotiable” explains Ferriss, and “Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical.” And the book has this stretching feel about negotiating reality out of the usual norm.

The funny thing is, the book looks like a perfect precursor before the pandemic, because it is exactly what eventually happens to a lot of people, especially for the remote office thing. Had I read this earlier, I would’ve been skeptical of the feasibility of the ideas in this book. But as it turns out, it is proven to be effective during the pandemic and the ideas in the book are working out very well in this era of new normal.