THE CHAOS THEORY

“The War of Art: Break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles” by Steven Pressfield

Every once in a while the A-list superstar guests at the Tim Ferriss Show podcast are asked about their favourite, or most life-changing, books. And without fail, this book often come up as the top 3 books. And now I can see why.

It is a light, good feeling, kind of book but with such an impactful message, which are broken down into several neat mini chapters (1-2 pages long) in just few hundred pages that are easy to read. They say that some of the best books ever written are thin books but with mighty content, just like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditation or Sun Tzu’s Art of War. I truly believe that the War of Art also live up to that category.

The core theme of the book is what the author, Steven Pressfield, calls the Resistance. It is that block you have in your life that prevents you from doing all the things that you’ve always wanted to do. And in this book he masterfully define the broad term of the Resistance into a multi-layer guide for many different walks of life.

Now, every sentence of the word in the book has this feel of wisdom in it, and this reflected from the author’s own harsh journey, where he too met his Resistance for years (decades, in fact). He got divorced, went bankrupt, resigned from a stable job to end up working odd menial jobs for years until well into his forties, even became homeless at one point, before he finally took the courage and developed the know-how to deal with his own Resistance. Hence, everything that he writes in the book came from his own incredible experience.

Today, Steven Pressfield is a best-selling author of several successful novels, one of which even turned into a movie (The Legend of Bagger Vance, starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Matt Damon), and he was even made an honorary citizen by the city of Sparta in Greece.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book:

“It was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”

“The Resistance covers every one trying to pursue everything, from health, entrepreneurial, seeking creative outlets, recovering from addiction, education, political, charity, everything that rejects immediate gratification in favour of long-term gain.”

“Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuates. Resistance is the enemy within.”

“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel towards pursuing it.”

“Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.”

“Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed.”

“The fundamentalist cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past.”

“The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.”

“To labor in the arts for any reason than love is prostitution.”

“We humans have territories too. Ours are psychological. Stevie Wonder’s territory is the piano. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s is the gym. When Bill Gates pulls into the parking lot at Microsoft, he’s on his territory. When I sit down to write, I’m on mine.”

“Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why” by Bart D. Erhman

This book breaks down the long creation process of the New Testament, complete with all the human fallibility and politics.

This is not like a whistle blower account of an insider, however, nor it is a blasphemy attempting to discredit the holy book. Instead, it is a genuine quest of a scholar who loves his religion to discover the real texts of the religion of the book.

The author, Bart D. Erhman, went to a fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute, and then proceeded to continue his bachelor’s degree in a top-rank evangelical college, Wheaton College, before studying with the world’s leading expert in the field, a scholar named Beuce M. Metzger at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Along the way he had to learn Greek (the original languages of the New Testament), Hebrew, and Latin, so that he can read the Bible and its supporting documents in its originally intended wordings. He also learned modern European languages such as German and French, in order to be able to read what other scholars had said about any particular things. And this depth of skills shows in the book.

Erhman remarks, “Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain text as authoritative scripture.” “However”, he continues, “[t]his is a textually oriented religion whose texts have been changed, surviving only in copies that vary from one another, sometimes in highly significant ways.” He then elaborates, “[t]he task of the textual critic is to try recover the oldest form of these texts. This is obviously a crucial task, since we can’t interpret the words of the New Testament if we don’t know what the words were.”

And this, in essence, is what the book is all about.

It is about the many authors, translators, scribes, scholars, and editors of the Bible. It is about what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote and why they wrote it in such ways. It is about the ghost writers using pseudo names. It is about the verses that got inserted into the Bible, and about the many more Gospels that did not make the cut. It is the story from the very beginning to our modern point of time in the likes of NIV Bible and New King James Bible, and the behind the scene evolution in between about what constitute the sacred texts of the faith, which span over hundreds of years.

Central to the debate is of course the teachings of Jesus Christ. However, the birth and the spread of Christianity was actually thanks to Paul. As Erhman explains, “the New Testament is largely made up of letters written by Paul and other Christian leaders to Christian communities (e.g., the Corinthians, the Galatians) and individuals (e.g., Philemon).”  And the problem today is, the 21 letters that survive in the New Testament are only a fraction of those written in total. For example, in 1 Cor. 5:9 “[Paul] mentions a letter that he had earlier written the Corinthians (sometime before First Corinthians). And he mentions another letter that some of the Corinthians had sent him (1 Cor. 7:1). Elsewhere he refers to letters that his opponents had (2 Cor. 3:1)”, and none of those referred letters survived today.

Moreover, most people who live in the early era of Christianity were illiterate, while the printing press has not been invented yet until the 15th century. Thus, the vital role of the spread of Paul’s letters lie in the hands of the scribes, who copied the letters word by word into a manuscript. In the early days scribes were only volunteers who can read and write, and not necessarily an informed scholar. Thus the early manuscripts were ridden by so many errors and typos and misinterpretations.

The human shortcomings then continued with the copied manuscripts being copied themselves, while it is also not uncommon that the writings were intentionally altered due to forgery, misquotation, or even inserted with hidden agendas, which dilute the original texts over time and can create discrepancies.

For example, the story of the woman taken in adultery, as it turns out was not originally in the Gospel of John, but instead it was added by later scribes. Another similar example is the last 12 passages of Mark (the elaboration of Jesus’ resurrection), that was also added by a latter scribe. It is also argued that the member of the Apostles were in fact larger than the list of 12 men, with women played a significant role, but was largely edited out.

Furthermore, even a difference of one word in a translation can change the meaning of the story altogether, such as in the story of Mark 1:39-41 where Jesus heals the man with a skin disease. While in one surviving manuscript the translation in the start of the sentence of Mark 41 reads “And Jesus, feeling compassion…. (from Greek word: Splangnistheis)”, scholars found another translation that said “And Jesus, feeling angry… (from Greek word: Orgistheis).” Indeed, the difference between compassion and anger provide an entirely different tone of the story.

Meanwhile, as Christianity progressed to become a major religion, the level of sophistication of the scholars also level up. This was the era when many translations and editions of the Bible emerged, from Jerome’s Vulgate, to the Polygot edition, Complutensian Polygot, the Greek New Testament, translations by Stephanus, by Beza, by Elzevirs, by John Mill, and many more scholars (most of whom are profiled in chapter 4).

And along with the growth, the many theological debates among these translators, scribes, and scholars also become increasingly professional and fascinatingly combative as time progresses, which brilliantly occupies the great latter half of this book.

Perhaps the biggest debate can be found in the 2nd and 3rd century, where there were Christians who naturally believed that there was only one God, but there were also other Christians who believed that there are two gods (the God of wrath and the God of love and mercy), while other such as Gnostic Christians insisted that there are 12 gods, another sect believed that there are 30, others said 365, all of whom insisted that their views were true and had been taught by Jesus and his followers. These different sects as you can imagine wrote different interpretation of the holy texts. And the debates cover a lot more grounds, including whether Jesus was the son of God, if Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world or not, and so on.

It is discomforting to conclude that, according to Erhman, “[t]he books we call the New Testament were not gathered together into one canon and considered scripture, finally and ultimately, until hundreds of years after the books themselves had first been produced.” Even the King James Version that is fairly familiar for us, “is filled with places in which the translators rendered a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus’s edition, which was based on a single twelfth-century manuscript that is one of the worst of the manuscripts that we now have available to us!” And the newer versions such as the New King James, Revised Standard Version, or the Good News Bible? They are all still based on texts that have been changed in places.

So does this mean that the Bible is a fraud and its integrity is compromised? No, far from it. It is indeed a shocker at first, that reality is never that straight forward, that these holy scriptures were not directly given by God in one piece from the very beginning (perhaps God intended it to evolve this way?). But what Erhman shows is the New Testament is a very human book with all its human flaws, which makes it authentically ours.

This very human problems explain, for example, why there are many Christian denominations today that are filled with intelligent and well-meaning people, who “base their views of how the church should be organized and function on the Bible, yet all of them coming to radically different conclusions (Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Appalachian snake-handlers, Greek Orthodox, and on and on).”

And while the scholarly debates among these different denominations will unlikely to reach a unifying conclusion in our lifetime, one important thing is certain: the many good messages of the Bible remain uniformed and universally applicable. That the basic lessons from Jesus are not lost in the political debates.

So which denomination is the authentic one, which sect is the right one, or which version of the Bible is the correct one? It doesn’t matter what or who the messengers are, as long as the messages are passed on and implemented daily by the good-intentioned Christians. As they say, “love thy neighbour, and the rest is commentary.”

“The Great Transformation: The beginning of our religious traditions” by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong refer to it as the Axial Age. It was a period of time between 900 to 200 BC where in 4 distinct regions the great world traditions came into being: Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and mythology and philosophical rationalism in Greece.

These traditions bring us the likes of Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Confucius, Jeremiah, Euprides, Mencius, and the mystics of Upanishads. Even today, in times of spiritual and social crisis we constantly referred back to this period of time for guidance, as Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were all latter-day flowering of the original Axial Age.

So what prompted these 4 regions to develop a similar philosophy?

This book is about the history of that period of time. It is about the people and the conflicts, the drama, and the reconciliations.  About how spiritual and religious lives evolved, with all the stories exquisitely told in impressive detail and reads like 4 different epic colossal movies. It is quite literally 4 big historical accounts combined into one dense narrative.

Now, due to its incredible wealth of knowledge this book is not only heavy to read, but also challenging to summarize. But here are the 5 main points that I learned from the book:

Firstly, the 4 Axial Age traditions were born out of a reaction of their respective circumstance of the time. Confucius was born in the middle of lawless, battle-torn, region. The birth of the dark Greek mythology stems from a period of 400 years of darkness in that region due to war and hardship. The Axial Age in India began when the ritual reformers began to extract the conflict and agression from the sacrificial contest. While Israel started their Axial Age after the destruction of Jerusalem and the enforced deportation of the exiles to Babylonia, which then the priestly writers began to create a philosophy of reconciliation and non-violence.

Even in what Armstrong refer as “the final flowering of the Axial Age”, the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) lived in a violent society when old values were breaking down, before Islam arrises. Indeed, as Armstrong remarks, “[t]he religious traditions created during the Axial Age in all four regions were rooted in fear and pain.”

The second point of the book is, when the environment changes the religion changes along with it. One of the most common occurances of change is political move, which can sometimes include or emit a deity from a culture. For example, when King Solomon made diplomatic marriages with foreign princesses, the marriages include the merging of the gods in the royal cult, where they built temples for them in the hills outside Jerusalem.

Another example of the politics of gods is the story of Elijah. In the old Middle Eastern theology, El had appointed a deity to each of the nations: Yahweh was the god of Israel, Chemish the holy one of Moab, while Milkom was the god of Ammon. But some Israelites prophets felt that their god Yahweh would be undermined in the region if a king imported a foreign deity into the royal cult. Hence, during his time, Elijah tried to keep the god of Baal in Phonecia so that Yahweh would remain thriving as the local god, where the brutal story on how exactly he did it was told grippingly in the book.

Meanwhile, Yahweh Himself was originally one god among many others (He was a god of war), but later in the 6th century BC as the circumstances changed He too evolved to become the only God in the eyes of the worshipers, which in turn evolved to eventually become the sole God that we familiar with today.

Thirdly, when the religion gets too brutal or corrupted there will be a breakaway sect, such as Christianity from Judaism, Protestants from Catholic, and the many religion out of Hinduism like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, while Islam fixed the problems of old Pagan faith that was no longer working in Arabian society.

Fourthly, all of the Axial Age changes had often occurred between two imperial-style ventures. The Indian Axial Age occurred after the demise of the Harappan Civilization and ended with the rise of the Mauryan empire. The Greek Axial Age transformation occurred between the Mycenaean kingdom and the Macedonian empire. The Chinese Axial Age got under way after the collapse of the Zhou dynasty and ended when Qin unified the warring states. And the Jews, who had suffered horribly from the imperial adventures in the region, had been propelled into their Axial Age after the destruction of their homeland and the trauma of deportation that severed their link with their past and thus forced them to start again.

And lastly, most of the Axial Age sages did not leave a book. Instead, their teachings were passed on orally, which was the custom back then. And their wisdom were eventually written down as a holy text long after they’re gone, which as you can imagine could be exposed to the many risks of human errors or misquotations or hidden agenda of the writers.

Hence, everything that have been written down ever since, everything that we now know in the modern society, are the product of many environmental changes, compromises, evolution, revolution, mergers and acquisitions, or even anihilation of deities and cults over a long and turmulous period of time.

So, in short: 1. The Axial Age were born as a response of a violent era 2. When the environment changes the religion changes with it 3. When the religion gets too brutal or corrupted there will be a breakaway sect 4. The Axial Age occurred between two imperial-style ventures 5. Most of the Axial Age sages did not leave a book, and their written wisdom could be exposed to the many “agency problems.”

Seeing this summary might prompt us to ask the next question: will this pattern repeat itself? Karen Armstrong remarks that reformation should be happening all the time, that religion cannot stand still. Because if they cannot adapt they will become obsolete and fade away, just like the many religious cults mentioned in the book that did not survive the Axial Age. And yes, according to Armstrong, we are now in the midst of a Second Axial Age.

“The End of Faith: Religion, terror, and the future of reason” by Sam Harris

What can you learn from someone you disagree with the most? As it turns out, there’s not much to learn from the ever biased and hypocritical Sam Harris, a person whose whole book is about condemning religious violence but yet criticises Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifism as “highly immoral.” So much for challenging my default perceptions every once in a while.

I cannot treat this book with an open mind when the very first few paragraphs consist of ficticious over-dramatized story of a terror attack to make his points, then assume without a doubt that ALL 1.5 billion Muslims are supporting terrorist attacks, that ALL baptized Christians cannot respect the beliefs of others, and that moderation is a myth in any religion.

It is astonishing for me that for a self-proclaimed atheist he’s preaching a way of thinking that are strikingly similar with the argument of every religious extremists: that their way of thinking are the correct one, others are stupid or even dangerous, and therefore should be abolished. Religious scholars such as Karen Armstrong refer people like this as anti-theist, rather than atheist, an extremist in their own way.

Yes, there’s no denying that there are plenty of religious hardliners today, as covered in “The Wahhabi Code” by Terrence Ward or even “Buddhist Warfare” by Michael K. Jerryson, but if he actually reads all of the religious texts (rather than point out some of the bad verses without providing the context, and excluding the later verses that cancel off these bad verses), Harris would find several unifying messages across many different religion for the better of humankind, in which the Rig Veda commented as “Truth is one, the wise call it by different names.”

So the problem is not religion, remarked Karen Armstrong in her brilliant book on extremism “Fields of Blood”, but human struggle for power and money. It is not religion that is violent or peaceful, says another religious scholar Reza Aslan, but it is people that is violent and peaceful. And blaming religion as the cause (rather than the tools and justification) for violence is missing a huge point, akin to blaming atheism on all the desructions and genocides caused by atheists Stalin and Mao.

But it doesn’t stop Harris for presenting what he thinks as the biggest demon in this book: Islam. He dedicate the whole 44 pages of chapter 4 on “the problem with Islam” but yet fail to mention about the ACTUAL problem with Islam: the descendants of Ibn Saud and Muhammad Abdul Wahhab that captured the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the 1920s, and forced their extreme version of the Hanbali interpretation into the world with their petro-dollars. The fact that the vast majority of terror attacks in the 21st century – from Al Qaeda to today’s ISIS – all have roots in Wahhabism is lost in this book. And instead he leave out Islam’s 1300+ years of progression (he might not even aware of the Golden Age of Islam), and thus gives the impression that Islam has always been a barbaric religion since birth. It is as if he’s portraying Christianity solely based on the conducts of the Crusades, but then fail to mention about the Crusaders.

Conversely, I can’t help comparing Harris with Alain de Botton, another atheist. Like Harris, de Botton believes that God does not exist and that religion is nothing but a human invention. But de Botton also believes that these human inventions are key to create order out of chaos in many parts of cultures and civilisations throughout history, provide good instructions for daily living, and that there are so many things that we can learn from religion and can implement in the secular world to make us a better human being.

Things such as meditation, where Sam Harris has the audacity to critise the Buddhist religion (Buddhists, he says, improperly treat Buddhism as a religion, which is “naive, petitionary, and superstitious” and that such beliefs impede the spread of Buddhist principles), but then created a meditation app with the purpose of cashing in on the teachings of the Buddha.

Indeed, apparently according to Harris the teachings we found in religion are not that bad, and in the book he actually mentions about the strong points of religion such as “strong communities, ethical behaviour, spiritual experiences”. But instead of being respectful, Harris insult them as obsolete and says “it require no faith in untestable propositions – Jesus was born of a virgin, the Koran is the word of God – for us to do this”, then proceeded to “steal” the religious teachings as if he figured them out himself from sheer logic.

Believe in the miracles, or don’t believe in the miracles. Follow the doctrines with no questions asked, or constantly seeking historical accuracy of the events. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an atheist or a pantheist. What matters, as de Botton remarks, is that we live life as a decent human being and treat others the way we want to be treated. As progressive Christian Matthew Disterano commented, kind atheists are closer to Jesus than mean Christians. And abolishing religion alltogether – as per Harris’ big takeaway – will take away THE solution to very old problems in humankind, one that is brilliantly analysed in “A World Without Islam” by Graham E. Fuller.

Alain is wise to be a kind atheist. Alain is respectful. Alain is not a hypocritical a-hole. If you’re an atheist, be more like Alain.

“The Dhammapada” translated by Eknath Easwaran

In the quest of reading all religious holy scriptures, I have so far read the Torah, the New Testament, Al Qur’an, Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads. And out of respect I gave them all 5 stars and refrained from giving any comment or sharing the many highlighted notes. And this review is no different.

However, here I am writing this on the sole purpose of commenting on the introduction of the book by co-author Stephen Ruppenthal, which takes up about 40% of the book. It is by far the most beautifully written short religious biography that I’ve ever read, with the clearest insight into the concept of Dharma and Karma, the 5 skandhas, with plenty of wonderful stories about the Blessed One, and the incredible blue print into the actual steps of reaching Nirvana.

It also notably provides the fascinating illustration of meditation steps (from the first until the fourth dhyanas) that is deeper than the 2 books on meditation that I’ve so far read, which explains a lot why the sadhus in India can meditate days at a time. Certainly neuroscientists or experts like Steven Kotler could be very intrigued with this “Eastern phenomenon” that has yet been codified in Western science, and the introduction of this book matches their level of expertise.

In fact, in the introduction Ruppenthal draws parallel between the teachings of the Buddha to modern science, in which he commented “[m]uch in the Buddha’s universe, in fact, can be understood as a generalization of physical laws to a larger sphere.” He then proceeded to highlight several similarities between Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics, Einstein’s several theories, and so on.

Indeed, the introduction section alone is worthy of a stand-alone book, but Ruppenthal did not stop there. Right before each 26 chapters of the Dhammapada he provides another clarifying context that will make the actual holy texts – beautifully translated by Eknath Easwaran – crystal clear. It is inline with the one sentence from Ruppenthal’s chapter 19 introduction, which summarizes best what his body of work do for this version of the book: “A person who understands the reason behind a law is more likely to obey it intelligently than someone who is simply ordered to obey.”

And thus, as a result, the many wonderful lessons and laws in the Dhammapada sticks.

“The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran

I’ve never been a fan of poetry, but I guess it takes the best of the best as the “gateway drug” that could lure us into anything new. And for a book written in 1923 which has since become an international bestseller for more than 9 decades, this book really delivers.

The wisdom are plentiful, they cover many different aspects of life, and their message are timeless, while the simplicity of the flow ensures us that all of this can be read in just one sitting.

These are some of my favourites:

On marriage: “Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For the only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

And on giving: “Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.”

Moreover, the version that I read has annotations by Suheil Bushrui that provide a much needed context (remember, I’m not a fan of poetry), which in several occasions even give me more gems than the original poetry.

One such occasion is when Bushrui annotate a line by Gibran from his other book, which is just perfect, given the context of the poetry: “You are my brother and I love you. I love you when you prostrate yourself in your mosque, and kneel on your church, and pray in your synagogue, you and I are sons of one faith – the spirit.”

“Essentialism” by Greg McKeown

The simple premise of the book is pretty straight forward: it is only after we stop trying to do everything and stop saying yes to everyone, that we can direct our energy to the few things that really matter to us, the essentials.

It is about priority, the discipline pursuit of less, about getting the right things done, and doing them mindfully and wholesomely. And everything else become fairly insignificant.

I must admit that while reading the early chapters I was at first skeptical of this book, as its simple message is just another minimalism mantra that I’ve already read in several books. But as I read on, I soon realize that McKeown relies more on data and scientific findings rather than just the general zen feeling of the outcome (which have profoundly changed my life nonetheless). And the more the book progresses the more practical it gets, which starts with the concept of trade-offs.

In a perfect world we can easily eliminate all of the non-essentials. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and instead in every decision that we make we will more likely to face trade-offs. As McKeown explains, “by definition, a trade-off involves two things we want. Do you want more pay or more vacation time? Do you want to finish this next e-mail or be on time to your meeting? Do you want it done faster or better?” “Obviously”, McKeown continues, “when faced with the choice between two things we want, the preferred answer is yes to both. But as much as we’d like to, we simply cannot have it all.”

So yes, most of the time we have to choose. And this just happens to be the core specialty of this book: the intricate process of decision making.

The book provides us with the scientific and psychological researches about the underlying determinants behind our decision making process – such as learned helplessness, Pareto Principle, the Power Law theory, sunk-cost bias, or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow – and guide us to the process of (re)gaining control over our options.

It then teaches us several decision making skills, such as to look at information like a journalist (by following a lead, by listening to what is not being said, by finding the essence of the information), or the 90 Percent Rule (if it’s not a hell yeah, then it’s a no – only the 90% mark out of 100% will do), or decluttering methods that would make Marie Kondo blushed, or simple methods like clarifying our purpose so that it’s changed from pretty clear to really clear.

It then analyzes some crucial factors of decision making such as the power of sleep, with the short chapter on sleep provides a more compacted findings than the 2 books on sleep that I’ve read. The fact that this book put the science of sleep into the overall context of Essentialism makes it relatively more actionable that Shawn Stevenson’s and Ariana Huffington’s excellent stand alone book on the subject.

For example, to succeed at something we need to put 10,000 hours of hard work on it (a theory founded by K. Anders Ericsson by studying violinists, and popularised by Malcolm Gladwell). But this book provides the 2nd part of the study that was rarely highlighted: that the very best violinists actually sleep an average of 8.6 hours. It was sleep that gave them the edge.

Moreover, the book also provides so many tools for the execution, including the very useful “buffer” theory and the “slowest hiker” efficiency, that ensure our execution can be efficient and precise. It also highlighted the importance of routines to switch our task to Basal Ganglia part of the brain and make it automatic and thus freeing up our minds (akin to Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habits), and a sub-chapter on triggers that would make Marshall Goldsmith proud.

The book also provides an abundance of many more examples from various walks of life, with examples from the morning routines of some of the most successful people, to the investment decisions of Warren Buffett (whom owes 90% of his wealth only from 10 investments), what Stephen R. Covey did for his daughter (that leaves a profound inspiration for my parenting style), how Britain and Norway handle their oil proceeds differently, to what Nelson Mandela did in his 27 years in prison (eliminating everything non-essential including his resentment to work on 1 clear goal: to eliminate apartheid in South Africa), or how the right NO spoken at the right time can change the course of history (such as the bus incident with Rosa Parks).

Neurologically speaking our attention span, willpower, and cognitive bandwidth are not unlimited. Hence, it is only by focusing on the essentials that we can produce deep work, flows, and other things that lead to extraordinary performances. In fact, one of the biggest differences between the average person and billionaires and top athletes is that they prioritize their time and effort differently. And this book gives us the clarity on how to do them.

“Made in America” by Sam Walton

Good ol’ Sam Walton. During my university years, whenever I visit any book store this book will always be in the top 5 books there, if not the 1st. No matter if it’s the biggest Borders (don’t you just miss Borders?) or a tiny airport bookshop. But I always thought what could this book – one that is written by the owner of Wal-Mart – possibly teach me?

And throughout the years this book kept being mentioned by some of the brightest and most successful people as one of their main inspirations, a must read business classic, with the latest one (that I read) referred to by Jeff Bezos. So after more than a decade wondering, I finally decide to read the book. And what could it possibly teach me, someone who isn’t in the retail industry? As it turns out, quite a lot.

This book was written at the last few moments of Sam Walton’s life when he became ill, with him reminiscing about his journey in building his ultimate baby, the merchant giant Wal-Mart. And there’s so much to learn from this humble billionaire. First and foremost, there are many lessons about the business: on supply chain, logistics, accounting stuff, how to size up your competitors, how to expand, all the way to their choice of locations and addressing some of the infamous stigmas, such as the one that claim Wal-Mart kills small mom and pop stores, and provide answers that make perfect sense.

The book also highlight the way he organises the structure of Wal-Mart that benefitted the family and the employees, about the fun company culture that he establishes, how they revamp every small town’s atmosphere, how they still focus on one store at a time even when they’ve become a huge corporation, and the one thing he asks to his grand children and great-grand children NOT to do, or else he will come back and haunt them: selling their Wal-Mart stocks to finance their extravagance, that would leave the family’s controlling stake vulnerable to hostile take over.

Then there are also lessons from their failures, the most expensive mistake he ever made, the tiny details of franchise and lease contracts that can safe you or screw you, how to nurture good business relationships (even with your competitors), what NOT to do through extracting lessons from failed competitors, and most importantly for Wal-Mart’s key to success (which become the core of this book): his many, many lessons on pricing, and controlling the so-called absentee ownership.

In fact, he is not shy to share most (if not all) of his formula to success, as he believed that competition makes everyone better. For example, in describing Wal-Mart’s early strategy on pricing, which became one of the key engines of growth for his stores: “The basic discounter’s idea was to attract customers into the store by pricing these items—toothpaste, mouthwash, headache remedies, soap, shampoo—right down at cost. Those were what the early discounters called your “image” items. That’s what you pushed in your newspaper advertising—like the twenty-seven-cent Crest at Springdale—and you stacked it high in the stores to call attention to what a great deal it was. Word would get around that you had really low prices. Everything else in the store was priced low too, but it had a 30 percent margin. Health and beauty aids were priced to give away.”

Furthermore, this autobiography is also lessons about hard work from early age, and lessons on frugality where despite of his riches he still drives an old pickup truk, buys his clothes at Wal-Mart, and refuses to fly first class even though he can afford to (but then again he also owns a private jet that he flew himself, but one that he purchased only after weighting the cost of travel that would be more efficient if he flew himself).

The book is also part testimonials by his family, friends, partners and associates, even his competitors, with nice little anecdotes along the way. One of my favourite stories is when he was caught taking notes in his competitor’s store, Price Club, and how he dealt with it with such grace and humor (and responded by Price Club’s owner with equal respect and warmth).

Indeed, Sam Walton has this folksy charm and wit that makes him instantly likable, as well as a wise grandfather vibe that is reflected in the way he writes the book. It is as if he is telling about his life’s stories to his grandchildren in one delightful seating, with lessons that are also applicable to any other areas in business and in life. And so, as it turns out, you don’t need to be in the retail industry to appreciate the abundance of knowledge coming out of this book.

“Stuff You Should Know: An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things” by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant

Just like their many brilliant podcast episodes, this book is both enlightening and entertaining, it’s amusing without being condescending, it’s a bit skeptical but still comical.

The book covers a wide range of stuffs that we should know, from the equation for blackouts from a tequila (important), how to slow down the ageing process, whether there will be a trillionaire, all the way to answering whether Paul McCartney really died, and who the hell was John Frum and why was he so influential in Vanuatu. I cannot believe that they can even make few dull subjects such as taxation and the smell of dogs become hella interesting.

It also covers some other stuffs that aren’t that urgent for us to know but still fun, like we can fix a scratched CD with a toothpaste (I know, way too late), that the British have 3000 ways to describe “drunk”, the many types and names of facial hair, and the juicy conspiracy theory of an incident at The Price is Right whose winner guessed the price correctly at exactly $23,743.

And what about them jokes, eh? I’m not going to spoil anything, but let’s just say the chapter about how to use your pet rock, and their illustration of a pet rock, made me laugh a little longer than I should. In fact the many illustrations in the book are just downright hilarious.

Meanwhile, every once in a while the book gives us pithy sayings that set us straight in the right path in life and away from troubles. Sayings such as  “never get into a shouting match with someone whose job involves a microphone.” Or “you’re usually better off going with the guy who has all the spreadsheets.” Or “nothing good has ever happened in the back of a van in the woods.” Wise, wise words.

Weirdly, I automatically read every word of the book using Josh’s voice in my head. Because the choice of words, the jokes, all of it, you know, it’s all Josh-like. Unless, of course, the parts where it is better to say it with an Italian accent, then it’s Chuck’s voice taking over.

Anyway, the book is a light read but with a lot of knowledge to absorb, what’s not to like? I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I also came out of it gaining several potential band names, which is not useful at all for me but hey you’ll never know.

“Figuring” by Maria Popova

This is a beautifully written book, an art, in fact, that expressed itself through the eloquence of words. It is one of a kind book, that brings us into a journey of mesmerising flows akin to what I’ve been accustomed to with Brainpickings for more than a decade.

The book dissects multiple knowledge and wrap them up into a very gripping narrative that reads like a novel, which was seemingly unconnected at first but later brilliantly gel together into a pattern that sets the tone for the remaining of the book.

I never knew that the many historical figures mentioned in the book ever crossed path with one another, and this makes many interesting revelations. It is quite simply Maria Popova at her finest.