Manoj's Review on Books

Creativity is meant for every professional and can be applied even in domain that are hardbound on rules and regulations. The underlying belief that a person is born with creative talents is a myth that needs to be broken and latent creative expressions can be opened up even with advocates, doctors, accountants and range of professional who are hardwired in analytical traits. The crux of the book drives the above-mentioned point right till the end and I must admit there is a compelling nature to the creative potential that David and Kelly desires to crack open. Any successful business needs to strike a sweet spot with respect to three critical components and the same can be understood through the given Venn diagram.   While there are plenty of financially well off businesses meeting mostly the 2 components of business and technical viability, it’s the third angle of human factor that provides the necessary fillip to raise as an enterprise. A prime example can be invention of MR...

Tim Ferris is an American entrepreneur, investor, podcaster and author of the well known book series, 4 hour work week, 4 hour body and 4 hour chef, all of them are aimed at lifestyle optimizations. On top of all the books his podcasts boasts of incredible depth with a range of personalities giving their interviews. ( Do check out Tim Ferriss podcasts here ) At the outset, tools of titans is intense and voluminous to an extent wherein a reader will easily need multiple readings to get the full essence of it. The structure of the books isn’t formal and Tim has taken liberties on how he wanted to present the storyline. The idea is to land the concept in a straight-forward fashion rather than beating around the bush. As mentioned earlier, the author is known for his podcasts while he has picked up 102 high performance individuals for his book. Tim categorizes these individuals into healthy, wealthy and wise based on their domain experience, achievements and the kind of conversations that ...

Ravikant’s journey has been remarkable to say the least, from a humble background of having spent his childhood in a lower middle class family run by a single parent, he has transcended himself to a phenomenal venture capitalist. The fact that he has invested in over 200 early stage companies including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Postmates to name a few and amongst them, 10 have grown out to be unicorn companies, this highlights the quality of his foresight combined with enormous risk taking appetite. The Almanack of Ravikant focusses on his tenets that laid the foundation for his phenomenal success, I have highlighted the ones that resonated with me. *Love for reading books – This must be driven to a point wherein it becomes an obsession. Many super successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have known to spend 2 to 3 hours everyday on reading books. The number of books read within a year or month shouldn’t be a vanity metric but how much we derive value out of th...

It’s always interesting to learn about the city in which we grew up and hence there is no surprise in picking up a book that traces Chennai’s history especially when the same is authored by historian V. Sriram. Let’s first focus on tracing the roots of how Chennai got it’s name. Apparently, Chennai short form of Chennaipattinam points to Damarla Chennappa Naicker who ruled over Kalahasti and adjoining areas in the late 16 th century (a sketch of him is given below). Ayyappa Naicker who was the son of Chennappa Naicker gave permission to Francis Day for an English settlement back in August 1639, the rest as they say is history. But why did the British start calling it as Madras isn’t very clear. One legend points to a chief of fishermen community named Madarasa who was instrumental in parting areas of his community for George Fort and another points to a rich Portuguese women named Madeira who lived near San thome. However, there is no clear evidence for both these stories. The f...

Vaclav asks an interesting question, can humanity realize all it’s aspirations within the safe boundaries of our biosphere? He attempts to determine the answer covering a range of human actions, right from farming practices, mode of travel, economic strata of different regions and also touching upon discoveries along the way. The broad intent of the book is to give indications on how the world is progressing towards net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Though Vaclav states quite a few times that he doesn’t prefer being optimist or pessimist, his indications were clearly pointed towards a global arena not even getting close to the 2050 target. There are definitely abundant reasons to justify his indications and the following pointers throw some light. *Even till the fag end of 19 th century, 90% of all mechanical energy was extracted through animate power, in simple terms it refers to physical effort of animals and humans aligned towards the output required for existential needs. Ina...

The first thing that strikes when someone picks up this book is the question, what’s the connect with a technocrat billionaire and climate change? Isn’t this supposed to be the topic of some nerd scientist who would potentially display abstract mathematical models to elucidate the impact of climate change? Well, this point of view drastically changes when we realize the catastrophe of what just 1 degree Celsius (33.8F) increase in temperatures can do at a global scale. Let me throw some light on an impending apocalypse like scenario, northern ice caps could melt down submerging coastal cities, hurricane, heat waves, floods, droughts and a range of other unforeseen disasters that can regress human life by centuries. This can result in unprecedented economic depressions, massive levels of immigration, dearth of energy along with food supply and the worst of all a potential world war. Before I go any further, let’s understand that climate change is a critical aspect every human should b...

Having picked up this book after knowing that Sheryl Sandberg was a COO of Facebook, I was expecting a lot of references from her career experience of having worked in a leadership role. However, the entire book is focused on post trauma growth and the factors that lead to a positive change despite a major setback. The narrative begins with Sheryl finding her husband Dave lying dead over a treadmill back in 2015, she is shell shocked on the hard event and goes about describing the impact of her deepest trench in life. She refers to 3P’s - Personalization, Pervasiveness and Permanence as a core emotional pattern exhibited by individuals post a trauma. Let me throw some light on each of them, Personalization – it’s feeling of guilt that the individual is fully responsible for the trauma, Pervasiveness – the individual feels that the negativity will spread across or impact all areas of life and Permanence – it’s a belief that the trauma will have a life long negative impact. A high pe...