Accidentally in Code

Tag: books

  • Book: Life in Three Dimensions

    Book: Life in Three Dimensions

    I learned about the book Life in Three Dimensions on the Happiness Lab podcast. I was fascinated by the idea of psychological richness. A psychologically rich life is one with interesting, varied and perspective changing experiences.

    Oishi argues this is the missing dimension of what it means to live a good life. Distinct from happiness (pleasure and contentment) and meaning (purpose and contribution).

    This struck a chord with me. While my life in many ways is happier since 2020 (aka since I stopped travelling constantly), I’ve been feeling the absence of something that I might have characterized as novelty. Psychological richness is a better term, and it’s clearer to me now what I want more of, and that while airplanes help, they aren’t a hard requirement.

    Throughout the book Oishi contrasts his life as a migrant and a professor, with his father’s life of stability and contentment. His father’s life becomes something of the definition of happiness and contentment, whilst Oishi talks about his own desire for more, even when that makes things hard. The three dimensions are not mutually exclusive, but I think psychological richness and happiness might be the hardest pair to combine.

    All in all, I found this a really interesting and helpful read. Recommend.

  • Book: The Fax Club Experiment

    Book: The Fax Club Experiment

    The Fax Club Experiment is an interesting book. 100 people signed up to receive a weekly prompt, via fax (!) and responded only under their assigned number. 32 people made it to the end, and the book is a selection of their responses.

    I enjoyed people’s deeper thoughts, separated from any knowledge of their identity. The little snippets of life that emerge as a result. Most of them blurred into an anonymous mass, aside from the person I know who I am pretty confident I guessed early on, and #47, who I really want to be friends with.

    My only annoyance was that I couldn’t read it on my kindle, and had to read it on my phone. Maybe for the sake of typography? No aesthetic is worth that kind of inconvenience to me.

    The questions range from personal to philosophical, many of them challenge the writers to think bigger and more creatively. I liked those ones best – it’s nice to see the inner workings of what someone else does with that kind of prompt, especially with the freedom (I imagine?) of anonyminity.

    I read it over a weekend in bits on planes and at airports, and a small part of it perched on a rock in Parc Güell. I loved it. You might too.

  • Book: The Next Day

    Book: The Next Day

    I was listening to the first episode of the “Welcome to the Party” podcast, when Melinda French Gates was mentioned, and all three sports icons (Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy, and Billie Jean King) took the opportunity to gush about her and her work. So I bought the new book – The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward, and finished it within 24 hours.

    It’s a beautiful book. Little vignettes from various key moments in her life, and the lessons she took from them. Surprisingly relatable and down to earth considering the writer, it builds up through formative years and key moments until the most recent decisions that got the most attention – divorcing Bill Gates and leaving the foundation they started together – and makes them seem both less interesting and more inevitable given the person she is – connected to her values and determined to live them out.

    A nice read that I very much enjoyed.

  • Book: Decisive

    Book: Decisive

    The overall thesis of Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath is that you make better decisions when you use a process called “WRAP”.

    • Widen your options
    • Reality test your assumptions
    • Attain distance before deciding
    • Prepare to be wrong

    It’s a really interesting book, I got a lot out of reading it. Some stuff that’s like, oh that does work, and some stuff that gave me a new perspective and caused me to rethink some of how I make decisions. Definitely well worth a read.

    Ways to widen assumptions:

    • Think about the opportunity cost – for example when considering a 700 vs 1000 stereo, you can also think about it as 700+300 of albums vs 1000 stereo
    • Use the “vanishing options” forcing function – you can’t pick any of your current options, so what do you do instead?
    • You don’t have to consider too many – even going up to 3 makes a difference. So just think of a couple more to get out of the “do or not” dilemma that leads to the worst decisions.
    • Consider both a positive framing (more happy) and a limiting one (less stressed) – they can highlight different things.
    • Consider if you can make both options work.
    • Look for other people who have solved your problem – what did they do?
    • Look for bright spots, what can you build on or take from elsewhere?
    • Create a playlist for repeated problem types – “a checklist stops people from making an error; a playlist stimulates new ideas”
    • Ladder up via analogies. For instance when designing a swimsuit, the designer looked for “anything that moves fast” and came up with something very creative (and subsequently banned for being too effective) as a result.

    When reality testing assumptions:

    • Seek out disagreement. E.g. if everyone agrees, end the meeting and reconvene the meeting when people have something to disagree on.
    • Ask questions like “what would have to be true for this option to be the very best choice?”
    • Consider the opposite of instincts to fight confirmation bias. For instance, if you have a narrative that your partner is selfish, keep a diary of times your partner was kind instead – the opposite of your narrative about them.
    • Deliberately make a mistake to challenge an assumption.
    • “Trust the average” over assumptions – get reviews for important decisions. Restaurant reviews are a good example, but you can get creative. If you’re thinking about a new job, ask people who work there about their experience.
    • if you can’t find the “base rates” for your decision, ask an expert. For instance ask a lawyer what % of cases get settled before trial (rather than how likely you are to win).
    • Use a close up to add texture, for instance FDR got people to write to him. He would have his staff aggregate stats for the average, but read a sample of letters himself for color.
    • “ooch” – conduct an experiment that moves you forward by testing your idea.

    To attain distance before deciding:

    • Sleep on it is good advice, but can be insufficient.
    • Use the 10/10/10 by Suzie Welch – when faced with a dilemma, ask yourself how will you feel in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years.
    • Ask questions that create distance: for instance an Intel CEO at a critical moment asked “what would my successor do?”.
    • Ask “what would you advise a friend?” – when we give advice to friends we normally anchor more on the longer term view.
    • Remember that loss aversion + mere exposure = status quo bias

    Finally, you need to prepare to be wrong:

    • “Prospective hindsight seems to spur more insights because it forces us to fill in the blanks between today and a certain future event (as opposed to the slipperier process of speculating about an event that may or may not happen).”
    • Focus on predicting a range – be specific about worst case scenario, best case scenario (which can also create problems!) and mid-point.
    • Realistic job interviews – be honest about the cons of working a job, especially a difficult one with high turnover; knowing what to expect means people are mentally prepared for setbacks
    • Set a trip wire – a decision point that takes you off autopilot – often these can be concrete (time, dollars, other metric) but can also be important to use the feeling that something is off – nurses and pilots are examples where they are encouraged to use their feelings that something is off to flag for deeper investigation.

    Honor core principles is not a lettered entity within the WRAP piece (I think it falls under attaining distance), but I thought this was a really core and relevant insight. It’s not about making the correct decision, because sometimes there is no single correct decision. It’s about making the right decision for you. This was one of my favorite sections, some takeaways:

    • Agonizing decisions are often a sign of conflict among your core priorities.
    • By identifying and enshrining your core priorities you make it easier to resolve present and future dilemmas.
    • To carve out space to pursue core priorities we must go on the offense against lesser priorities
  • Book: Careless People

    Book: Careless People

    Facebook tried to shut it down, so obviously like so many others I had to read it!

    Careless People covers the period of 2011-2017, the author pitches a job to Facebook working in policy, and was there from the inception of Facebook getting involved with governments. It’s a well written, engaging story. The author knows how to grab your attention and keep it.

    It’s also the kind of book that stayed in my head even once I had finished it. Asking myself what I believed and what I didn’t. In the end, I think of it as a composite of three pieces.

    The first, the gossipy stories. These are obviously cherry picked in support of the bigger narrative. For instance, there’s a lot about Sandberg’s behavior in 2015 and no mention of her husband’s death. These stories are certainly part of what makes it a good read, but I don’t know how much weight to give them.

    Second, is Zuck and Sandberg’s villain origin story. Essentially that Sandberg’s was always a status obsessed megalomaniac, and that Zuckerberg became that way over time. Reading the book, this makes for a good narrative arc, but having left that narrative and come back to the reality of this being two people with tremendous power, I don’t really care about their villain origin stories.

    Third is the real thing, which is the way that the pursuit of growth and money has done untold harm to democracy. The stories about working with China demonstrate a kind of moral bankruptcy that is appalling but also by that part of the book, par for the course. I did not realize the full extent to which Facebook had enabled Trump’s first election win, but it is all laid out. The part I found most horrifying was the dark ad targeting designed to suppress voters. A close second to Facebook embedding staff in the Trump campaign because they were spending so much money. (As an aside, as a European, I do find US election spending absolutely horrifying. It re-enforces why it is illegal elsewhere.) Now Musk buying Twitter and the existence of Truth social make so much more sense.

    Well worth the read.

  • Book: Backlash

    Book: Backlash

    Book cover of Susan Faludi - Backlash - the undeclared war against women

    Backlash (Susan Faludi) is a long and not particularly easy read. Written in response to the Reagan administration’s assault on women’s rights (originally published in 1991), it was reissued in 2020 as history repeated itself.

    Two recurring themes in the book. First, the way that the data did not at all align with what was being written about women in the media. Second, the hypocrisy of so many who proclaimed to know what women want. I enjoyed both of these, but it does add to my confusion about how little fact checking goes on.

    “Trend journalists in the ‘80s were not required to present facts for the same reason that ministers aren’t expected to support sermons with data. The reporters were scripting morality plays, not news stories, in which the middle-class woman played the Christian innocent, led astray by a feminist serpent. In the final scene, the woman had to pay—repenting of her ambitions and “selfish” pursuit of equality—before she could reclaim her honor and her happiness.”

    Since November, I’ve been wondering why so many white women vote against their own interests, and I thought this book would provide some answers. The short answer, I understand, is “racism”. I wanted a longer one – what is the narrative? What is the belief system? Ultimately in as much as I understand those things better after reading this book, it is simply that the rules they don’t apply the rules the put forward to themselves. That some women have so little imagination that they would sooner be fembots of the patriarchy rather than support a different world, even if that different world aligns better with the way they personally (want to) live.

    The final chapter, on women’s reproductive rights, is particularly eye opening. It explains the history behind why women in the USA have so little access to reproductive health care. It also covers a truly horrifying story of some women who, trying to support their families, were forced to “choose” between getting sterilized and keeping their employment.

    All in all, if you’re trying to understand the current state of affairs, this book provides useful context. And, I guess, some modicum of hope – the situation in the 80s sounds pretty dire for women in the USA, but prior to 2016 much progress had been made. That such progress will have to be made again seems inevitable.

  • Comfort Reads

    Comfort Reads

    I really believe in the power of a good novel as an escape from Real Life. Some of my recent(ish) favorites I’ve been recommending.

    The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston – an absolutely beautiful novel, I loved it.

    Somali Dev’s Austin inspired series – I adore this series about an Indian immigrant family, each one of the series inspired by a Jane Austin classic.

    Write my Name Across the Sky by Barbara O’Neal – a 70-something influencer confronts her past.

    One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston – a gay magical mystery, what is not to love.

    The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Tara Jenkins Reid – a disaster bisexual love story.

    Bonus – all of these authors have other novels (I’ve read all of them, but these are my favorites), so if you like them you too can work your way through the back catalog.

  • Book: The Stake

    Book: The Stake

    The Stake [Amazon] is the book about the CoActive Leadership program. It’s written in a different way, from the other books from the perspective of the people taking it and the journeys they go on. As a result, it’s more engaging to read and the application and impact more clear.

    One of the most important concepts in it is that of the “Leader’s stake”, which means the orientation around which a leader is operating. The stake is not a goal, but goals serve the stake. So a stake is not “to be right” but in software something more like, “we can maximize value whilst working sustainably”.

    I read this for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that I am thinking about when and how to take the full Leadership program. The thing I love about CoActive is how the training takes people on a journey. I recently did my first back of the room assisting, and was so interested in how the training addresses what is needed, often without talking about it directly. The Stake unravells how some of that is done, such as the co-leadership concept, and the focus on managing the space rather than individuals.

    All in all might be quite a specific book and not suited for everyone, but personally I got what I wanted out of it.

  • Book: The Outward Mindset

    Book: The Outward Mindset

    My coach recommended The Outward Mindset, from the Arbginger institute, same as Leadership and Self Deception (one of my all time most impactful books) and The Anatomy of Peace. It feels in many ways a continuation of those ideas, but more team/business oriented.

    The first part of the book focuses on the impact of mindset, and how you can focus on changing behavior, or you can focus on changing mindset and let behavior change follow from it. I really liked this way of expressing something that I’ve really found to be true.

    The outward mindset is about how when teams and businesses that think about the perspective of the teams they work with before their own perspective, can be more impactful and effective. When you have an inward mindset, you’re thinking about what you want to get out of things. When you have an outward mindset, you’re thinking about what others need and focusing on that.

    One example was that of a debt collection agency, who instead of hounding people for debt started focusing on helping those people make more money.

    Another example was of a non profit building wells, who identified that the real success metric was how many days children were in school. They took a more expansive view of what they were doing, and it shifted their approach.

    There’s a shift in mindset in both of those from “what is my job” to “what is the real outcome I’m trying to drive”, which is pretty fascinating.

    I’ve been thinking about concept a lot in terms of the challenges of building a first team mindset. When people have a perspective of competition, they tend to be inward focused. Having a first team mindset is having an outward mindset with your peers; focusing on being a good team mate rather than being a good competitor.

    As with other Arbinger books, I totally see that it’s a really powerful concept when it’s shared, and a really challenging concept to hold up when it’s not. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.