Category: Book summaries
Welcome to the collection of book summaries. I love to read, and I read a lot. My goal is to read around 50 – 55 books per year (or one book per week), especially on various psychology, personal development, business and IT topics.
To get the most out of my favorite books or books that genuinely changed my life, I prepare book summaries, mind maps and sometimes even flashcards or other learning aids. That enables me to refresh knowledge chunks in regular intervals, which is one of the best learning practices.
I am happy to share all the materials with you, in hopes that they will positively influence your life too. Book summaries are not that short, but they are prepared in a very structured and detailed way, so you can really get a grasp on what the books are all about.
The book summaries serve two main purposes – to understand what a book is all about and encourage you to read it, and as a way to refresh your knowledge once you’ve read the book.
If you possess the fixed mindset, you are most concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes your primary concern how you can improve yourself. With the fixed mindset, you see the traits as fixed, and consequently success is about proving you’re smart or talented. The fixed mindset is all about validation. On the other hand, the growth mindset is more about stretching yourself to learn something new. With the growth mindset, your goal is to develop yourself and become the best version of yourself. People in a growth mindset always seek a challenge and, even more importantly, they thrive on it. Entering the world of two different mindsets, the most important question you have to ask yourself is the following: If you had to choose, what would your priority be – loads of success and validation or lots of challenges? With a summary of a book on …
By nature, we all like status quo, certainty and control over every situation. But life has become extremely complex, fast-changing and uncertain. That means the only constant in our professional and personal lives is change. And change goes against our basic nature. The winners are people who learn to do hard things. Managing change is one of them, because it enables you to become flexible and adapt to any new situation. It enables you to grow and move forward. One of the best books that teaches people how to change things when change is hard is called Switch, written by Chip & Dan Heath. The book presents many interesting stories of how change was successfully implemented. It also offers a very precise and simple step-by-step formula for implementing change. That’s why I decided to write a summary of the book.
A nice guy can be quickly confused when they hear the statement that women are attracted to assholes and that nice guys finish last. I suffered from the same confusion, not knowing why being nice is so problematic. I always wanted to be exclusively a nice person, but that often didn’t lead to the results I wanted. Sometimes it backfired in a nasty way and I didn’t understand why. At the end of the day, I was only being nice. The confusion went away after reading No More Mr. Nice Guy written by the psychotherapist Robert A. Glover. After reading the book, I finally understood that there is a healthy form of being nice (something we should all do) and a very toxic one (fawning). And the toxic form is the one that backfires almost every time, because it’s nothing but a manipulation strategy. Being a nice guy (the toxic …
If you just took over a leadership position or you're about to, The first 90 days by Michael D. Watkins is absolutely the book to go to. It gives you a really good step-by-step master plan on what to do and how in the first 90 days after being appointed to a new leadership position. The President of the USA has a 100 days to prove himself. You only have 90 if you have taken over a new leadership position. If you can’t build a suitable positive new momentum during this time, there might be hard work ahead of you or your leadership might even be doomed to failure.
If you were always wondering why you are so damn sensitive, this blog post is for you. First of all, you really are special by being a highly sensitive person, possessing many gifts and talents. But unfortunately, you are rarely understood, because only around 15 % of the population is highly sensitive. And many times you can be seen as a weak, shy or fearful person when you are too sensitive. Those are not the qualities attributed to successful and assertive people. Nevertheless, when you understand yourself better and know how to manage your sensitivity, it can become your greatest source of power. Reading this blog post you will learn how to thrive as a highly sensitive person.
