Category: Quotes

My 12 Favorite Nonfiction Books Most People Have Never Heard Of Cover

My 12 Favorite Nonfiction Books Most People Have Never Heard Of

Nik

Imagine a city with one million inhabitants. It has everything you would expect from a city of that size: some skyscrapers, a decent transport system, and all the usual public and social infrastructure.

There is, however, a catch: Everyone in this city can only read the same 10 books. It’s a simple literary restriction, but what consequences might it have? If all of those books are mainly concerned with inequality and societal problems, chances are, the city’s citizens will spend most of their time bickering and fighting. But what if those books are instead filled with stories about community and kindness? Probably, people will be inclined to help one another, and everyone will get along on most days.

Regardless of their effect and how strong you believe this effect might be, however, with only 10 books, the people in that city will inevitably stop learning. Thinking, creativity, innovation — eventually, these pillars of progress will come to a screeching halt. Why? Because the pool of ideas is too limited! Try as hard as they may, the best those citizens can do is to rehash the same ideas from the same 10 books, over and over again. Sooner or later, to create more and better output, they’ll need more and better input. The same is true for you as an individual.

Haruki Murakami famously wrote that “if you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

Popular books are usually popular because they’re agreeable. They’ll get you social credit and remind you of what’s common sense, but they’ll rarely truly stretch your brain. There’s nothing wrong with reading these books, but they shouldn’t be the only ones you consume. If you and your friends all read the same few bestsellers each year, and you all agree on their premises, none of you will learn anything new! Where’s the discussion? The thinking? The sparring of ideas? If you all read different books, however, everyone has something to teach to everyone else.

Over the last ten years, I’ve read hundreds of nonfiction books. Without fail, the lesser known ones have been the most satisfying in terms of new ideas, memorable lessons, and, yes, I’ll admit it, making me look smart in front of my friends. So for more than one reason, I agree with Murakami: Don’t run the risk of becoming like the people in that city — set in your ways, a rusty thinker. Read the obscure, the questionable, the forgotten. Read what no one else is reading.

Here are 12 titles I believe will fit that mark. Even if you’re an avid nonfiction reader, I’m confident you won’t have heard of most of them. But if you give them a try, maybe they’ll enter the ranks of your all-time favorites. They sure have done so for me.

Read More
How To Sound Smart in Work and Life Cover

How To Sound Smart in Work and Life

Nik

The easiest way to sound smart is to say nothing at all.

Silence creates an aura of mystery, which people will usually interpret in your favor. They’ll use the time to imagine what you might think and know, to wonder why you remain silent, and, sometimes, to second-guess themselves rather than questioning your abilities.

Silence is powerful because few people dare to employ it. They’re afraid of the initial awkwardness, and so they just keep talking. Of course, the more we speak, the more likely we are to say something stupid, wrong, or offensive. If we stay silent, however, we get to observe, think, and choose our words carefully.

We commend speakers for not filling breaks with “ummm”s and “errrm”s because their silence provides us with time to process what they’ve said. We stare in awe at our screens as TV show characters go quiet to add extra oomph to what they’re about to announce. We can’t fathom how the big boss can keep her mouth shut on a Zoom call for this long, but when she then comes out with a brilliant idea, we at least remember why she does it.

However, even the best silence can only last so long, so the question is: What are you supposed to say when it ends?

Here are a few counterintuitive ideas that’ll help you sound smart at work and in life.

Read More
Be Water, My Friend Cover

Be Water, My Friend

Nik

Water is balance. That’s why Bruce Lee’s “Be Water” analogy is popular to this day. His metaphor captures the balance we all need in our lives.

Water doesn’t look left or right. It just makes its way however it can. It adapts, but it always perseveres. Even at rest, water still slowly eats away at its surroundings. In Striking Thoughts, Lee expanded on the short recorded clip:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Water is a slow judge. It asks: “What shape do I need to be?” It conforms to whatever it’s in touch with, one drop at a time. However, you can only ask that question if you come to any situation with an empty mind.

Read More
4 Mighty Quotes From Hidden Figures Cover

4 Mighty Quotes From Hidden Figures

Nik

If no one told you what you can’t do, how much would you dare to try?

Unfortunately, humans have a long history of telling each other what we can and can’t do. Most of the time, we do so with words. Sometimes, with weapons. Both can cause pain and irrevocable damage, only one can inspire us to transcend physical and invisible barriers.

In the United States of the 1960s, those barriers took the form of racial segregation. African Americans were forced to use different walkways, different restaurants, different toilets, and even different park benches.

Set against this backdrop, the movie Hidden Figures tells the true story of three heroes. Three American heroes. Three Black female mathematicians, who defied the odds and made history.

Like many great stories of history, it is one told far too late and with too little accuracy, but it’s still a story worth hearing, embracing, and learning from.

Here are four awe-inspiring quotes that surprised and amazed me at the same time, along with some context and research.

Read More
Yesterday Is Dead Cover

Yesterday Is Dead

Nik

“All that’s left is smoke and ash, so let’s keep dancing on the broken glass.”

Thus go the lyrics of Kygo’s latest song. It’s about two lovers breaking up, but right now, it feels like advice to all of us. We’re all going through a similarly traumatic if more abstract separation: Reality broke up with us.

Yesterday died, and it left us high and dry. Slow Fridays at the office with your biggest concern being what you’ll wear for the pub crawl — gone. Two-hour weekend trip flights to the coast to munch on some fresh fish by the beach — gone. First dates in the park while having ice cream — gone.

Don’t you wish you could go back to just figuring out how to switch companies because your boss is annoying? Or to plotting how you’ll finally break free from corporate shackles? Struggling to save for a two-week family vacation sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

All that’s left now is to stay inside, work, and veg out with Netflix on the couch when you’re done, which is of course later than it used to be because hey, you’re working from home!

Depending on where home is, you might not even want to go outside anymore. What’s there? People yelling, fighting, breaking things — and infecting each other in the process. It’s a great time to get hurt but little else.

Not that you could do anything anyway. Restaurants closed. Shops closed. Bars closed. Gyms closed. Fuck. Travel is forbidden. Dating is dangerous. No large gatherings. And now people ignoring all those rules — health-related and otherwise — to protest and, in some cases, loot stores and torch cars.

Great. Just great. After three months of dying to go outside, quarantine is suddenly attractive. Good one 2020, you got us again! And it’s barely June.

“Cheers to us and what we had, let’s keep dancing on the broken glass.”

Read More
The 10 Paradoxical Commandments Cover

The 10 Paradoxical Commandments

Nik

“Even when the world is difficult, even when things seem really crazy, we can still find personal meaning and deep happiness — and we do that by facing the worst in the world with the best in ourselves. That’s the idea.”

Today, Kent Keith talks about his “Paradoxical Commandments” with the ease of a Michelin chef whipping up some eggs Benedict, but when he wrote them down in 1968, he wasn’t sure if the words would form the right message.

The world was different back then, but neither less crazy nor less difficult. “It was the 60s. That was a provocative time. A lot of conflict and confrontation but also idealism and hope.” Keith was only 19, a sophomore at Harvard, but he had already witnessed his fair share of said provocative time.

He’d seen Kennedy get elected, celebrated for the moon program, and then shot. He’d observed the Civil Rights Act, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, and the bloody protests at Columbia. In essence, he saw a young generation unable to cause change without violence, unable to find meaning in anything that wasn’t a big symbolic act, “like seizing a building or something,” and it troubled him.

Keith decided to write something that would address these issues and, in the process, he discovered that the answer to better leadership was also the answer to lasting, personal happiness. “If you go out and do what you think is right and good and true, then you’re going to get a lot of meaning and satisfaction. You’ve got that no matter what.”

Today, more than 50 years after Keith published his little set of rules as part of a book on student leadership, he calls them “guidelines for finding personal meaning in the face of adversity.” Millions around the world have read, shared, and put Keith’s commandments on their refrigerator doors. Some say they’re a “no excuses policy.” Others, “a personal declaration of independence from all that stuff we can’t control.” Keith explains:

As individuals, we can’t control the world economy, world population growth, natural disasters, fires and floods, when a terrorist might attack, when a war might break out, which companies are going to succeed, which jobs will be created, which jobs will be eliminated.

What we can control is our inner lives, our spiritual lives. You and I get to decide who we’re gonna be and how we’re gonna live. The good news is that’s where people have been finding a lot of meaning for thousands of years. Even better news: Finding personal meaning is actually a key to being deeply happy.

Here are Dr. Kent Keith’s Paradoxical Commandments.

Read More
5 Thought Experiments to Upgrade Your Thinking Cover

5 Thought Experiments to Upgrade Your Thinking

Nik

Einstein said we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking that created them. Science estimates we have between 30 and 50 thoughts per minute. That’s a lot of chances to change our thinking.

Widely regarded as the smartest man to ever walk the earth, Einstein made good use of these chances. He loved thought experiments. In fact, a thought experiment became the first seed of his theory of general relativity.

Einstein imagined himself riding on a beam of light towards the sun. Looking at another beam right next to him, he should have perceived it as stationary, but, according to the laws of physics, that was impossible. Years later, thanks to another thought experiment, Einstein concluded the only possible answer: time itself is relative.

Although this wasn’t the insight that won him the Nobel prize, decades of science have built upon it. 100 years later, researchers finally verified the most important chunks of his theory as unequivocally true.

There’s something to be said here about vision, about genius, and about daring to imagine, but the real point is this: A question opens the mind. A statement closes it. You can’t upgrade your thinking with statements. You have to ask better questions.

Read More
The 7 Quotes That Broke Me Out of My Career Crisis Cover

The 7 Quotes That Broke Me Out of My Career Crisis

Nik

Seven years ago, I had a mid-life crisis at the ripe age of 21. I was studying abroad in the US, and, suddenly, nothing about the career path I had chosen two years earlier seemed to make sense anymore.

Why do I need to work 60 hours a week just to pass seven random exams at the end of the semester? Should I really become a consultant if it means I won’t have time to spend any of the money I make? If I’m gonna work a lot, shouldn’t I work on something I believe in?

I was desperate for answers to these questions, and today, I’m happy to say I found them. I built a career that can last a lifetime from scratch, and even in its early stages, I earn more than the best entry-level job could provide. I’m not worried about the future and can stomach bad days with relative ease.

Of course, a lot happened in those seven years, but one of the first steps I took was so simple I didn’t consider it to be “a step” at all: I started a Facebook Page and posted inspiring quotes. Every day, I shared cliché little phrases with the world — on one hand, to take a stand in public, on the other to talk myself into going after my dreams.

While it’s easy to dismiss lines like “actions speak louder than words” as glib and indulging, they’re valuable not always due to their meaning but because they get you to do something when you would otherwise be doing nothing.

That said, I also learned that it doesn’t matter if something’s cliché as long as it’s true. Once I got off my high horse and really made an effort to consider and implement these ideas into my life, things did change for the better.

Here are seven of my favorite lines from that time and how they changed my perspective.

Read More
Matthew McConaughey’s 5 Rules for a Good Future Cover

Matthew McConaughey’s 5 Rules for a Good Future

Nik

In 2015, Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey gave the commencement address at University of Houston. Speaking to some 4,000 graduates, he shared personal stories and lessons he hoped would help young people find their path in life.

Before he even started, however, McConaughey made a sobering but accurate observation: A college degree in and of itself is no longer a guarantee that you’ll have a great career.

“I have two older brothers. One was in high school in the early 1970s — a time when a high school GED got you a job and the college degree was exemplary.

My other brother was in high school in the early 80s, and by this time the GED wasn’t enough to guarantee employment. You needed a college degree, and if you got one, you had a pretty good chance of getting the kind of job you wanted after you graduated.

Me, I graduated high school in 1988, got my college degree in ’93, and that college degree in 93 did not mean as much. It was not a ticket, it was not a voucher, it was not a free pass go to anything.”

Now, if Matthew McConaughey found his college degree to be of little use in the job market in 1993, he’d be in for a real shock 26 years later.

With the half-life of knowledge eroding a little more each day, that certificate on paper is now a one-punch ticket at best and a completely useless credential at worst. At the same time, new career paths open up all the time. Youtuber, Instagram influencer, ecommerce strategist — a few years ago, none of these jobs existed.

Therefore, McConaughey is right in suggesting that the one big commonality people entering the workforce share is uncertainty.

“You’ve just completed your scholastic educational curriculum in life — the one you started when you were five years old, up until now — and your future may not be any more clear than it was five years ago. You don’t have the answers, and it’s probably pretty damn scary.”

Luckily, McConaughey is anything but a downer. Immediately, he offers some reassurance: “I say that’s okay. Because that is how it is. This is the reality that many of you are facing. This is the world that we live in.”

Instead of lamenting this reality, McConaughey urges us to accept it — and then do something about it.

“The sooner that we become less impressed with our life, with our accomplishments, with our career, with whatever that prospect is in front of us, the sooner we become less impressed and more involved with these things, the sooner we get a whole lot better at doing them.”

When you’ve spent 15, 20, 30 years of your life chasing the next grade, the next semester, the next scorecard, it’s easy to get stuck. To follow the same pattern and spend the rest of your life running after, valuing, and blaming certifications, documents, and diploma.

The truth, however, is that we live in a world where references don’t matter nearly as much as they used to. That’s what McConaughey wants us to understand and accept. To help us do this — move past a culture of credentials and into one of action, real impact, and results — he then goes on to deliver a total of 13 lessons. Today, I’d like to share five of them with you.

May they help you build the tomorrow you deserve.

Read More