The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win – Maria Konnikova
It’s true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn’t even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn’t interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can’t. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold’em, their initial end point the following year’s World Series of Poker.
But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel’s guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn’t. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like “How one writer’s book deal turned her into a professional poker player.” She even learned to like Las Vegas.
But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.
The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind – Jonah Berger
Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade and pressure and push, but nothing moves. Could there be a better way?
This book takes a different approach. Successful change agents know it’s not about pushing harder, or providing more information, it’s about being a catalyst. Catalysts remove roadblocks and reduce the barriers to change. Instead of asking, “How could I change someone’s mind?” they ask a different question: “Why haven’t they changed already? What’s stopping them?”
The Catalyst identifies the key barriers to change and how to mitigate them. You’ll learn how catalysts change minds in the toughest of situations: how hostage negotiators get people to come out with their hands up and how marketers get new products to catch on, how leaders transform organizational culture and how activists ignite social movements, how substance abuse counselors get addicts to realize they have a problem, and how political canvassers change deeply rooted political beliefs.
This book is designed for anyone who wants to catalyze change. It provides a powerful way of thinking and a range of techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to change one person, transform an organization, or shift the way an entire industry does business, this book will teach you how to become a catalyst.
Coming from the manufacturing sector, a continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process or CIP or CI, is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek incremental improvement over time or breakthrough improvement all at once. Some successful implementations use the Japanese approach known as Kaizen where kai means change and zen which stands for good is improvement. Kaizen the Sino-Japanese word for improvement, is a concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. By improving standardised programmes and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies. Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside business and productivity.
So how can this be applied to our daily lives? How can we use Continous Improvement to improve ourselves and make us better individuals? Read on.
We live in a world of never-ending disruption and change. By adopting the philosophy of Kaizen, we can become more adaptable, flexible and resilient to deal with the constant demands and disruptions we face in our lives. By adopting continuous improvement, we can live our lives to the fullest by continuously learning, growing and thriving. This philosophy is based on the concept that instead of making big changes at once, the continuous improvement approach focuses on making a small improvement over time.
Kaizen is often referred to as the strategy for 1% gains. It is these 1% gains that athletes focus on to improve their performance. The 1% gains are incremental and if one keeps building on the 1% gains the rewards are phenomenal. Continuous improvement is perpetual and so to maintain gains and improvement, one needs to work on them continuously. Continuous improvement is perpetual and so to maintain gains and improvement; you need to work on them continuously.
An easy example is the new year resolution we make every year. How many of these do we actually fulfil and maintain all through the year? At some point, we slip up and then many of the resolutions fall by the wayside. But there is that small group of people, dedicated and committed, who are able to maintain and fulfil all their goals for the year. However, if one commits to continuously improving themselves, then the motivation to achieve the goals set will never die. One will never have to struggle with giving up or giving in because it is hard. The achievements and success in life will be a result of one taking continual incremental steps toward their goals. Continuous improvement is not about reaching the big goals in life but about taking small steps and improving and refining those goals along the way.
To be successful at the adoption of a continuous improvement lifestyle, the first thing to do is to embrace and accept that the journey of self-improvement and growth will never end, it is a lifelong journey of learning. The steps to improve continuously are as follows:
Step 1: Set goals based on the philosophy of 1% incremental achievements. The setting of the goal is the east part, keeping motivated, focused and on track to achieving the goal is the hard part. Continous Improvement provides one with a system or a process that one can you commit to to enable one to achieve any goal they set. 1% does not seem much, but being slightly better today as compared to yesterday will gradually add up and the goal will be achieved in no time. This system of being slightly better each day enables one to avoid feeling like a failure and being subject to self-anger and derision when one gives up.
Step 2: Break down the system into small actions: When one is attempting to be just 1% better each day, then it’s not about random bursts of improvement in fits and bursts. Continuous improvement is a journey of personal growth where one is making long-term steady progress. This approach of self-improvement will give one the sustainable long-term changes they seek to improve their lives and achieve goals.
As an example, if you are trying to lose weight, instead of obsessing with the ideal weight, start by thinking on how you are going to achieve a healthy lifestyle. Create a system which includes diet and exercise and then break that system down into smaller actions or behaviours which you can follow without exerting yourself too much. Like, you could start walking or exercising and everyday or every week, do something slightly more. Commit to these actions on a daily basis until it becomes a habit. Keep going until the goal is reached.
Step 3: Keep track of your 1% success: It is very important that you measure and track your 1% successes. This is a crucial factor about incremental achievement. Evaluating and measuring improvements are important for one’s own motivation and commitment to the journey. If one is not measuring progress, the subconscious brain will kick in and sabotage progress by convincing one that it is all too hard and that they are not making any progress at all. The subconscious brain only believes what one tells it. Unfortunately, we have told our brain a lot of untruthful things over a long period of time about how we are a failure, not motivated and never really achieved anything in life. The subconscious brain, as a result, believes all these facts that we have told it to be true. Measuring and evaluating our 1% successes is key to us retraining our subconscious to believe that Yes – we can achieve our goals and succeed in life.
Continuous Improvement does not focus on making huge gains or big improvements all at once. Instead, it focuses on long-term steady progress. When one follows the philosophy of Continuous Improvement, they won’t radically change their life, but over time with consistent and constant improvement and change, they will find that they are living their life to the fullest – empowered, resilient and thriving.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking – Susan Cain
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.
Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life – Gaur Gopal Das
While navigating their way through Mumbai’s horrendous traffic, Gaur Gopal Das and his wealthy young friend Harry get talking, delving into concepts ranging from the human condition to finding one’s purpose in life and the key to lasting happiness.
Whether you are looking at strengthening your relationships, discovering your true potential, understanding how to do well at work or even how you can give back to the world, Gaur Gopal Das takes us on an unforgettable journey with his precious insights on these areas of life.
Das is one of the most popular and sought-after monks and life coaches in the world, having shared his wisdom with millions. His debut book, Life’s Amazing Secrets, distils his experiences and lessons about life into a light-hearted, thought-provoking book that will help you align yourself with the life you want to live.
Memories and Such 
