The first rule of book club is..
 

Looks like I'm copying Phils thread but I was gunna do this anyways he just got in there first. Plus this one's regarding real books.

I'm only gunna list books I read from this year onwards because I want to keep a proper track of all the books I read from now on.

I'll do short reviews on some of them. Which will be in no way extravagant detailed accounts. Just quick, in-a-nutshell opinions.

Feel free to add comments or opinions of your own to any of the books I list that you've also read, or if you have any questions ask away.

At the weekend I read The Lean Startup - It's a book for entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, with many case studies and practical "outside the box" advice on business and entrepreneurship.

Just finished The Secret which I started last night done 100 pages per night - It's based on this "law of attraction" that I'm sure most of us have heard about. Basically if you live and breath positivity, and positive thoughts about what you want, you will receive it... I'll keep you posted on how fast I get a million quid and 3 glamour model girlfriends.



I'm going to be reading a hell of a lot more now. My only problem is that I've got so many hard copy and ebooks I'm spoilt for choice so I've often found myself start a book for a few chapters then ditch it and go on to another... but I'm not playing that shit no more.

The secret in a nut shell is basically to have passionate & authentic belief in yourself & have a positive mental atitude. Thats about it really.

Fuck you dan...

Fuck you.

Love you too Phil x

Last night at the gym I thought to myself that the staff at PureGym who see you regularly must notice the changes in the physique of the regulars, since I look amazing now compared to when I started..

..shortly after that a random instructor commented on my physique, that I was "looking good bro, the hard work is paying off"


Must have been the law of attraction :trampoline:


Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

I've started spending a lot of my lunch hours at Waterstones book store 5 minutes away from work.

I'll go there, pick up an interesting looking self-development or business book, & spend 30 or 40 minutes reading.

I check the contents & go direct to chapters & sections that are relevant to things that interest me or that I want to learn. Then read through as much as I can in the 30 or 40 minutes.

Sure, I obviously don't read the book in depth. But I pick up plenty of nuggets of info & little motivations & positive things.

It adds a further 2.5 to 3 hours of reading per week.

Today at the bookstore I had a browse through How to start a business without any money by Rachel Bridge - I read 3 of the most relevant chapters to me & took pictures of the recap pages at the end of (at least 20) chapters... Picked up a few nice little tips

Yesterday I had a read at a book from the "Brilliant" series How to influence in any situation - basically like a body language book with a bunch of extra tips on dominance etc... A lot of stuff I've already read about before but seen it as a refresher or kick up the backside in some areas

Are you actually taking anything from these books, or are you reading loads of books or just skimming them?

Finished a book yesterday called Influence, the psychology of persuasion - very interesting book that points out a lot of stuff that happens to us on a regular basis in regards to how easily our minds & behaviours can be manipulated.

Obviously, most of you reading this will be smart enough not to fall into such traps however as a psychologist this was a very interesting read & my favourite book since I started this thread.

I'm reading books in full in my own time.

When I go to the bookstore on my lunch breaks I just grab a book & skim it yes. I'll skim it & see what it's about & then pick a chapter or 2 that I'm interested in & read them. Then flick through the book reading all the summary pages.

Yes I'm getting stuff from this. Even if it's just little nuggets of info here & there on my lunch break.

I also now consider myself an autodidact. Which is a self-taught person.

I'm not trying to act clever I didn't even know that was a word until 2 months ago.

Academically.

I've got an independent social psychology project due on March the 9th, with a self-imposed deadline of March the 4th. Because the 4000 word report has to be handwritten and posted - after also transcribing two 30 minute interviews and performing a thematic analysis on them as well as all the other shit that goes in a report.

So it's safe to say i'll not get many books read over the next month.

But i'm still gunna try to, and i'm currently trying to get through 59 seconds ~ Think a Little, Change a Lot

Still popping into the bookstore on lunch a few times a week too.

Just finished this..

Which turned out to be so much like..

That I skimmed the second half of it.

It was written in very much the same way and even to the point that a lot of the stories and case studies and examples out of the Influence book were covered again in the 59 seconds book. Felt like I was wasting my time by going over behavioural & compliance stuff I've already learned about loads of times. Which is why I skimmed it.

Gunna start another one here that I bought called The Tools ~ 5 Life changing techniques to unlock your potential.

Yes I know, it's just a book and they'd need to be very fucking good techniques to be life changing but I'll give it a look anyway & see what it's about.

Finished this last night..

Tools are..

1 The reversal of desire - For when you need to take an action you've been avoiding

2 Active love - For when someone enrages you and you can't get them out of your head

3 Inner authority - For intimidating situations, when you find it difficult to express yourself or engage with other people

4 Grateful flow - For when your mind is filled with worry, self-hatred, or any other form of negative thinking

5 Jeapardy - Basically knowing that you're gunna die some day, in order to spur you on


It's very spiritually oriented. He keeps banging on about the "higher power" & all that shit.



Anyways, although I do have an important project to work on, the next book I have in my hand I'm really excited about..

Internet Riches ~ the simple money making secrets of online millionaires

I think reading lots of books seems like a good idea, but in reality it's better to read one and try out the ideas mentioned in the book. Try to implement them in your daily life. Even if you manage to change one thing or pick one good habit from one book it's better than knowing 1000 things but not doing them.

Valid points.

Of which they are timely because the writer of this book..

Suggests just a couple of dozen pages in, that we grab a notepad and keep a journal as there will be many exercises designed to make you think.

He goes on saying that he wants us, the reader, to have a convenient and consistent place to write down our ideas and responses to these exercises.

"If you follow along and make an honest attempt to participate in all the exercises, you'll soon see those pages filling up with great ideas that could change your life."


I'm usually full of scepticism about such claims. For example..


However, I am serious about entrepreneurship and for that reason I'm going to take this book and associated exercises seriously. Particularly since I'm now more interested in the online entrepreneurial avenues.

Got nothing to lose by paying attention to the guidance.

Dan
Have you read the 4 Hour Work Week yet?
Sure I read you started this somewhere.
This changed me big time

Yeah I did read it about 6 months ago. I thought it was good at the time. The 4 hour work week would be fine if you want to do as little as possible whilst making a passive income that you can live comfortably with.

However..

If you want to be a serious entrepreneur and taken seriously as one, you're gunna be pulling 60, 80, 100 hour weeks. Not by being a lazy ass expecting to be a millionaire driving a supercar without working your bollocks off for it.

Fuck life experience I could write one of my own. I've got a bunch of biographies of big time entrepreneurs. Which is something I haven't experienced, yet..

Richard Branson
Alan Sugar
James Caan
Sam Walton
Felix Dennis
Jack Canfield

There's a bunch more I would like to get, Elon Musk, Peter Jones, & many more.

Basically the big super rich tycoons. Gotta be inspirational reading that stuff.

(Yeah having said that I've not started any & am always powering my way though self-development and knowledge books)

I prefer motivational stuff from cunts who've actually done it. Cunts who were fearless and went after their dream relentlessly.

This guy is solid gold ~ Patrick Bet-David, virtual mentor to many including myself..

https://youtu.be/ytchGSaA5-g

His channel is filled with solid content, free, uploaded regularly, and this is absolutely the best channel on the internet for entrepreneurs.



As for Mike Tysons book, The Undithputed Truth. My sister read that too. Yeah I guess there's not many people on the planet who can say they burned their through 300 million and lived to tell tales to the grandkids.

To be honest depends how you look at it bro.

I was pulling 60-70 hours weeks for far too long without realising I literally become an employee of my business. Then I discovered something quite amazing that he introduces.. designing the structure of the business to operate with as little input from me as possible... transforms your life.

His angle isnt to do less work, just maximize efficiency on the actual time he puts in. That's how the rich make money, focus on creating systems that generate cash than hiring 'drones' to man them.

Anyway, keep us up to date with what you do.

100 hours a week? Say you do 6 days a week with 1 day off, you'd be pulling 16 hour days. Basically working the entire day then as soon as your finished food and straight to bed. I get you'd have to probably domore than the normal 9-5, but you'd barely sustain that work life for more than 2 months. Isnt oneof the major perks of having your own business to work differently? I'd rather be an employee working less hours than have no life working for myself.

I did a near 65 hour week for my client working 7-18.30 during the week & a half day on a Sunday. After around 3 months I felt like utter shit - both your personal life and work life suffers, your productivity & quality of work go completely downhill. I eventually went back to them and said Id be sticking to my 45 hour week contract. Any extra hours would be charged at double my rate. At the new client Im at I do my 9 hour day & thats it. I dont start any earlier than 07:00 & I log off bang on 17:00 and it feels so much better.

Yeah 65+ Hrs is not worth ANY kind of money
I do think his point was that when you have your own business there is ONLY you to put the time in so yeah, its a working while eating and rarely sleeping kind of life.
But the idea should be to eventually to pull out of the model completely.. and do 4 hours a week :)

I'm not entirely sure exactly what direction I'm going to take, but what I do want is a significantly more enriching life.

I'm looking into online business and that's most likely going to be my first attempt at it. Again, I haven't decided what exactly to sell yet. I'm worried about grabbing some product "just for the sake of it" and would prefer to give myself the best chance by making sure it's something worthwhile, and popular now etc.

Was looking into jumping on this Amazon bandwagon, where people buy stuff for cheap and sell it at a profit using Amazon as the middleman. Again, need to be careful what to buy and sell there.

Sure, pulling 100 hour weeks sounds ridiculous (it doesn't just sound it, it is) but yep the bottom line is to be the driving force in my own company or organisation. Fuck 100 hour weeks. I didn't necessarily mean sitting behind a desk the whole time, but everything else you do that helps you to grow your business or assist in your personal growth - reading, studying all that stuff "outside" work.

The CEO of our company was up doing a talk last week and all I could think the whole time was "I'm gunna be in your shoes one day motherfucker"

Now, I don't mean literally in his shoes. I mean I want to be the top guy. The CEO. A fucking successful entrepreneur.

As for this. The reason I haven't read any more books yet is because from here on I'm going to take the required, or suggested action in the books I read.

Still on that internet millionaire secrets one. Ain't had time to get stuck in as i'm doing psychology shit right now and need to get it out of the way.

Good Luck Bro

Despite not having blindly jumped into any more books yet, I've just started Beyond Positive Thinking by a Dr. Robert Anthony.

The chapters are separated into much smaller chunks with different subheadings. So I can just pop in, read a few, then fuck off again without feeling the need to dedicate to finishing at least a chapter at a time.

Just cos I like to always be reading some self help shit.

Now, gotta get up and tackle another 2600 words for my latest 4000 word report, then post the fucker off tomorrow.

Can't wait till this fucking degree is done & dusted.