I thought I would list some of the books I’ve read recently and found interesting or enjoyable recently.  I won’t write a lot about them because they are Amazon links that you can follow and get a lot more information than I can provide here.

Heart Warming

I love animals and this book just made me feel good.  A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion.

Happiness and Well-Being

Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life – I highly recommend this book.  It doesn’t seem to be too well known but 64% of Amazon reviewers gave it 5 stars.  I agree.  The author Dr. Todd Kashdan claims the missing ingredient in much of the popularization of positive psychology is curiosity.  Very well written.

Two books by Tal Ben-Shahar The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life and Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment.  The author has a very personable writing style and these books are full of insights that I found valuable.  They are both fairly short (200 pages) and easy to read.  I found the one on perfection to be slightly preferable because it covers less well-travelled ground.

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want is outstanding.

I wrote a whole article called Positivity Leads to a Flourishing Life on this book so I won’t say anymore here other than I recommend it: Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive.

Productivity

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less is a unique and fascinating book by Sam Carpenter. It gets an 90% 5 star rating on Amazon.

I absolutely loved Can I Have Your Attention?: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Concentration.  This book is obviously not widely read and my review on Amazon is the only one out there.  I gave it 5 stars when I was only 1/2 way through the book.  So maybe I’m crazy and maybe I liked it because it was so unique.  I really don’t know, but it is an inexpensive and short 200 page paperback so how can you lose?

I devoured The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World and now I’m trying to figure out how to use it.  It is a quick and interesting read.

OK, I read this one a long time ago but it is an idea that most people just don’t seem to apply: The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less.

Good to Great

The book gets a 94% 5 star rating on Amazon: The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great. I truly enjoyed this book and it has a fairly unique thesis.  Rick Smith the author writes about how to make “the leap” without leaping and taking a lot of risk.  It’s 200 pages long and is an easy read.

Health

I bought this book the day it came out.  I noticed it has since received a 100% 5 star rating on Amazon.  It is a fascinating and unique book and I strongly recommend it.  Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality

Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever – This is a very interesting and highly valuable book in my opinion.  The nine steps are a mnemonic for the word “transcend”: Talk with your doctor; Relaxation; Assessment; Nutrition; Supplements; Calorie reduction; Exercise; New technologies; Detoxification.  The authors have an extremely optimistic view of the future in health that may not come to pass, but this is an excellent resource.

Odd

I thoroughly enjoyed The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, but it is rather controversial and gets mixed reviews.  To a curious person like myself it was a very interesting read.

Biography

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a long (721 pages) biography about the father of the atomic bomb.  I found it engrossing.

True Story

Trail Of Feathers: Searching for Philip True is about a reporter who was murdered in Mexico and the subsequent search for justice.

Life in General

I thought this book was excellent but be forewarned: it is a rejoinder to the very popular The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  Thus, it is not for everyone.  Robert M. Price writes from a humanist perspective:  The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For?

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Get Free Updates to The Rat Race Trap by Email here or via a reader in the top left sidebar.  I would love to have you on board.

This is the third article in the series describing Leo Babauta’s ideas from his book Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta.  I highly recommend it.

The other articles can be found here:

The Power of Less – Setting Limits
The Power of Less – Identify the Essential

Focus

Focus is your most important tool in becoming more effective.

Leo says focus on less to become more effective: Focus on one goal to achieve it, focus on a single task at a time and you’ll be more productive, and focus on the present to reduce stress and anxiety.

• Focus on a goal.  The most important factor in achieving a goal is focus.  Not self-discipline, willpower, or rewards but simply maintaining focus on a goal or habit at all times.
• Focus on the present.  Focusing on the present will reduce stress and help you live life to the fullest.  (see below)
• Focus on the task at hand.  Clear distractions and get into the flow of whatever task you decide to work on. (see below)
• Focus on the positive.  Eliminate complaining and eliminate the constant focus on problems. Instead focus on the good things and how good you’ll feel when you accomplish whatever you are working on.

How to Focus on the Present

“If we spend most of our time thinking about the past or future, we are missing life itself. It’s passing us by while we’re elsewhere. You can’t get the most out of life unless you learn to focus on being present, while things are happening. Thinking about your childhood, or your kid’s future, is useless if your kids’ childhood is passing by without you being there.” –Leo Babauta

Here are three links to being present Leo has published on his blog.  The first is the most comprehensive.

• A Simple Guide to Being Present for the Overworked and Overwhelmed
• 5 Inspirations for Being in the Moment
• Practical Tips to Practice Being Present

Focus on the Task at Hand

Single-task and do not multi-task.  Studies prove over and over again that given the same tasks, people who serially process them and single-task instead of multi-task are much more efficient at getting things done.  Total time to complete all tasks is much shorter.  Multi-tasking also creates stress.  Keep yourself sane!

How to Single-Task

• Do your most important task or tasks (MITs) first thing in the morning.  Don’t do anything else until these are done.
• Block Interruptions.  Go to a private conference room, shut your door, turn off email, cell phones, etc.
• Do small similar tasks like email, phone calls, blog reading, etc. periodically and in batches.  So maybe work on a MIT for two hours and then batch process your email.
• Every hour take a five to ten minute break and drink some water.  Every few hours eat a small healthy snack.  During your breaks completely disconnect from work and enjoy the moment.  Go outside and get some nature.

My good friend Jonathan over at Advance Life Skills wrote an excellent article on applied focus sessions.  I recommend you check it out.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Get Free Updates to The Rat Race Trap by Email here or via a reader in the top left sidebar.  I would love to have you on board.

This is the second article in the series describing Leo Babauta’s ideas from his book Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta.  I highly recommend it.

The first article can be found here:

The Power of Less – Setting Limits

Identify the Essential

Choose only the essential and you will create maximal impact with minimal resources.  Always choose the essential to maximize your time and energy.

In contrast to most systems, in the Power of Less you learn to choose the essential first.  Most others tell you how to get things done quickly without teaching you how to determine what is most important to you.

You must constantly ask yourself, what is essential?  No matter what you are doing and when.  The context can be this hour, this day, this week, this year, or your whole life.

This is something that very few people do.  Our lives are filled with the trivial.  Are those hours of useless TV really essential to your long-term well-being?  I doubt it.  Do all of those 50 emails qualify as essential with a big impact today?  Are the hours of web surfing or online games essential to your well-being or are they an easy escape?

We rationalize everything we do as important and essential when in fact it is not.  Below are some questions to ask to help identify what is essential to you.  But keep in mind the standard must be very high.  Don’t just tell yourself everything is of the same value or everything is necessary, because it is most certainly not.  Take an axe to your non-essential activities and maximize your time by concentrating on the most important.

The Key Questions

These are not all Leo’s questions.  I’ve changed it up quite a bit.

Questions to identify the essential:

• What things give you that feeling of well-being or genuine happiness?
• What do you want out of life?
• What fills you with emotion and inspires you to want
  to make a difference?
• What are your most important values? What’s most
  important to you; the principles by which you want
  to live your life.
• What are your goals?  For your life, next year, next
  month?
• What do you love? Who, what, how you love to
  spend your time.
• What has the biggest impact? When you are making
  choices between projects, tasks, activities ask which
  one will create the biggest impact.
• What has the most long-term impact?
• What did you really enjoy doing as a kid at play?

Simplify

Simplify by eliminating anything that is not essential.

This part is easy.  Stop doing anything that you have not identified as essential.  Spend your time on your most important priorities.  This simple principle will do more to advance your real goals that almost anything else you can do.  The heart surgeon does not perform the janitorial duties in the operating room, even though he may be perfectly capable of it.  His valuable time is best spent on the patients.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Get Free Updates to The Rat Race Trap by Email here or via a reader in the top left sidebar.  I would love to have you on board.

Overview

I’ve been a fan of Leo Babauta’s ideas ever since I stumbled across his blog.  His book Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta. is simply fantastic.  I’m going to give you a summary of his ideas in a series of articles starting with this one.

The other articles are listed below:

The Power of Less – Identify the Essential

Leo’s ideas are true to themselves – they are elegant examples of less.  The system has two foundational steps from which the rest of the system derives:

1. Identify the Essential
2. Eliminate the Rest

Modern society is consumption oriented.  Everything seems to be focused towards getting more stuff.  To get more stuff we spend our time getting more money.  Time is finite and so is human ability so there is a limit to what we can do.  If we maximize productivity and time management practice, we can get more tasks done.  But by trying to maximize the number of tasks we do, we end up doing unimportant things.  This dilutes our focus and takes energy away from the more important tasks.  We also end up stressed-out, overworked, and unhealthy.

Setting Limits

Setting limits forces you to choose the essential.  So set limitations for everything you do.

Setting limits is the first of Leo’s six main principles.  Leo provides a beautiful illustration of it with Japanese Haiku.  This form of poetry requires the poet to express a complete idea in 17 syllables.  In order to accomplish this, the poet must eliminate everything that is not absolutely essential to the meaning.  The result is something very powerful.

Another example.  Imagine two reporters.  Each week, one reporter writes 30 short, quick, and limited articles that get little attention.  The other reporter writes one really good article each week.  Each article has high impact and he receives awards on some of them.  The second reporter did less, focused on the long-term, and gets promotions and widespread recognition as a result.  This is the Power of Less at work.

You can choose to be like the first reporter and “Get Things Done” or you can choose to be like the second reporter and do fewer but more high impact tasks.  How do you decide what activities are high impact?  Use the following criteria:

• Long-term view – Will it make you a lot of money or get you a lot of recognition in the long-term?  Will it make you happy and contribute to your long-term well-being?
• Life changing – Your career or personal life is changed for the better in some important way.
• Makes a significant contribution to society or humanity.

Apply these criteria to your tasks, projects, and goals to help determine what is essential for your life.  I would also suggest you check out these articles:

Edit Your Life
Finding Your True Self

Setting Limits

Apply limits to all aspects of your Life – email, possessions, work hours, phone calls, internet surfing, etc.  Apply limits first to any area in your life that seems overwhelming.  It will force you to be very effective.  This is one of the greatest ideas on how to live your life I have ever found.

We lead lives filled with way too much stuff.  It weakens and dilutes our effectiveness.  Go from a limitless life of too much stuff, gadgets, information, etc. that is overwhelming, stressful and ineffective to a life of limits, focus, and incredible power.  This change will bring the following benefits:

• Simplifies your life.  Everyday life becomes stress-free and under control.
• You gain focus.  You are focused on a small number of things and you are focused only on what is important.  You stop doing everything else.
• Demonstrates that your time is valuable – others will respect this.  Firm limits on what you do demonstrates to other people that you treat your
  time as a precious resource.  You expect everyone else to treat your time the same way.
• You are more effective and you achieve more.  You are doing less busy work and more of your important work.  You aren’t spinning your wheels on the trivial.

Set limits on any area of your life that you think is overwhelming.  Examples might include:

• Email
• Number of tasks or projects
• Time spent on phone calls or internet surfing
• The number of things on your desk or workspace
• The number of subscriptions, paper or online, you regularly read

In reality this is a small fraction of the things you will ultimately want to limit.  However you need to move slowly, changing only one thing at a time until it becomes a habit.

How to Set Limits

Put a strict limit on something you do such as checking email.  Instead of 10 times a day try checking it three times a day.  Test the result.  Can you live with it?  Can you do your job with it?  The first week or so of your new habit is an experiment and you will tweak the limit as you learn more about what is reasonable for you.  Continually adjust until you find the right level and make it a habit.

Setting limits is a powerful technique to prevent common tasks from taking over your life.  I suggest you give it a spin.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Get Free Updates to The Rat Race Trap by Email here or via a reader in the top left sidebar.  I would love to have you on board.