Book Notes Archives - Michael Bianco

Book Notes: Wanting

I ran into Luke Burgis years ago and was excited when his book Wanting came out. Rene Girard’s thought changed my perspective and lens through which I view many things in business and life. I think of the philosophy of Rene Girard is a kind of axiomatic definition of human interaction; the physics of human action and desire. When I found Luke was running a conference on Girard I had to attend. I’ve always enjoyed the first attempt at a niche conference. Only the true believers show up and you are guaranteed to have really interesting conversations. Additionally, it was a great way for me to dive deeper into Girard’s thought; I still feel like a total beginner…

Book Notes: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

This was a book recommended to me by some folks at work, and has been popular on tech twitter. I have more kids than the average person (4), and we’ve chosen to have them closer together than most; the title caught my attention. Below is my summary & thoughts on the book! I hesitate to write anything about parenting, there are so many strong opinions, there’s no perfect right answer, and I’m always learning and changing my views. Follow the data Brian (author) uses a lot of twin studies, mostly from 1st world middle-class families with no major trauma (which he calls out as a caveat), to support his arguments. The basic argument he’s making that if you are a middle-class family in a first-world country, his findings apply to you…

Book Notes: The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Something new I’m doing this year is book notes. I believe writing down your thoughts helps you develop, harden, and remember them. Books take a lot of time to read, taking time to document lessons learned is worth it. Here are the notes for The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Definitely worth reading, especially if you are actively building a company, although I wouldn’t say it’s in the must-read category. Below are my notes! Enjoy. Leadership A much better idea would have been to give the problem to the people who could not only fix it, but who would also be personally excited and motivated to do so. I think any good leader feels personally responsible for the outcome of whatever they are doing…

Book Notes: Successful Fathers

An older book (no kindle version!), Successful Fathers, was recommended to me by a father I really respect. Here are my book notes for it. Fathers and mothers today, isolated as they are from their own parents and extended family, need as much experienced advice as they can get. In our own era, they need to work harder to get it. Rings very true. Most parents, who aren’t under some other massive life stress (finances, health, etc) are very concerned about raising their kids the "right way". I am too. However, parenting advice is an industry. It’s a business. There’s lots of advice in books, videos, courses, etc and much of it is conflicting. We aren’t missing advice, we are missing advice we can trust…

Book Notes: Making it All Work

Something new I’m going to try doing this year is book notes. I’m continually more bought into the idea that writing down your thoughts helps you harden and remember them. Books take a lot of time to read: if I’m going to invest the time in a book, I should be ok investing another ~hour in calcifying the lessons I learned—so that’s what I’m going to try to do. This should help me better filter what books to read: if it’s not worth spending the time to write the notes, I probably shouldn’t read the book (obviously excluding entertainment-only reading). Here are the notes for Making it All Work. The book wasn’t great, I wouldn’t read it unless you haven’t read Getting Things Done and are new to personal productivity. Here are the notes!..

Category: Book Notes