
Ask HN: What book that you read in 2015 significantly affected how you think? - BreakoutList
Mine (they were read in this order, and I have left off many that weren&#x27;t as good):
Zero to One, Poor Charlie&#x27;s Almanack, Snowball, The Outsiders (8 CEOs, not the fiction novel), Sapiens, Principles by Ray Dalio, Overcoming the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, The Road to Character
======
tedmiston
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

It's a short book with a bias toward action that's changed how I interact with
my work and share it with others.

Key takeaways:

\- good work doesn't market or promote itself [writing a great library doesn't
matter if you don't have docs and examples to make it accessible to people]

\- give people a convenient way to access your work [convince yourself that
having a personal mailing list does not make you too self-important]

\- share your side projects to create a feedback loop early [maybe they could
help solve other people's problems too] / stop telling yourself "i'll ship
this after i fix one more thing"

\- let good ideas bubble up from "flow" to "stock" \-- for example, a few well
received tweets might lead to a blog post which might lead to a whole book

\- reuse the things you create across projects and mediums

\- life is messy and uncertain, but you choose how you crop and present your
experiences [share the interesting parts!]

My full chapter-by-chapter notes:
[https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Show%20...](https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Show%20Your%20Work!.md)

~~~
firebones
Your notes repo is a great idea, and seems to flow from some of Kleon's
principles.

A new 2016 resolution unlocked!

------
shoo
## Things I've been doing this year that's a change from last year:

* switched jobs from full time permanent to better paying less interesting contract work

* moved house to reduce expenses

* growing vegetables

* donating to crowd sourced environmental lobbying campaigns, attending the odd climate change rally

## Thinking that's influenced these actions

\+ our civilisation is geared towards pursuing economic growth, that was a
reasonable idea in earlier times, but is now an arguably terrible one, as we
near/exceed planetary environmental boundaries. changing reality, old
thinking. our goals are wrong.

\+ if i learn to be more self sufficient and live modestly i can retire in a
few years, and will be more resilient against things going amiss with the
economy / society.

## Books I've read that have influenced my thinking:

* a stack of climate-change related books. e.g. here's a few book recommendations from a post i made earlier this year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053960)

* personal finance blogs

Warning: it's probably best not to read a bunch of climate change books if you
are in a place in your life where you are prone to depression.

~~~
edcastano
@shoo Have you seen
[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/)? Also,
message me if you want to collaborate on an environmental advocacy platform.
[http://writegreen.org/](http://writegreen.org/) Unfortunately, it's not
currently working because I need to migrate the app to Cedar 14 on Heroku. I
haven't been hacking since 2011
([http://mbahacks.com/](http://mbahacks.com/)), so not feeling confident I
could successfully migrate myself. Here is the old writegreen site that talks
about the idea a bit more:
[https://writegreen.wordpress.com/problem/](https://writegreen.wordpress.com/problem/)
. The Nature Conservancy and NRDC were interested in the tool, but I wasn't
able to invest any more time into it at the time (I had a family to feed).

Anyhow, I'm looking to get back into trying to make a dent on this topic.
Would love to connect with others to collaborate on something. Writegreen, or
otherwise. I'd like to leave this world to my children better than I found it.
Right now, it's not looking that way. You can message me directly via ed dot
castano at gmail.com

------
lamby
Curious, although not altogether unsurprising, to find so few fiction books
being mentioned. :)

For me, it would be a toss-up between James Clavell's «Shogun» (but I wouldn't
really be able to explain how or why), and then perhaps «Waking Up» by Sam
Harris (a bit more obvious).

~~~
fasteo
>>> then perhaps «Waking Up» by Sam Harris (a bit more obvious).

Bought it 1 hour ago. Great reading so far. Thanks for the pointer.

------
Bar_Code
Positive Intelligence. I was able to "label" my personality and all of those
of my teams and reports. I know how I need to change, and know what drives the
people I work with. I never thought of the over achiever as a problem, but
they "prevent" others from stepping up. Emotional Intelligence 2.0. Much
easier read than the original. We are humans, driven by emotion, we need to be
smart about it.

------
jrumbut
Atomic Accidents

This is a series of detailed retelling of accidents involving nuclear power,
weapons, and radioactive materials generally. It starts with some 19th century
hunters wandering into a cave full of radon and ends with Fukushima. The twist
here is that the author is a major proponent of nuclear energy and research.
It's fascinating to see someone take an in depth look at the flaws of a cause
they support, it has just the right amount of technical detail for me, and it
really sheds light on how the wildest bugs get into any system.

Dept. of Speculation

A mostly unflinching look at a difficult modern relationship from a woman's
perspective. There are some hard truths in it that are surprisingly easy to
swallow.

Moby Dick

I read this novel in high school but it didn't have much impact on me then. It
is an unbelievably rich experience now, filled with all the wonder, terror,
joy, and boredom that comes from trying to find your own meaning.

------
noblethrasher
_On Intelligence_ , by Jeff Hawkins — At some point, he off-handily mentions
that what we call “consciousness” may just be what it feels like to have a
neocortex, similar to how vision is nothing more than just what it feels like
to have eyes.

 _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ , by Neil Postman — Among lots of other ideas,
he defends the thesis that / _writing_ / is still humankind’s greatest
invention, and that our thoughtless eagerness to replace it with newer forms
of media, such as television and computers— _just because they 're newer_—is
dumb and dangerous.

------
brudgers
My answer to a recent similar but tech oriented question:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10702175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10702175)

------
gangcil_yc
Pretty interesting book with obscure yet consequential assessment and history
on a controversial topic today: Religious Extremism in the Lives of
Contemporary Muslims
[https://ia902506.us.archive.org/17/items/ReligiousExtremism/...](https://ia902506.us.archive.org/17/items/ReligiousExtremism/Religious%20Extremism.pdf)
( __* written and translated well before September 11).

Another valuable read: What Is Islam?
[http://d1.islamhouse.com/data/en/ih_books/single/en_What_Isl...](http://d1.islamhouse.com/data/en/ih_books/single/en_What_Islam.pdf)
Both made it less nebulous to me of what is otherwise a largely irreconcilably
contradictory narrative ([http://nypost.com/2015/11/22/missing-paris-attacker-
loved-ga...](http://nypost.com/2015/11/22/missing-paris-attacker-loved-gay-
bars-and-playstation/)).

Bad Samaritans, Ha-Joon Chang : a neat illuminating read on economic
development matters that are not typically articulated in discussions of
relevance and dominance.

------
kleer001
Reading it now, so that technically counts.

"Say this not that." by Carl Alasko

I've gone through a metric shit ton pile of self help and relationship help
books in my time. But I think this one, while it repeats some well worn
wisdom, it presents them in a concrete enough way that the advice is finally
gaining traction in my own head. I think the key is that it presents the
advice in real world vignettes as both bad and good idea formats. Like that
bone guy on Animaniacs.

------
kfnn
Karen Horney - Neurosis and Human Growth

The book attempts to describe the complete process of neurotic personality
development: how and why it starts, how it affects a person's behavior and
life choices. It's full of references to real-life cases Horney encountered as
a psychoanalyst.

Many concepts presented in this book where a revelation to me, and I believe
it significantly deepened my understanding of myself and human psychology in
general.

I think anyone could benefit from reading this, because even if you're not
neurotic at all, you will inevitably meet someone who is.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis_and_Human_Growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis_and_Human_Growth)

~~~
zeeed
Is this work still state-of-the-art, given that it has been written in 1950?

~~~
kfnn
I honestly have no idea. I did a quick search and I couldn't find any notable
further works on neurosis in the field of psychoanalysis (perhaps E.Fromm,
Adler? But this is the same generation). Surely other branches of psychology
keep studying the subject.

To me personally, Horney's observations felt enough accurate and complete, so
I wasn't really looking for other books on the subject.

------
SeaDude
"The Internet is Not the Answer" by: Andrew Keen

FINALLY! a scathing, rake-that-rich-a$$-across-thee-coals dive into our
superficial obsession with the digitally privileged. Muah!Best book I've read
in years + the appendix/biblio holds 20 pages or so of FURTHER awesome
reading.

"Human Use of Human Beings" by: Norbert Weiner

An awesome transportation into 1950 MIT professor who calls out the problems
of "progress" and explores communication in the neatest way. Everything he
mentions is still a problem today! I just really dug this book.

------
splitdisk
The War of Art | Steven Pressfield

May have turned me into a workaholic though...

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I couldn't get on with that book, there seemed to be a lack of anything useful
in it, for me anyway.

------
trishume
[https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-
zombies/](https://intelligence.org/rationality-ai-zombies/) and
[http://hpmor.com/](http://hpmor.com/) gave me a great model of how to plan
and think about difficult issues. Excellent (and very long, each one is the
length of 5+ books) primers on rationality.

------
iamnothere
Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday. It's Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"
for the social media age.

------
twunde
The goal. I was really surprised by the number of new insights I had, even
after reading the Phoenix project multiple times.

------
lilcarlyung
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Free Will by Sam Harris. Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

~~~
krp
How did Atlas Shrugged change your way of thinking? I've read The
Fountainhead, but felt like Officer Barbrady when I started Atlas Shrugged
many years ago. Maybe it's worth another shot?

~~~
EliRivers
While I'm not the OP, I'll answer anyway. It changed how I thought _about
Atlas Shrugged_ ; previously, I thought it was some kind of political tract
cum morality tale, but after reading it I thought it was a fairy tale and was
slightly concerned at how seriously it was taken.

------
miraj
Some of the books that made me think and look at things differently (from 2015
readings only):

\- In the Light of What We Know

\- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No
Easy Answers

\- Bathing the Lion

\- The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

\- The Tears of Dark Water

\- God Is Dead

\- A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life

\- The Water Knife

------
ldd
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

------
mindcrime
Not sure about "significantly affected how I think", but here are a couple of
the standouts from 2015 that come to mind:

 _The First World War: A Complete History_

 _Predictable Revenue_

 _Superforecasting_

 _The Master Algorithm_

 _Natural Born Heroes_

------
adomanico
The Moral Landscape - Sam Harris

River Out of Eden - Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

------
jordsmi
the millionaire fastlane by mj demarco.

It has the same problem as the 4hww where the name sounds very scammy, but the
idea behind the book is really good.

------
rfc
A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life

------
krp
The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene. I began reading it with a "know your
enemy" frame of mind, similar to why I read some Ayn Rand, hoping that I'd
better understand why some people behave certain ways. As I got further into
the book I began reflecting upon the past, becoming consciously aware of all
the faux pas I've made over the years. I started identifying with all the
honest, outspoken historical figures that would speak their mind and end up
without a head. I used to pride myself on my _honesty above all else_ way of
life, thinking how virtuous it was to be like Socrates or Galileo. Now I
realize that more often than not, I'd just seem like a dick, and probably
wouldn't have a head if the guillotine were still in use. Now I put more
energy into understanding others points of view, and understand others better
as a result. Much of my old behavior was childish.

Others that changed my way of thinking in some way or another:

Rework, Getting Real, and the recent Reconsider post - DHH & Jason Fried: I'd
always considered external funding as the best way to grow things I've built
in the past, and wrote off the few bad experiences with this approach as being
outliers. After also reading others' bad experiences throughout the year, now
I'm wondering if my experiences were perhaps representative of the industry as
a whole. Confirmation bias? Maybe. I'm sure there are the rare few good
angel/VC's somewhere out there (no doubt someone will reply with "YC").
However, after watching several things I'd passionately built over significant
amounts of time be driven to failure by others, I'd much rather bootstrap
future projects. I learned a lot from each failure, but trial and error is a
shitty way to spend years of your life. Far better to learn what worked from
those who succeeded.

Business Adventures - John Brooks: Until this book, reading about businesses
was one of the most boring things I could imagine. Some of it is dated, but
there are also many valuable gems that still hold true 50 years later. I now
see that with a good storyteller, even seemingly boring subjects can be
fascinating.

Freshbooks: Breaking the Time Barrier - McDerment & Cowper: This tiny book
(free from their website) helped me think of new ways to improve my consulting
services and emphasize value instead of focusing on hourly rates, which made
it easier to make more money.

Various online sales & marketing resources: My viewpoint on the importance of
sales & marketing has also completely flipped since the beginning of the year.
I used to have the mental image of a used car salesman whenever I heard the
word sales, and of Mad Men when I heard marketing. Now I understand that if
you don't market what you build, nobody will know that it exists. If you don't
experiment with different sales tactics, you'll miss out on a huge amount of
users who would otherwise love using your product, but who avoid it because
it's priced wrong, or you're unable to convince them of why they'd want to use
it.

