
Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2019? - bryk
I&#x27;m interested in what book(s) changed your life in 2014. I ask because I&#x27;m going through something of a personal and professional renaissance.<p>Thanks for a great community and I look forward to your suggestions.
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dmfdmf
The Upper Half of the Motorcycle: On The Unity of Rider and Machine. By Bernt
Spiegel

Spiegel is a psychologist. If you are not a rider then you might not know that
one of the main appeals of riding, that many riders have not explicitly
identified, is the tight integration of mind/body or the subconscious and
conscious mind. This was why I bought the book.

Your riding skills have to be automatized subconsciously because the conscious
mind is far too slow in this environment. In his book he has a number of
riding "objectives" that you need to automatize to be an expert or world class
rider. These are pretty standard riding tips and strategies but the part that
changed my life was his recommendation of using an error counter. You get one
of those hand-held tally-counters, like coaches use to count laps or reps, and
you mount it on your bike and when you violate the rules or tips you count an
error and forget about it. At the end of your ride or practice race you count
and track your error rate and think about ways in which you could have done
better.

Now I am just a recreational motorcycle rider and have no desire to become a
world-class rider so I never used his method to improve my riding skills.
Nevertheless, I realized that everything he says about riding applies to
acting and living in your daily life! Daily life moves too fast to think/act
consciously and most of our actions are guided by subconscious processing that
we automatized in the past. The problem comes when you consciously want to
change your behavior but keep subconsciously acting on old ideas, premises and
habit.

So how do you undo that automatic error? I bought a couple of tally counters
and carry one with me, one in my car etc and count errors in my automatic
thoughts or actions for the week and calculate and track a daily error rate.
In a few weeks I have been able to make progress on correcting subconscious
errors that I have been trying to correct for decades with little to no
progress. I am using it to count negative thoughts, mind-reading (of others),
logical errors and other subconscious flaws that I want to fix or improve.
This tip has changed my life and you probably don't even need to read the book
to get this precious gem.

~~~
agumonkey
Interesting, it would great to extend the idea to maths. They say 'you dont
understand math you get used to it'. And it does feel the same internalizing
complex physical knowledge. One morning you wake up and some concept is
commited to subconscious.

Very strange.

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jurgenwerk
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Man, reading this book really put a fire
under my ass. I realized how much more I could be getting out of life by
pursuing optionality and using the barbell strategy.

A quote that stuck with me the most is: "If you have more than one reason to
do something, don't do it." That means that you are trying to convince
yourself to do it. Obvious decisions require no more than one good reason.

~~~
natalyarostova
It’s a shame he has made himself distasteful to sum through his tweets, as his
books (particularly anti fragile) are phenomenal.

~~~
omosubi
Totally agree. his books would be even better if he got rid of the obnoxious
chest thumping and just laid out his arguments. I read it a few months ago and
it was the only book of the year that I wanted to reread. I continually find
myself relating things back to it.

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pisteoff
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

A beautiful book about waves, love, writing, and living a good life. As a
surfer, skier, mountain biker, and overall risk taker, this book affected me
in the same way "Walden Pond" or "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" affects some
people. It is the most impactful book I've read in the past 10 years. Probably
not for everyone, but for those of a certain ilk it is stunning.

~~~
mindfulmark
I cannot agree more. I haven't felt so strongly about a book in a long time.

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rocketpastsix
"The Simple Path to Wealth" by JL Collins. Gave me a clear path to what to do
with my money and investments.

~~~
tracer4201
I really enjoyed The Millionaire Nextdoor.

Is there detailed practical advice other than investing in cheap index funds?

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raptorraver
Biography of saint Siluan the Athonite deeply affected how I view the world
and people around me
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/898516.Saint_Silouan_the...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/898516.Saint_Silouan_the_Athonite)

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shekhardesigner
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall.

This book gave me broader prospective in understanding geopolitics in a way I
have never thought before.

After reading this book, I see world and global event differently, my biased
opinion about many countries have changed.

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Anon84
This might help:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21900498)

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swirepe
"The Argonauts" by Maggie Nelson. It turns out that gender is pretty complex,
and I hadn't spent much time thinking about it before.

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rchaudhary
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

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chillacy
Probably made the biggest material difference in how I feel day to day, and
finally convinced me to keep a regular schedule.

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hikerclimb
The last lecture

