3 Foundational books: special guest post for our Celebration
EntreGurus is celebrating 200 posts today, YAY!!!! A big, heartfelt THANK YOU to each and every one of you, Dear Gurupies, who have made this possible.
And for this special celebration, we have a special guest post for you directly from Romania, from my friend Dorel Vaida, the founder of Reading with Purpose.
I admire and respect Dorel very much because of his self-disciplined approach to reading: he decides on a topic, say leadership, gathers a series of book recommendations, and then immerses himself into reading. Mercilessly, he extracts the core knowledge from those books that works for him and makes a handy compendium of that topic. What emerges from each series of books is a transformed and wiser Dorel, full of insight, and ready to take on a new series. He’s unstoppable: Bravo Dorel!
And without further ado, here’s what he wrote for us.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 4 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: 3 Foundational books
— Guest post by Dorel Vaida founder of Reading with Purpose.
Everyone’s reading. We like some books, we dislike some others. Then, every once in a while, there are books that will blow your mind away. They will turn your mind into a spinning wheel and bring out the best in you.
I call those foundational books. And, as with any foundation, it doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. It all depends on what you’ve set out to build.
That foundation you’re building, what’s it for?
Immediately after altMBA, I set out to become a better leader (leadership series). I made a reading list and applied the Reading with Purpose method to extract the best information out of the books on the list. It was a crude approach but I learned. Then, I set out to become a more effective professional and individual (effectiveness series). A much longer reading list. All spectacular books. One thing happened, though. Interesting thing. In both of these reading series, there were a few books that were referenced over and over again as backing research. They were often written by well-regarded academics, and they were based on years and years of research. Foundational, mind you.
Here they are:
Mindset. Drive. Flow.
Now, there’s something interesting about these books. They set out principles for how to do things. Or teach you why you do things. While reading something in my effectiveness series I found myself thinking — Oh, boy, this definitely makes me a better leader too. Well, yes, an effective leader is a better leader. 😉 So, what these books do, I concluded, is give you tools that permeate and improve every aspect of your life.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, is a controversial and comprehensive study of how to have a finer look at intelligence, something more encompassing than raw IQ. Can we really increase our intelligence? Well, if you take raw IQ, you’ve got very narrow margins, if at all. But we, at the same time, accept that there are factors which impair one’s intelligence, such as alcohol and sleep deprivation. Thus, there’s a general agreement that we can become more stupid (aka dramatically lower our intelligence), even if temporarily.
The question is then, why wouldn’t we believe there are ways to boost our intelligence? Turns out that, yes, there are some. It’s all based on a core and deeply ingrained belief in change, in improving qualities and in growing your intelligence through hard work and continuous learning. That is the growth mindset.
Read Mindset to discover how much harm a fixed mindset — as opposed to a growth mindset — is doing to your intelligence. Read Mindset to gain a strategic, life-long perspective on how to use your mind the right way.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Dan Pink, is a fresh look at the brave new world and how the nature of work changed, from routine to creative, in a way that enables motivation 3.0 — intrinsic motivation — versus motivation 2.0 — carrots and sticks. Learn what enables intrinsic motivation, what to look for, or create, in your workplace: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
Read Drive to know what kind of environment helps you become intrinsically motivated, enabling effectiveness for doing work that matters.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is a deep dive into optimal experience. It’s a mesmerizing introspection (at least for an engineer like me) into the anatomy of consciousness and the two conditions — flow or optimal experience, and psychic entropy — which enrich and disrupt the self, respectively.
A most comprehensive case of why the ability to focus attention on a single subject at a time matters tremendously. An equally intriguing and fascinating look into the huge gap in spirituality between the West and the East, and a possible answer to the question of why meditation becomes increasingly popular in the western world.
And it’s all related to a state of mind — flow — in which the subjects report losing the notion of time and the sense of self, and they perform whatever they are doing for the sake of the activity itself. Recognize yourself being in that state, remember how it felt and better understand now how it enables the growth of one’s self.
Read Flow to learn how to reach optimal experience (a process in which you enjoy whatever you do), and also to learn how flow enables an ever-increasing, complex and evolved self.
There you have it; these are what I call the foundational books. As I said earlier, it all depends on what it is that you’re building the foundation for: if you’re building the foundation for a lifelong-learning mindset, and an intrinsically-motivated, ever-growing self that turns both work and leisure into flow, then these three books will be a solid foundation for you.
After reading them I can guarantee you two things (and I’ll sign my name to it!):
- That you will understand yourself better; and
- That you will immediately become an improved version of yourself.
Now go iterate.
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