Zen and the Art of Admin Tasks by Nic De Castro, Nathan Pettijohn
Published by Lioncrest Publishing on 27/06/2018
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 66
Format: eBook
Goodreads

In the world of hustle, we often forget how much time we lose instead of spending it in a useful manner. Time management is an actionable task if you run a startup or a micro business. If you are not managing your time wilfully, you are not only losing time but your energy too in performing mundane tasks. Think about the most mundane task you go through every day that unknowingly consumes a lot of time?

I am a remote worker and I spend a lot of my time reading and answering emails (not from my workmates). Emails in a modern world, consume a lot of our time. I often find myself reading emails on my laptop and if away from that, my mobile phone happily delivers them to me. Zen and the Art of Admin Tasks is a short book, mere 65 pages, about how to outsource these type of administrative tasks. It offers a system that if followed and maintained can add a lot of value to your time and save that energy. It is a tactical guide that might not interest everyone, but let me convince you to read it at least once.

Along with defining the situation by giving a real-life example of the major difference by managing these tasks on your own versus hire someone to manage your inbox, this book offers a variety of tools, mostly free. Written by Nic De Castro and Nathan Pettijohn, both of them are startup owners. They describe by hiring a virtual assistant how they were able to add more value to their personal and work life.

This book even the so short is about implementing the strategies defined in it ASAP. That is the idea both the co-authors want to convey. The writing style is simple and to the point. The tools and systems defined are pragmatic. Two of those tools, I have started using them. However, I do feel this book could have been a longer and tackled other issues for a modern-day hustler. I would have loved to hear about how Nic’s and Nathan’s manage and tackle different situations in their startup world. That zen could have been more descriptive.

3.5 out of 5!

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Mastering Fear - A Navy SEAL's Guide by Brandon Webb, John David Mann
Published by Portfolio on 07/08/2018
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship, Self Help
Pages: 256
Format: eBook
Goodreads

Best book I have read in 2018!

When I saw the cover of the book I knew I had to get my hands on it. The cover is unique and simple. A yellow background with a man representing a warrior type of a person on a horse killing a lion with a spear. Might sound mythological to some or hypothetical to others. It has a significance to the context of the book. I urge you whatever thought comes into your mind after grasping the cover image from both of your eyes, either try to remember it or write it down somewhere. You will be astonished by its significance.

Mastering Fear is a great title to start the book. It is not your typical self-help book if you read it carefully. The author of this book had experience in war zones of Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL where he learned a lot of things and developed a conscience for trusting himself in the situations where panic easily takes over a human mind. Brandon Webb, he is an accomplished author and has written many books before this one. Apart from being a Navy SEAL, he now runs a media business that is worth millions. Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to understand the motive behind this book. To master the fear, the first step is to take a decision and I want you to take decide for yourself whether this book is for you or not.

Mastering Fear is not about facing a hostile gang of men or being in a war zone. It's about the battlefield in your mind.
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Think about it. Who is that person that you most spend time with? Talk to, care about or listen to? Yes, yourself! This book talks about you. It is based on you. There are stories of people who are have mastered their own fear of drowning in the water, heights or build their own life after getting bankrupt 2 or 3 times. But all are these realities of others who have faced panic in its face when the time came for them. Brandon Webb, the co-author of this book starts it in a storytelling way about his friend who is suffering from the fear of drowning for the last 35 years of his life. The only reason he is still suffering because he wants to learn to swim and has tried everything. Contacted every medal winner or coach but always failed. This how Brandon concludes this situation:

Mastering Fear is not about becoming physically stronger, or tougher, or more macho r more aggressive, or more stoic. It is about how to identify and change the conversation in your mind.
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I consider this a universal truth after hours of dwelling in works of ancient and modern day writers. The book focus on the self’s thought process and how to change it when the situation of an excruciating adrenaline rush comes where we often fail because we forget to give it a second thought right there, in that circumstance. This is the core of the book. Switching your thought process and understanding that fear is not something you should despise and can have your own way in life. Brandon points out that fear is a signpost, a gateway to the prize or the achievement or your success. It can be that secret weapon or the missing piece of puzzle right under your nose. To do so, Brandon divides the whole process into five interesting steps that are demonstrated with real-life anecdotes.

The writing style of the book is simple and easy to grasp. The book even though only 250 pages long is time-consuming. The chapters are short and consistent. Each follows the previous one, so I would not recommend skipping one for another. Its narrative style is catchy. Once you sit down and start reading it, it is hard to move away from it.

I would also like to say here that the context of the book is solely a pragmatic POV. Some readers might do not want to read it since it is written by a Navy SEAL or some only want to read it because it is written by a Navy SEAL and will have content on war zones, et cetera. You both are going to be disappointed. This book is about overcoming your fear even if you sit in a cubicle all day. It is about how to grow as a person and achieve what you always wanted to.

A must-read book for everyone.

5 out of 5!

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Pennies to Power by Tom Graneau
on 30/04/18
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 340
Format: ARC, eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

Netgalley is a good platform to browse for upcoming books. If you get lucky, you will get the chance to read an ARC of a book you wish too. I also think it is one of the biggest platforms to search for indie authors. Recently, I got my hands on Tom Graneau’s new book, Pennies to Power: How to use your 20’s to Gain Financial Independence for Life.

For those of you who do not know, Tom is an advocate for working independently. At least to generate an income for your own efforts instead of working for others and fulfilling their dreams. In this book, he tries to provide pragmatic patterns and suggestions. He intakes 7 cultural barriers that are adhering most people from earn money outside their monthly paycheck life. There is no harm in that, but doing what you love and earning for yourself instead of paying to the banks to clear of your loans, is the motivation behind this book. Pennies to power gives the example of the American financial situation. It is full of researched anecdotes and diagrams. The author shows how temptations lead debt that looms for the rest of their lives. This forces one to think and live in a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.

Pennies to Power tries to educate young ones about what financial situations they might lead into if there are no proper steps taken early in their lives. Tom believes that an individual’s 20s are the best time to start. Even though this book is targeted at people of a certain age group. The author claims that it can be useful for someone in their late twenties, I feel otherwise. I think the right audience for this book is for the age group of 18 to 22. They might feel more empowered and find it useful.

The writing style is not an attractive one. Even though it is a work of non-fiction, I felt it could have been better. The language is easy to understand and the book justifies the theme it revolves around: money.

3 out of 5!

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Infin-Eight: Eight Principles for Infinite Professional Success by Prajeet Budhale
Published by Fingerprint! Publishing on 01/05/2018
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship, Self Help
Pages: 224
Format: Paperback
Goodreads

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Crushing It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
Published by HarperBusiness on 30/01/2018
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 228
Format: eBook
Goodreads

If you show up with that energy, and intensity every single day, good things are going to happen. #CRUSHINGIT
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Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord
Published by Silicon Guild on 09/01/2018
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 228
Format: eBook
Goodreads

The nature of business in the modern digital and information overload age is ever-changing. The foundation of Patty McCord’s book Powerful – Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility is that the as workplace progress, so should human resources.

The author challenges the old, traditional corporate HR that include annual performance reviews, retention plans, engagement programs, etc. She clearly speaks her mind in the early chapters that these activities and actions are a mere waste of time and resources and why the modern day companies, irrespective of their number of employees should not practice them.

I liked this ideology. I feel this is the most positive point in the book. All that corporate mumbo-jumbo is a distraction and I have experienced it myself while working full time in previous years. It does stop an organization’s development process. Patty McCord’s pragmatic suggestions in managing a company are discussed in detail throughout this book.

Although the book starts stating that it is not a memoir, after reading it, I’d say that it is. It is written from the perspective of the author and her experiences in the organizations she worked. Especially, at Netflix. Another thing I did not like while reading is that the writing style is plain and it failed to create any enthusiasm in me as a reader and a learner looking to get something out of this book. While the practical insights shared from her own experience at Netflix in the book are a must-read, the way they are presented is not an ideal one.

3 out of 5

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Before You Start Up: How to Prepare to Make Your Startup Dream a Reality by Pankaj Goyal
Published by Fingerprint! Publishing on 24/11/2017
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 200
Format: Paperback
Goodreads

The debut novel of Pankaj Goyal, Before You Start Up is about preparing for the life of an entrepreneur. This book offers insight on more than having an idea, evaluating it, the financial hurdle, and other pragmatic steps of launching your own product or a service company. It is a business book that I recommend especially to someone who might have doubts in their mind about the journey.

Doubts are not at all like holes in the brain cells. They are an essential part of a critical thinking process. But they often lead to low creativity levels. I urge not to dwell in them much. Instead, read this book. The first 50 pages of this book are highly critical. The author/entrepreneur himself starts by telling his own journey, a brief period of three years of his own product. All over the book, he has used quotes and cites text from the book that is already bestsellers and popular in the business world as well as with readers. He refers to the to his story in between the chapters. But that is not the reason I want you to read this book.

This book offers a lot of pragmatic advice that is important to observe if not implement all of it. I suggest you take his advice and his personal experience as his own point of view but at the same time you will find things useful. The world is full of them. You have your own and that is very necessary. No one has succeeded in their life by walking the track already exists. It is not a linear track for anyone.

The topics this book puts emphasis on are the generation of an idea, evaluating it, finding a co-founder, but most important one I found is understanding your “why”. It is all about your “why”. Everything starts and end at the “why” part. Best chapter of the book I would say.

Rest, as I said, his opinions are his own, I do not agree with his three-year breakup analogy of running a startup. You cannot judge a company or a product with that. What if it fails in the fourth year? He sounds too harsh in first pages of the book which in my opinion could have been anatomizing over the book instead of appearing all at once with more reasoning and understanding of the reader, especially, the first time readers. Here, at this point, the author assumes, the reader is already familiar with the sense of a topic. What if he is not?

3.5 out of 5

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Your Creative Career by Anna Sabino
Published by Career Press Genres: Self Help, Business, Entrepreneurship, Nonfiction
Pages: 192
Format: eBook
Goodreads

Anna Sabino is an entrepreneur and she wrote her debut work, Your Creative Career for budding entrepreneurs in mind who want to pursue a creative path.

I picked her book in during an important phase of my life. When I needed it. Her suggestions in this book are on how to build a business with a creative mindset that reflects one’s skills and by putting one’s effort, one can have earnings. The book starts with some amount of pep talk that I find essential in the genre this book falls under and motivating personally. A reader who wants to pursue long-term success by being creative and escape can benefit from. Her own story she covers along with some anecdotes from modern day and internet age businesses. It prompts a reader to consider their current situation and position in life and how from at that point, no matter where they are, can move forward with a set of clear goals.

She has put enough emphasis in her book creating a lifestyle or designing one as she likes to call, as creative enough to suit you. This does not mean one has to be comfortable and procrastinate all their work for the day or quit the job that is there a major source or only source of income. Her words do not convey this message. She urges you as a reader to find your passion or a niche where you can start putting your effort and time. She urges the reader to work hard on their dreams.

This one of the first book I have read that classifies dreamers into three categories: doers, squeezers, and postponers. On reading the book you will be willing to pick one for yourself. Apart from her analogy on dreams, she offers pragmatic suggestions on actual ways to create a career around your passion and almost lays a blueprint on how to induce one’s creative mindset in a field where one earn and thrive. Her own story of leaving Wall Street and starting a jewelry brand in New York is a great example she provides as an entrepreneur and as a writer in this book.

With a direct and straight-forward writing style, one should read this book to be productive. On reading it, I observed that there must have been a huge amount of research she has to go to pick as if the reality references she provides seem right at the moment she introduces in her book for her readers to aspire.

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Hack the Entrepreneur by Jon Nastor
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 205
Format: eBook
Goodreads

Jon Nastor is a famous podcaster by the name of Hack the Entrepreneur which shares same title as the book. I picked this book because I read somewhere about it in which they mentioned as quote from Nastor that no body is born an entrepreneur. It is sort of a skill plus lifestyle that you have to create, build around and live. Though after picking up this book, I can say, there are some inspiring moments mentioned in this book.

Jon Nastor’s entrepreneurial journey began in 2011 when he started some of his business online. In 2012, he was running a software company from his laptop and by travelling the world to play drums in a rock band. Might sound like a fantasy, but Jon shows clear appreciation of what Internet has brought on the table, not only for himself but like many others. His podcast channel has received over a million downloads and contains 200+ interviews.

The main focus in this book is converting an Idea into reality, pragmatically. Jon has put enough emphasis on pragmatic views and lessons learned in his own journey. There are enough tips on avoiding procrastination, validating your idea and getting inspired. I mean the title is something, isn’t it?

The chapters are quite short, majority of them two pages at max. Smartly entitled, with a perfect quote to describe what comes ahead. This book has some amount of business virtues as well as story of Jon’s journey.

4 out of 5

Check out the Podcast Channel on iTunes here.

Buy the book from Amazon (Kindle Unlimited Subscribers, it is free for you)

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Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
Published by Harper Collins on 2009
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship
Pages: 161
Format: eBook
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads

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