2020 Books adaptation
It’s been quite a year. The unthinkable has become everyday life, and yet life goes on. With all this alone time an important theme for me has been the idea that your mindset needs to be more adaptable than ever before.
There are five books that I read this year that took me on a journey of understanding how to become more adaptable. The first two books, The Tyranny of Metrics and The Mismeasure of Man, question the basis for much of what modern life is based on—the numbers that run the world and how often those numbers don’t really represent people but rather the system that is trying to control them. If you think you can measure the economy then think again. Think you can quantify people by something as simple as an IQ score? Once again, history and science do not bear this out. After being told for so long that these measures are accurate and important, it is time to adjust to a new (or newly clear) reality.
“But what is most easily measured is rarely what is most important, indeed sometimes not important at all. That is the first source of metric dysfunction.” - The Tyranny of Metrics
“The spreadsheet is a tool, but it is also a worldview... those who use them tend to lose sight of the crucial fact that the imaginary businesses that they can create on their computers are just that—imaginary. You can’t really duplicate a business inside a computer, just aspects of a business. And since numbers are the strength of spreadsheets, the aspects that get emphasized are the ones easily embodied in numbers. Intangible factors aren’t so easily quantified.” - The Tyranny of Metrics
“Not only did Binet decline to label IQ as inborn intelligence; he also refused to regard it as a general device for ranking all pupils according to mental worth. He devised his scale only for the limited purpose of his commission by the ministry of education: as a practical guide for identifying children whose poor performance indicated a need for special education...” — The Mismeasure of Man
The third book, The War of Art, is a short but powerful reminder that oftentimes resistance to change does not come from the external world but from your internal world. Self-criticism and regret stop you from adapting to new ideas and it is this resistance that needs to be overcome every day by showing up, sitting down, and doing the work.
“There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.” - The War of Art
My fourth book, Doughnut Economics, starts to move past numbers and self critique and does something new, it presents a new system for the world based on a simple diagram of, well, a donut to explain how to adapt to this new world view.
“We have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive; what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow…” - Doughnut Economics
Finally, Mindset is one of the most useful books I have read in a long time. It has been out for more than 20 years and shows that beyond statistics and effort and ideas the real change starts with your mindset. If you can be open to adapting to new ways of learning almost anything is possible if you put in the practice. Practice does not make perfect but it does make progress.
“In short, people who believe in fixed traits feel an urgency to succeed, and when they do, they may feel more than pride. They may feel a sense of superiority, since success means that their fixed traits are better than other people's… However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is simple question: If you're somebody when you're successful, what are you when you're unsuccessful?”It’s been quite a year. The unthinkable has become everyday life, and yet life goes on. With all this alone time an important theme for me has been the idea that your mindset needs to be more adaptable than ever before." - Mindset
The Books
The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Goul
The Tyranny of Metrics, by Jerry Z. Muller
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth
Mindset, by Carol S. Dweck
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