On Predictably Irrational

I recently finished reading Predictably Irrational – The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – by Dan Ariely. As the author best states it, this book is about: ” My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are—how we repeat them again and again—I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them.” He further expands: “My further observation is that we are not only irrational, but predictably irrational—that our irrationality happens the same way, again and again. Whether we are acting as consumers, businesspeople, or policy makers, understanding how we are predictably irrational provides a starting point for improving our decision-making and changing the way we live for the better.”

Below are key excerpts from this book that I found particularly insightful:

Relativity is (relatively) easy to understand. But there’s one aspect of relativity that consistently trips us up. It’s this: we not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable—and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.

When we keep social and market norms on their separate paths, life hums along pretty well…When social and market norms collide, trouble sets in.

The answer, I believe, is not to re-create society as Burning Man, but to remember that social norms can play a far greater role in society than we have been giving them credit for. If we contemplate how market norms have gradually taken over our lives in the past few decades—with their emphasis on higher salaries, more income, and more spending— we may recognize that a return to some of the old social norms might not be so bad after all. In fact, it might bring quite a bit of the old civility back to our lives.

We have problems with self-control. related to immediate and delayed gratification—^no doubt there. But each of the problems we face has potential self-control mechanisms, as well. If we can’t save from our paycheck, we can take advantage of our employer’s automatic deduction option; if we don’t have the will to exercise regularly alone, we can make an appointment to exercise in the company of our friends. These are the tools that we can commit to in advance, and they may help us be the kind of people we want to be.

Our propensity to overvalue what we own is a basic human bias, and it reflects a more general tendency to fall in love with, and be overly optimistic about, anything that has to do with ourselves…I don’t think we can become more accurate and objective in the way we think about our children and houses, but maybe we can realize that we have such biases and listen more carefully to the advice and feedback we get from others.

As it turns out, positive expectations allow us to enjoy things more and improve our perception of the world around us. The danger of expecting nothing is that, in the end, it night be all we’ll get.

This is my take. We care about honesty and we want to be honest. The problem is that our internal honesty monitor is active only when we contemplate big transgressions, like grabbing an entire box of pens from the conference hall. For the little transgressions, like taking a single pen or two pens, we don’t even consider how these actions would reflect on our honesty and so our superego stays asleep. Without the superego’s help, monitoring, and managing of our honesty, the only defense we have against this kind of transgression is a rational cost-benefit analysis. But who is going to consciously weigh the benefits of taking a towel from a hotel room versus the cost of being caught? Who is going to consider the costs and benefits of adding a few receipts to a tax statement? As we saw in the experiment at Harvard, the cost-benefit analysis, and the probability of getting caught in particular, does not seem to have much influence on dishonesty.

In many ways, the standard economic and Shakespearean views are more optimistic about human nature, since they assume that our capacity for reasoning is limitless. By the same token the behavioral economics view, which acknowledges human deficiencies, is more depressing, because it demonstrates the many ways in which we fall short of our ideals. Indeed, it can be rather depressing to realize that we all continually make irrational decisions in our personal, professional, and social lives. But there is a silver lining: the fact that we make mistakes also means that there are ways to improve our decisions—and therefore that there are opportunities for “free lunches.”

In closing:

Visual illusions are also illustrative here. Just as we can’t help being fooled by visual illusions, we fall for the “decision illusions” our minds show us. The point is that our visual and decision environments are filtered to us courtesy of our eyes. our ears, our senses of smell and touch, and the master of it all, our brain. By the time we comprehend and digest information, it is not necessarily a true reflection of reality. Instead, it is our representation of reality, and this is the input we base our decisions on. In essence we are limited to the tools nature has given us, and the natural way in which we make decisions is limited by the quality and accuracy of these tools. A second main lesson is that although irrationality is commonplace, it does not necessarily mean that we are helpless. Once we understand when and where we may make erroneous decisions, we can try to be more vigilant, force ourselves to think differently about these decisions, or use technology to overcome our inherent shortcomings. This is also where businesses and policy makers could revise their thinking and consider how to design their policies and products so as to provide free lunches.

A must read in the area of decision making.

 

On Einstein

I recently finished reading Einstein – His Life and Universe – by Walter Isaacson. As introduced: “Looking back at a century that will be remembered for its willingness to break classical bonds, and looking ahead to an era that seeks to nurture the creativity needed for scientific innovation, one person stands out as a paramount icon of our age: the kindly refugee from oppression whose wild halo of hair, twinkling eyes, engaging humanity, and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius. Albert Einstein was a locksmith blessed with imagination and guided by a faith in the harmony of nature’s handiwork. His fascinating story, a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom, reflects the triumphs and tumults of the modern era.”

Below are key excerpts from the book that I found very perceptive:

On his approach:

His success came from questioning conventional wisdom, challenging authority, and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. Tyranny repulsed him, and he saw tolerance not simply as a sweet virtue but as a necessary condition for a creative society. “It is important to foster individuality,” he said, “for only the individual can produce the new ideas.”‘ This outlook made Einstein a rebel with a reverence for the harmony of nature, one who had just the right blend of imagination and wisdom to transform our understanding of the universe. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the twentieth century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.

On using suspicion successfully:

Throughout the six decades of his scientific career, whether leading the quantum revolution or later resisting it, this attitude helped shape Einstein’s work. “His early suspicion of authority, which never wholly left him, was to prove of decisive importance,” said Banesh Hoffmann, who was a collaborator of Einstein’s in his later years. “Without it he would not have been able to develop the powerful independence of mind that gave him the courage to challenge established scientific beliefs and thereby revolutionize physics.”

On Einstein’s ability to pursue several ideas at once:

A Strength of Einstein’s mind was that it could juggle a variety of ideas simultaneously. Even as he was pondering dancing particles in a liquid, he had been wrestling with a different theory that involved moving bodies and the speed of light. A day or so after sending in his Brownian motion paper, he was talking to his friend Michele Besso when a new brainstorm struck. It would produce, as he wrote Habicht in his famous letter of that month, “a modification of the theory of space and time.”

On his background:

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said. “But,” he hastened to add, “intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.” Einstein’s discovery of special relativity involved an intuition based on a decade of intellectual as well as personal experiences. The most important and obvious, I think, was his deep understanding and knowledge of theoretical physics. He was also helped by his ability to visualize thought experiments, which had been encouraged by his education in Aarau. Also, there was his grounding in philosophy: from Hume and Mach he had developed a skepticism about things that could not be observed. And this skepticism was enhanced by his innate rebellious tendency to question authority.

On his dual approach to his research:

In it Einstein pursued a two-fisted approach. On the one hand, he engaged in what was called a “physical strategy,” in which he tried to build the correct equations from a set of requirements dictated by his feel for the physics. At the same time, he pursued a “mathematical Strategy,” in which he tried to deduce the correct equations from the more formal math requirements using the tensor analysis that Grossmann and others recommended…Einstein’s “physical strategy” began with his mission to generalize the principle of relativity so that it applied to observers who were accelerating or moving in an arbitrary manner. Any gravitational field equation he devised would have to meet the following physical requirements: It must revert to Newtonian theory in the special case of weak and static gravitational fields. In other words, under certain normal conditions, his theory would describe Newton’s familiar laws of gravitation and motion. It should preserve the laws of classical physics, most notably the conservation of energy and momentum. It should satisfy the principle of equivalence, which holds that observations made by an observer who is uniformly accelerating would be equivalent to those made by an observer standing in a comparable gravitational field.

His peer’s on his discoveries:

Its equivalence to acceleration, and, Einstein asserted, the general relativity of all forms of motion. In the opinion of Paul Dirac, the Nobel laureate pioneer of quantum mechanics, it was “probably the greatest scientific discovery ever made.” Another of the great giants of twentieth-century physics. Max Born, called it “the greatest feat of human thinking about nature, the most amazing combination of philosophical penetration, physical intuition and mathematical skill The entire process had exhausted Einstein but left him elated. His marriage had collapsed and war was ravaging Europe, but Einstein was as happy as he would ever be. “My boldest dreams have now come true,” he exulted to Besso. ”General covariance. Mercury’s perihelion motion wonderfully precise.” He signed himself “contented but kaput.”

On his reaction to his discovery:

Einstein’s decision reflected a major transformation in his life. Until the completion and confirmation of his general theory of relativity, he had dedicated himself almost totally to science, to the exclusion even of his personal, familial, and societal relationships. But his time in Berlin had made him increasingly aware of his identity as a Jew. His reaction to the pervasive anti-Semitism was to feel even more connected— indeed, inextricably connected—to the culture and community of his people.

On his view about education:

The Times called it “the ever-present Edison questionnaire controversy,” and of course Einstein ran into it. A reporter asked him a question from the test. “What is the speed of sound?” If anyone understood the propagation of sound waves, it was Einstein. But he admitted that he did not “carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books” Then he made a larger point designed to disparage Edison’s view of education. “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think,” he said.

On challenging authority:

This wariness of authority reflected the most fundamental of all of Einstein’s moral principles: Freedom and individualism are necessary for creativity and imagination to flourish. He had demonstrated this as an impertinent young thinker, and he proclaimed the principle clearly in 1931. “I believe that the most important mission of the state is to protect the individual and to make it possible for him to develop into a creative personality,” he said.

On morality:

The foundation of that morality, he believed, was rising above the “merely personal” to five in a way that benefited humanity. There were times when he could be callous to those closest to him, which shows that, like the rest of us humans, he had flaws. Yet more than most people, he dedicated himself honestly and sometimes courageously to actions that he felt transcended selfish desires in order to encourage human progress and the preservation of individual freedoms. He was generally kind, good-natured, gentle, and unpretentious. When he and Elsa left for Japan in 1922, he offered her daughters some advice on how to lead a moral fife. “Use for yourself little,” he said, “but give to others much.”

On realism:

Einstein’s concept of realism had three main components: 1. His belief that a reality exists independent of our ability to observe it. As he put it in his autobiographical notes: “Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is thought independently of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of physical reality.’ ” 2. His belief in separability and locality. In other words, objects are located at certain points in spacetime, and this separability is part of what defines them. “If one abandons the assumption that what exists in different parts of space has its own independent, real existence, then I simply cannot see what it is that physics is supposed to describe,” he declared to Max Born. 3. His belief in strict causality, which implies certainty and classical determinism. The idea that probabilities play a role in reality was as disconcerting to him as the idea that our observations might play a role in collapsing those probabilities. “Some physicists. among them myself, cannot believe,” he said, “that we must accept the view that events in nature are analogous to a game of chance.”

On his final moments:

The aneurysm, like a big blister, had burst, and Einstein died at age 76. At his bedside lay the draft of his undelivered speech for Israel Independence Day. “I speak to you today not as an American citizen and not as a Jew. but as a human being,” it began. Also by his bed were twelve pages of tightly written equations, littered with cross-outs and corrections. To the very end, he struggled to find his elusive unified field theory. And the final thing he wrote, before he went to sleep for the last time, was one more line of symbols and numbers that he hoped might get him, and the rest of us, just a little step closer to the spirit manifest in the laws of the universe.

His eulogy:

“No Other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of 20th century knowledge,” President Eisenhower declared. “Yet no other man was more modest in the possession of the power that is knowledge, more sure that power without wisdom is deadly.” The New York Times ran nine stories plus an editorial about his death the next day: “Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad stars and upon billowing oceans and tossing trees—and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about? The most thoughtful wonderer who appeared among us in three centuries has passed on in the person of Albert Einstein.”‘

On curiosity:

A tenet of Einstein’s faith was that nature was not cluttered with extraneous attributes. Thus, there must be a purpose to curiosity. For Einstein, it existed because it created minds that question, which produced an appreciation for the universe that he equated with religious feelings. “Curiosity has its own reason for existing,” he once explained. “One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”

On freedom:

Einstein’s fundamental creed was that freedom was the lifeblood of creativity. “The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit,” he said, “requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice.” Nurturing that should be the fundamental role of government. he felt, and the mission of education.

On religion:

Einstein considered this feeling of reverence, this cosmic religion, to be the wellspring of all true art and science. It was what guided him. “When I am judging a theory,” he said, “I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.” It is also what graced him with his beautiful mix of confidence and awe. He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos. the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.

A must read for all.

On Outliers

I recently finished reading Outliers – The Story of Success – by Malcolm Gladwell.

The main premise of the book, as outlined by Malcom is: “In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is mainly by asking where they dire from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”

Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “Wolf and Bruhn had to convince the medical establishment to think about health and heart attacks in an entirely new way: they had to get them to realize that they wouldn’t be able to understand why someone was healthy if all they did was think about an individual’s personal choices or actions in isolation. They had to look beyond the individual. They had to understand the culture he or she was a part of, and who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from. They had to appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are. In Outliers I want to do for our understanding of success what Stewart Wolf did for our understanding of health.”

2- “Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”

3- “We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit. But there’s nothing in any of the histories we’ve looked at so far to suggest things are that simple. These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society. Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up.”

4- “The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.”

5- “Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying…Work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful.”

6- “So far in Outliers we’ve seen that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: when and where you are born, what your parents did tor a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were all make a significant difference in how well you do in the world. The question for the second part of Outliers is whether the traditions and attitudes we inherit from our forebears can play the same role. Can we learn something about why people succeed and how to make people better at what they do by taking cultural legacies seriously? 1 think we can.”

7- “Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraordinarily specific.”

8- “The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how ten it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths ot the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a timesharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success—the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history—with a society that provides opportunities for all.”

9- “Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Outliers

On Executive Thinking

I recently finished reading Executive Thinking by Leslie L. Kossoff.

Below are thirteen key lessons, in the form of excerpts form the book, that I found particularly insightful:

1) “The executive must be able to speak to his vision clearly and charismatically in order for others to know where it is that he sees the organization going and why. That clear, exciting picture is the one that must be communicated, translated, and demonstrated to the rest of the organization through the actions and words of the executive and his executive and management staff.”

2) “Executive Thinking is not conventional thinking, nor is it a conventional organizational process. It is one in which, based on the dream of the executive, everyone becomes involved as an active participant in the shared dream. It is both tangible and amorphous. It is both process and result. It is the life and breath of the organization.”

3) “The executive must realize that, because his dream is iterative and evolutionary, there will never be a time when it is finished.”

4) “Knowingly or not, executives form their organization in their own image. The importance for the executive is to realize that the organization adopts what it believes to be that image. This puts a particular onus on the executive to be aware of the image he is projecting and to understand that the members of the organization are looking to him to determine the image and actions they must project.”

5) “It is useful for the executive to think of the dynamics within the organization not as competitive or adversarial activities, but as a dance. In so doing, the previously competitive and adversarial actions become part of a larger choreography wherein each person performs his steps while always knowing that his part is a part of the larger dance. That choreography is designed and determined by the executive.”

6) “As humans we are not limited to seeing things in one particular way. We choose to see things in a way that is most familiar to us. We develop thinking processes that keep us from seeing all that there is to see. We limit ourselves by not looking for or accepting the potential that is presented to us. But, just as thinking is a skill, our thinking paths can be altered and added to.”

7) “There are five trust-building behaviors that must be demonstrated. They are respect, reciprocity, consistency, integrity and involvement. Each is equally important. Unless each behavior is manifest, the model will not work. It may have some success, but ultimately it will falter and possibly fail.”

8) “Executive Thinking makes it worthwhile for individuals to challenge their previously held beliefs. Each individual sees that her participation in the system works not only to the benefit of the organization but to her own benefit as well.”

9) “The dream must be positioned so that its intent is clear and its outcome are of benefit to everyone. In this way, it becomes more than just the dream of the executive. It becomes the dream of each and every associate throughout the organization. The paradox of empowerment is that the stronger the executive and his direction and management of the organization, the more empowered the associates can be.”

10) “One of the problems that might well be encountered is the mistaken impression that a participative organization is a tolerant organization. This is and must be patently untrue. There can be no tolerance for behaviors that are not in keeping with the goals, expectations, and commitments of the organization to its associates and to its stakeholders.”

11) “Executive Thinking is a balance between action and results. Problems occur only when and if the process is wholly biased toward one or the other. Action must occur in the form of thinking and the actions that ensue as a result of that thinking. Results occur based on thinking and actions taken.”

12) “Decisions are made using the dream as the context. Actions taken are assessed both while in progress and after the fact to determine whether all the factors were adequately considered. Analyzing and applying lessons learned becomes an operating norm for the organization, both for those decisions that worked and for those decisions that did not work as expected.”

13) “Executive Thinking, however, is the greatest legacy that the executive can leave the enterprise. Through his commitment and actions he will have taught the organization how to dream…Thinking will have become a norm.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Executive Thinking

On Six Thinking Hats

I recently finished reading Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono.

The main premise of the book as summarized by the author is: “Thinking is the ultimate human resource…The main difficulty of thinking is confusion. We try to do too much at once…What I am putting forward in this book is a very simple concept which allows a thinker to do one thing at a time…The six thinking hats allows us to conduct our thinking as a conductor  might lead an orchestra. We can call forth what we will…It is the sheer convenience of the six thinking hats that is the main value of the concept.” Another core concept associated with the thinking hats is that of deliberate thinking which the switching of the hat signals. This type of thinking becomes clear with the following example from Edward: “When you are driving a car, you have to choose roads and follow roads and keep out of the way of other traffic…you are looking for signals and reacting to them. This is reactive thinking…You read signposts and make decisions. But you do not make the map. The other type of thinking has to do with mapmaking. You explore the subject and make the map. You make the map in an objective and neutral fashion. To do this you must look broadly.” The book then goes on to details the mechanism of using the six hats: “You choose which of the six hats to put on at any one moment. You put on that hat and then play the role defined by that hat…When you change thinking hats you have to change roles. Each role should be distinct…Thinking now begins to flow from the acted parts and not from your ego. That is how maps are made. Then, in the end, the ego can choose a preferred route.” These hats have the following purposes: ” The first value of the six thinking hats is that of defined role-playing…The second value is that of attention directing…The third value is that of convenience…The forth value is the possible basis in brain chemistry…The fifth value arises from establishing the rules of the game.” The hat colors have been chosen in a way that makes their corresponding function easier to recall. They are defined as follows: ” 1- White Hat: White is neutral and objective. The white hat is concerned with objective facts and figures…virgin white, pure facts, figures and information. 2- Red Hat: Red suggests anger (seeing red), rage and emotions. The red fives the emotional view….seeing red, emotions and feelings, also hunch and intuition. 3- Black Hat: Black is gloomy and negative. The black hat covers the negative aspects – why it cannot be done…devil’s advocate, negative judgement, why it will not work. 4- Yellow Hat: Yellow is sunny and positive. The yellow hat is optimistic and covers hope and positive thinking…sunshine, brightness and optimism, positive, constructive, opportunity. 5- Green Hat: Green is grass, vegetation and abundant, fertile growth. The green hat indicates creativity and new ideas…fertile, creative, plants springing from seeds, movement, provocation. 6- Blue Hat: Blue is cool, and it is also the color of the sky, which is above everything else. The blue hat is concerned with control and the organization of the thinking process. Also the use of the other hats…cool and control, orchestra conductor, thinking about thinking.”

This book offer a very creative, practical and applicable method of tackling any problem – and through its use achieve more effective outcomes and solutions. A recommended read!

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Six Thinking Hats

On The Closing of The American Mind

I just finished reading The Closing of The American Mind by Allan Bloom. As the author best puts it this is a book on “how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students”. This book offers a thorough historical lesson of our education echo-system and how it came to where it currently is.

Allan structure the book into three main sections. Students, where he describes the current state of students – particularly those getting ready to enroll in university – the books they read, the music they listen to and the relationships they engage in. The second section is “Nihilism, American Style” where the author discusses current culture (or lack there of), values and creativity to name a few themes. There is a strong focus in that section on Continental Europe and its thinkers –  and their influence on America. The last and final section “The University”  discusses the current role of this education centerpiece, and the back-warding it has gone through in terms of achieving its mission. Allan calls for a “revolution” of its role and a reversion to the roots of embracing classical liberal art and the early work of the Greek Philosophers.

A unique piece of literary work – based on years of research and experience from an educator. If one was to read one book on the evolution of education, this would definitely be a top contender. One that would make you think, and reconsider your views. The only criticism I have is with regards to the structure of the book which is sometimes hard to follow. That being said, the author does a good job of recapping the main point towards the end. To that effect it may be wise to re-read the book at a later point again, given the global understanding acquired from the first reading.

Below are excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “The gradual stilling of the old political and religious echoes in the souls of the young accounts for the difference between the students I knew at the beginning of my teaching career and those I face now. The loss of the books has made them narrower and flatter. Narrower because they lack what is most necessary, a real basis for discontent with the present and awareness that there are alternatives to it. They are both more contented with what is and despairing of ever escaping from it. The longing for the beyond has been attenuated. The very models of admiration and contempt have vanished. Flatter, because without interpretations are like mirrors, not of nature, but of what is around. The refinement of the mind’s eye that permits it to see the delicate distinctions among men, among their deeds and their motives, and constitutes real taste, is impossible without the assistance of literature in the grand style.”

2- “Thus, the failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency – the belief that the here and now is all there is.”

3- “Values are not discovered by reason, and it is fruitless to seek them, to find the truth or the good life.”

4- “Good and evil are what made it possible for men to live and act. The character of their judgments of good and evil shows what they are.”

5- “Since values are not rational and not grounded in the natures of those subject to them, they must be imposed. They must defeat opposing values. Rational persuasion cannot make them believed, so struggle is necessary. Producing values and believing in them are acts of the will. Lack of will, not lack of understanding, becomes the crucial defect. Commitment is the moral virtue because it indicates the seriousness of the agent. Commitment is the equivalent of faith when the living God has been supplanted by self-provided values. .. Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic self is consulting one’s oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not deliberations, are the movers of deed. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.”

6- “A serious life means being fully aware of the alternatives, thinking about them with all the intensity one brings to bear on life-and-death questions, in full recognition that every choice is a great risk with necessary consequences that are hard to bear. That is what tragic literature is about. It articulates all the noble things men want and perhaps need and shows how unbearable it is when it appears that they cannot coexist harmoniously. ”

7- “Many will say that my reports of the decisive influence of Continental, particularly German, philosophy on us are false or exaggerated and that, even if it were true that all this language comes from the source to which I attribute it, language does not have such effects. But the language is all around us. Its sources are also undeniable, as is the thought that produced the language.  We know how the language was popularized.”

8- “Men (in democracies) are actually on their own in comparison to what they were in other regimes and with respect to the usual sources of opinion. This promotes a measure of reason. However, since very few people school themselves in the use of reason beyond the calculation of self-interest encouraged by the regime, they need help on a vast number of issues – in fact, all issues, inasmuch as everything is opened up to fresh and independent judgement – for the consideration of which they have neither time nor capacity. Even the self-interest about which they calculate- the end – may become doubtful. Some kind of authority is often necessary for most men and is necessary, at least sometimes, for all men. In the absence of anything else to which to turn, the common beliefs of most men are almost always what will determine judgement. This is just where tradition used to be most valuable. ..tradition does provide a counterpoise to and a repair from the merely current, and contains the petrified remains of old wisdom.”

9- “To sum up, there is one simple rule for the university’s activity: it need not concern itself with providing its students with experiences tahat are available in democratic society. They will have them in any events.”

10- “It turned out that natural science had nothing to say about human things, about the uses of science for life or about the scientist. When a poet writes about a poet, he does so as a poet. When a scientist talks about scientists, he does not do so as a scientist. It he does so, he uses none of the tools he uses in his scientific activity, and his conclusions have none of the demonstrative character he demands in his science. Science has broken off from the self-consciousness about science that was the core of ancient science.”

11- “What happened to the universities in Germany in the thirties is what has happened and is happening everywhere. The essence of it all is not social, political, psychological or economic, but philosophic. And, for those who wish to see, contemplation of Socrates is our most urgent task. This is properly an academic task.”

12- “And one cannot jump on and off the tradition like a train. Once broken, our link with it is hard to renew. The instinctive heads of scholars, are list.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

The Closing of the American Mind

On The Magic of Thinking Big

I just finished reading The Magic of Thinking Big by David. J. Schwartz. Every now and then, one read a book that truly inspires. This is exactly what David has achieved with the Magic of Thinking Big. Not only does he inspire “big” thinking, but he also takes it one step further to inspire action to make it happen. The book is filled with ideas and techniques that can be applied in our everyday life whether at home or at work. These are illustrated by real-life examples that the author draws upon – in which these techniques have proven further success, happiness, and satisfaction to those who have implemented them. Many of the ideas presented, constitute the basis for true leadership.

A very enjoyable and educative read. It is structured in such a way as to allow the readers to read and implement specific ideas/techniques presented in one chapter without necessarily reading the entire book. This is in my opinion, the most effective way to take advantage of the wisdom presented. A highly recommended read!

Below are excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1- “The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.”

2- “Knowledge is power – when you use it constructively.”

3- “Action cures fear.”

4- “Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.”

5- “Practice adding value to things… Practice adding value to people…Practice adding value to yourself.”

6- “…The successful person doesn’t ask, “Can I do it better?” He knows he can. So he phrases the question: How can I do it better?”

7- “Big success calls for persons who continually set higher standards for themselves and others, persons who are searching for ways to increase efficiency, to get more output at lower cost, do more with less effort. Top success is reserved for the I-can-do-it-better kind of person.”

8- “In summation, use these tools and think creatively…Believe it can be done…Don’t let tradition paralyze your mind. Be receptive to new ideas. Be experimental. Try new approaches. Be progressive in everything you do…Ask yourself daily, “How can I do better?”…Ask yourself, “How can I do more?” Capacity is a state of mind. Asking yourself this question puts your mind to work to find intelligent short-cuts. The success combination is business is: Do what you do better…and do more of what you do…Practice asking and listening…Stretch your mind. Get stimulated. Associate with people who can help you to think of new ideas, new ways of doing things.”

9- “How you think determines how you act. How you act in turn determines: How others react to you.”

10- “The way we think toward our jobs determines how our subordinates think toward their jobs.”

11- “The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person. Almost without exception, the more successful the person, the more he practices conversation generosity, that is, he encourages the other person to talk about himself, his views, his accomplishments, his family, his job, his problems.”

12- “The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action. It’s still good advice to cross bridges as we come to them.”

13- “Persisting in one way is not a guarantee of victory. But persistence blended with experimentation does guarantee success.”

14- “A second way to profit from the “Be-Human” rule is to let your action show you put people first. Show interest in you subordinates’ off-the-job accomplishments. Treat everyone with dignity. Remind yourself that the primary purpose in life is to enjoy it. As a general rule, the more interest you show in a person, the more he will produce for you. And his production is what carries you forward to greater and greater success.”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

The Magic of Thinking Big

On The Art of War for Managers

I just finished reading The Art of War for Managers: 50 Strategic Rules by Gerald A. Michaelson.  This is a book based on Sun Tzu’s classic. At a high level this book is divided in two sections. The first one in which a translation of the original text is found, together with commentary and how it applies to the business world. The second part consists of short essays/commentary by managers on successful applications of this work in a business setting. It also contains a summary of the main concepts presented in the book.

These main concepts are grouped into 13 sections, as with the original work: Laying Plans, Waging War, Attack by Stratagem, Disposition of Military Strength, Use of Energy, Weakness and Strength, Maneuvering, Variation of Tactics, On the March, Terrain, The Nine Varieties of Ground, Attack by Fire and Employment of Secret Agents. Each section is then subdivided into strategic rules. What makes this book unique is the application of these concepts in a business setting, particularly in the corporate world. This includes how company strategize, market and deliver product and services.

On the criticism side, while the book is written in a way to allow for each section to be self-standing, if one is looking to read it from cover to cover, they will encounter some repetition in content and examples provided. In addition, the applications/examples are somewhat superficial and do not contain deep analysis.

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

The Art of War

On Thinking Strategically

I just finished reading Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff. This book was recommended to me by my manager as one of his favorite business/leadership books. Thinking Strategically is a book that talks about the different decision requiring situations that involve multiple parties within a variety of settings – politics, corporate etc and the underlying game theory fundamentals. Namely some situations are where the parties involved act simultaneously and ones where they move in a sequential manner. For each backward reasoning is used to determine the different strategies and outcomes for each of the parties. The authors not only present the strategies, but also the reasoning on how one arrives to them and their superiority in different settings and more importantly their weakness in some of the scenarios. Not all problems, after all, have an equilibrium solution.

While there are a number of other books that discuss the topic of thinking and making decisions, this book set itself apart by the plethora of applied examples. My only criticism is that there is quite a bit of overlap amongst other sections. While that serves the reader who is reading one section at a time well, if you are reading the book cover to cover, you will find some repetition.

I will conclude with one of my top learnings from this book is and I quote: “…it suggests that in the case of making offers, “‘Tis better to give than to receive.”” This was in reference to tactics on bargaining.

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

Thinking Strategically

As A Man Thinketh

I just finished reading the little volume As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. Don’t let the small size of this book fool you. It is full of gems of wisdom, in a classic that is more than a century old. It revolves around the idea that it is a man’s thoughts alone that drive his life. James refutes all notions of fatalism and determinism. The book is composed of a number of essays: Thought and Character, Effect of Thought on Circumstances, Effect Of Thought on Health and the Body, The Though-Factor In Achievement, Vision and Ideals, Serenity. While I agree with the author at a high level, there is much left to be said about execution and taking action. While thought is a necessary pre-requisite it is the implementation that drives results.

A recommended bed-side quick read. I will conclude with some of my favority quotes from the book:

“A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.”

“Self-control is strength; Right Though is mastery; Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, “Peace. Be still!”

Regards,

Omar Halabieh

As A Man Thinketh