Reviews and Comments

Great book making a lot of parallels from the 2016 US Presidential race and the following administration to the rise of authoritarianism across the world in the 20th century in both Nationalist and Socialist contexts

Definitely not an easy read, there's a lot in here that's still rather sad to be brought back up (and a lot of it has come back stronger in the last year)

Okay so I've gotten quite a bit of the way through this book and it's really interesting to see the parallels between Seneca's stoicism and the modern tech bro, alpha male, grindset

While that's true I do think there are places where Seneca's points are valid and are what I would consider to be useful insights

Ultimately Seneca cooks quite often in the book with heavy hitters along the lines of "The Senate carries out acts of violence that would proportionally result in one man's execution" which is pretty much where we're at with situations like Gaza and with the ICE raids

On the other hand, Seneca also goes "the reason women are getting sick is gender equality" so he doesn't always hit the nail on the head

I feel like if Feel Good Productivity were Swift, then Atomic Habits is C++ and this is good old fashioned C (If I were to continue this analogy, then the ancient Stoics would likely be Assembly)

It really gets to the root of most of the productivity and management books I've read in my life, breaking it down into some of its most atomic parts.

Covey spit facts on every page and I really enjoyed reading this one.

I've honestly really enjoyed the Tim Cook era of Apple. There've been some missteps, sure, but I think Cook is a super interesting person and I feel like Kahney does a great job showing his progression from small town Alabama boy to the leader of the most valuable company in the world.

I feel like at this point if you've been at all involved in the business scene you've experienced Gary Vaynerchuk at some point and I feel like you either appreciate his thoughts or you don't. Either is valid I'm not going to comment on that. This book is very much in line with his personality, there's really no beating around the bush here. It's definitely a little more of the modern grindset than the more productivity-focused reads I've reviewed, seeing as this is more business-focused, but I feel like you should be able to take these principles and apply them to other parts of your life. It's definitely widely applicable outside of the business world.

I will echo the words of other reviewers of this book: it does take quite a bit of time to really get into it, but it's so worth it. There's no shortage of thoughtful character development and world building going on throughout this whole book and it's honestly ended up being my favorite in the series. There's so much interesting detail this book adds to the series, even if YA isn't your thing, if you ever read the original trilogy you should probably pick this one up.

I really enjoyed this book. I'm not going to speak for every autistic person out there, but I'm not one for the wordsmithing thing myself. I can appreciate and respect it, but over time I find it tedious. This book does none of that, it moves quick and there's a lot to learn in only 128 pages.

While the language is certainly rather old and spends quite a lot of time not speaking in the literal sense, I still managed to enjoy this read. I've been fascinated with the stoics since I took my first philosophy class and I figured this would be a good place to start. It may have taken me a while to get through, but I didn't really do much personal reading when school was in session so that shouldn't be any indication of the quality: there's a reason this book is still being published and translated thousands of years later.

I think this book does a great job of showing what this genre is all about: it's not about being a more productive worker, it's not about increasing output, it's not about generating shareholder value. This genre is about figuring out the best ways to achieve what you want in life whether that's personal or professional. It's about finding the balance in your life for the things you want to do. I've been following Abdaal's work on YouTube for years and I preordered this book almost right away, I just jive with his personality and that really came across in his writing as well!

I'm only a few chapters in, but this guy is spitting facts every page

This book isn't necessarily one that taught me a lot, I read a lot of the authors that Clear pulls from during my masters program and I noticed that there are a lot of things that Clear discusses that I had already started implementing in my life, but having it verbalized definitely helps to understand how to really go about building great habits. Definitely recommend this for someone who needs a little more guidance on building long lasting habits.