Review: 55 невыдуманных историй: #запискиалмаатинца

55 невыдуманных историй: #запискиалмаатинца by Сегизбаев Данияр
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Довольно увлекательные и интересно написанные истории из жизни бывшего врача-хирурга, а после предпринимателя родом из Алматы (бывшей Алма-Аты). Истории хорошо показывают быт 1980-2000х годов в Казахстане (а также за рубежом глазами казахстанца). Интереснее всего было читать про случаи из карьеры хирурга.

Ближе к концу книги истории начинают повторяться по похожему сценарию: "Выпили. Появились девушки. Выпили ещё. И тут случилось..." Ностальгия по выборочному прошлому тоже не так интересна. Но понравилось, что автор описывает всё с изрядной долей самоиронии.

Amazing World: Kok Zhailyau, Kazakhstan

Kok Zhailayu, near Almaty, Kazakhstan:

Amazing World: Kolsay Lakes and Charyn, Kazakhstan

Middle Kolsay Lake (Mynzholky), Kolsay Lakes National Park, Almaty Oblast, Kazakhstan:

Charyn Canyon, Almaty Oblast, Kazakhstan:

Review: Principles: Life and Work

Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ray Dalio has been the founder of one of the most successful hedge funds in history to date - Bridgewater Associates. It is a story of a self-made billionaire - and the principles guiding him in this journey.

This book is an autobiography, a personal development guide and a course on management - all in one.

The main idea of the book - that you should lead your life and lead your organisation / team according to the set of principles that you constantly develop and refine - is powerful, albeit not new. Dalio is extremely methodical as to how to develop these principles. His idea is to minimise exceptions and categorise decisions to be made according to the algorithms.

I cannot agree with all of these principles. Many of them felt too stretched and reminiscent of "the brave new world" of a perfect organisation of corporate soldiers where everyone is expected to work 60-hours weeks. The praised idea meritocracy (the best ideas win) at times reminded autocracy (in the end, the big boss still decides). "Sorting" people according to their psychological personas felt too stretched as well.

The book of this size (more than 500 pages) is at times repetitive and not always that novel. However, it contains a lot of powerful insights - from a person who has indeed gotten very successful in business. Not sure you can always be that methodical and mathematical in ways you deal with people... but there is truly a good bit of wisdom and impressive work behind these Principles.

On tackling pain:

There is no avoiding pain, especially if you’re going after ambitious goals.

Pain + Reflection = Progress.

On being on top of the events:

Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine. Most people remain stuck in the perspective of being a worker within the machine.

On what is a valuable argument:

In thoughtful disagreement, your goal is not to convince the other party that you are right – it is to find out which view is true and decide what to do about it.

Be open-minded and assertive at the same time. Open-minded = seeing things through the other’s eyes. Assertive = communicating clearly how things look through your eyes.

On dealing with emotions:

The biggest difference between people who guide their own personal evolution and achieve their goals and those who don’t is that those who make progress reflect on what causes their emotional hijackings.

On making decisions:

Everything looks bigger up close. In all aspects of life, what’s happening today seems like a much bigger deal than it will appear in retrospect. That’s why it helps to step back to gain perspective and sometimes defer a decision until some time passes.

On approximation:

Be imprecise: understand the concept of “by-and-large” and use approximation.

Be an imperfectionist. Perfectionists spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of the important things.

On believability-weighted decision making:

The best decisions are made [when] the most capable people work through their disagreements with other capable people.

The most believable opinions are those of people who 1) have repeatedly and successfully accomplished the thing in questions, and 2) have demonstrated that they can logically explain the cause-effect relationships behind their conclusions.

On random decision making:

Everyone has opinions and they are often bad. Opinions are easy to produce and most people are eager to share them – even fight for them. Unfortunately many are worthless or even harmful, including a lot of your own.

If you ask someone a question, they will probably give you an answer, so think through to whom you should address your questions.

On management:

Great managers are not philosophers, entertainers, doers, or artists. They are engineers. They see their organisations as machines and work to maintain and improve them.

Regularly take the temperature of each person who is important to you and to the organisation.

On constant evolution:

Watch out for the “Frog in the Boiling Water Syndrome”. People have a strong tendency to slowly get used to unacceptable things that would shock them if they saw them with fresh eyes.

On leverage in organisations:

Constantly think about how to produce leverage. For each hour you spend with each person you work with, they should spend 5-10-20 hours working on their tasks.

On staying positive:

Don’t get frustrated. If nothing bad is happening to you now, wait a bit and it will. That is just reality. It’s important to figure out what to do about it and not spend time moaning about how you wish it were different. Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

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Review: Разин Степан

Разин Степан by Alexey Chapygin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Степан Разин - знаменитый казачий атаман России 17го века, устроивший восстание против власти царя и бояр. Эта книга описывает историю этого восстания в художественном стиле.

Интересно воспроизведенный язык того времени, яркое и детальное описание быта на Дону, в Москве, в Персидском шахстве, интересные диалоги и реплики, увлекательный сюжет - это из плюсов.

Книга написана в 1920х годах в Советской России. Отсюда четкая идеологизированность книги - плохие царь, бояре и попы против вольных и смелых казаков с Дона. Описание персонажей тоже соответствующее: "хитрое лицо" или"вольчьи глаза" против "широких плеч" и "развевающихся кудрей". Многие персонажи слишком карикатурны.

Однако, понравилось, что казачество в целом и участники восстания конретно - не идеализируются. Описаны постоянное буйное пьянство, безудержные грабежы и жестокость казаков.

Книга хорошо показывает исторические причины бунтов и революций в России (да и в других местах): пропасть в достатке дворян и "простолюдинов", полное презрение со стороны дворянства по отношению к "мужикам и бабам".

Review: How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have been consistently reducing my meat consumption for several years now - mostly for ethical reasons (I don't find mass-breeding and mass-killing of animals any appealing - and choose not to close my eyes to it simply because it is happening "somewhere else" and not close to my freezer with that frozen piece of beef well packaged in a plastic).

After reading this book I have a much more egoistical reason to reduce meat consumption. There is a whole lot of scientific evidence showing that eating meat is bad for my health, is highly correlated with the risk of heart diseases, several types of cancers and other common causes of death due to illnesses.

The situation seems to be especially worrisome in USA with less regulations as of animal breeding conditions, more gene modifications and more feeding of antibiotics to animals that are then fed to humans - compared to Europe. But the eating habits of a big part of population in Europe is not much better than in the U.S.: a lot of fatty and processed food filled with sugar, a lot of animal products and way too little of vegetables, berries, lentils, nuts and fruits.

Reading this book can at times get you thinking if any possible malady in the world can be shown to be related to meat. It is indeed one-sided. However, there is a lot of uncontroversial advice in the book as of what needs to be more of and less of on our dining tables. A 1/4 of the whole book (more than 100 pages) is filled with literally thousands of references to scientific research - quite impressive.

I liked the way Greger explained that the goal of this book was not to promote vegetarianism or veganism - it was to promote healthy food.

Several decades of relevant research combined with witty and intelligent writing style - a worthwhile reading.

Will I stop eating any meat, fish, eggs and diary products after this book? No. I am not going to be religious about it - and won't say 'no' to a good dish now and then.

Will I reduce consumption of all above? Definitely - even more drastically than before.

Any other choices I will take more of? Even more organic and more whole foods (as opposed to processed salty-sugary-junk "kindly" offered by food industry).

Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a sweeping and thought-provoking book by Harari - an Israeli historian and philosopher who has become a sort of a global celebrity.

Harari covers the whole range of the global challenges that we as a humankind stand against - the possible prevalence of the AI and giving up on personal privacy, the illusionary threat of terrorism (if you think in numbers) and the real threat of war, the challenges with religious and nationalist dogmas, our outdated education system, the problem with so-called fake news and more.

Harari writes in broad strokes. He is highly intelligent, skilfully uses history to back up his arguments - and there is a very healthy dose of wit in the book. There is a lot of interesting arguments in the book - for example:

• If we trust AI too much, it can eventually put many people out of jobs - and out of necessity for the society;
• Do we want utter convenience in life - or do we cherish our personal freedoms (including our freedom to think for ourselves) more? How much freedoms are we OK to give up to get just another level of convenience?
• Online social networks never substitute the real, geographically related communities
• Religions come and go. The need to have a religion as something that makes people obey some desired behaviours stays.
• All religions, nations, communities are based on some stories. People like to think in stories - we have always done so. But stories are always simplifications. Life itself - and solutions to our problems are never that simple.

There is really no specific focus in the book. 21 chapters are loosely related to each other - it can rather be read as the collection of the essays of one bright and consequent global thinker.

It is interesting that Harari did not mention global pandemic as one of the threats to the humankind when the book was published back in 2018 :)

Review: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If you are uncertain in the choices you have to make in your life, if you lack self-confidence and feel you waste your life, this book might well be helpful and eye-opening. If you feel there is too much feminism, liberalism and disregard for religion and tradition in your country, this book might well reinforce your views.

Since I do not feel I belong to either category of people, this book was a disappointment. A lot of words, a lot of citing Bible, a lot of stories to explain rather straight-forwards truths.

These 12 "rules" makes a lot of sense: do not overprotect your children, select friends carefully, be humble, do not lie, wish good to yourself, benchmark your performance against your past as opposed to others and so on. But there are so many other - better - books you can find good illustrations for these "rules".

The only parts of the book I enjoyed were the anecdotal stories of Peterson's childhood and teenage years in rural Canada, with its harsh winters and plentiful booze to be cheered up. In that regards, Peterson is a good story-teller.