Book review# 30 Clean

Book Review # 30 : Clean

Just to make it clear, this is not the book for diet or weight control. It’s the book that intends to change your eating habit and relationship with your food. The goal is to transform your eating perspective completely. 

After reading this book and try some of its method, I suddenly realized that my relationship with food is more important than I think. The following sentence from the book actually explains the whole concept. 

“You are what you eat and you eat what you are”

The first part of “ you are what you eat” is quite straightforward and familiar. I grew up listening to this phrase all the time. However, I still eat bad food even though I know it’s unhealthy. The reason is I can’t fight the “craving”. Whenever, I go into diet program it seems like tons of effort has to be put in. My body actually “wants” the bad food but can’t eat it because I’m on a diet. Sounds familiar? 

Here comes the second part that will explain the first part, 

“you eat what you are” 

This phase is not so common to me. Actually, I think I never heard it before I read this book. Explained in detail in the book is how the chemical in our body reacts to cravings. Basically, if you train yourself by putting in fat and unhealthy food you will crave for more fat and unhealthy food. Your body actually “wants” the unhealthy food. 

On the opposite side, if you train yourself to eat healthy food. Your body will be craving for healthy food. You will actually “wants” to eat healthy and believe when it’s come to food, “want to” is much different from “have to”.

It might be difficult to believe but you can actually crave for broccoli instead of french fries. 

The book will give you how you will be able to change eating habit completely and what will happen to your body and mind. 

I have personally tried some of the methods in this book. Within less than a month, these are the things that happen to me : 

• I have much more energy, I no longer feel lack of energy and sleepy during the afternoon
• My concentration is at all time high
• I no longer have sleepless nights
• I no longer suffer from GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease) 
• I lose 5 kg 
• My skin condition is improving magically without using any cosmetics

My relationship with food has evolved to the level that sugary donuts don’t seem attractive  to me anymore. All the carving for fatty food suddenly disappears. When there is a sugary stuff in front of me, I no longer “want” to eat it. 

The routine is quite simple, apart from vegetable juice I ate before meals, I just avoid three whites which are white sugar, white flour and white rice (and all of its byproducts). It might seem a bit difficult to follow the routine at first but once you’d get everything settled, good things come naturally. You will not want to get back to your old eating habit again. 

If you believe that a healthy mind stays in a healthy body, this is definitely the book for you. 

9/10

Cheers

Tab

Book Review # 29 Train Your Brain for Success

Book review # 29 Train Your Brain for Success

This year is definitely my lucky year as I found the second 10/10 book !

Frankly speaking, I’m not a big fan of personal development book. It might be because I thought that if the technique is good, I should have known it by now. I know some of you also think like me.

As it turns out, I never heard of hundreds of useful techniques which can literally turn my life around. Like the ones I have found in this book.

The book starts out on the techniques and tools that use to increase your memory power which  are extremely useful. Let me put it this way, I can now go through the list of 30 things for about couple minutes and remember all of the list including its position for a couple days after that with 100% accuracy.  Amazing isn’t?

Its quite simple actually, I wonder why my teachers never teach me in school. Or perhaps they did, but I wasn’t paying attention at the time.

Further, it gives techniques of how to read faster which is exactly what I needed at the moment. I know that some of you are tired of reading because it seems like such a long way to go every time you start a new book. Imagine what will it be if you can read three times after with a better level of comprehension? This particular reading technique will definitely help with that. I also learn that, before using the techniques, my reading speed is the same as six graders but it improves tremendously after deploying techniques.

Sound amazing already right? but it’s not even the best part yet.

Then it comes the time management. The most mysterious part of my life where I feel I never got it right. I have read many time management books in the past, I can tell you that this book is definitely thus far the best.

What I love most is that it incorporated tools that I use everyday like google calendar, twisted it a bit, then it into an incredible compass of my hectic life. I have tested this new theory for a couple days and it did really transfer the way I work and the way I live. I feel that for the first time in years, I have things under control.   My physical and mental energy  is at its peak.

My personal life has been improved as well, I have more time with people I love and more time to do something I like.

I’m not going to go into any details because it's much more fun for you to discover it by yourself.

Go get one now!

Enjoy

Tab

book review # 28 The Psychology Book

Book review # 28 The Psychology Book

If you recently walked into AsisBooks or Kinokuniya lately you probably will see a display of three large hardcover bright-colored books that are quite eye-catching. It’s the summary of concepts, thoughts, experiment and opinion concerning Phycology, Economy  and Philosophy. 

Three of them combine with Statistics will make up pretty much all the subject I hate during my educational years. Something I always try to avoid. 

However, as I grow up, I realize that general knowledge of these issues is very useful because the people I meet are from a diverse background and the knowledge about these subjects can become handy. When I study these subjects, without the pressure of having to be graded like in school, some of them are quite fascinating. 

Just like the sciences of Phycology which I have lately found to be very interesting. Because of its adaptivity to real-life situation. Diving into the world of psychology will not only help me understand why people did what they did but also reminds me of how my own mind reacts to various stimuli. 

This book is essentially a reference book for those who are not specialized in this field.The content boiled down each concept and experiments into couple pages. There are 7 main topics which are philosophical roots, behaviorism, psychotherapy, cognitive psychology, social psychology, development philosophy and psychology of difference. 

Some of the highlights I like, just to name a few , are : 

• The unconscious is the true psychical reality : Sigmund Freud 
• Anyone regardless of their nature, can be trained to be anything : John B. Watson
• 24 hours after learning something, we forget two-third of it: Hermann Ebbinghaus
• A peculiar destruction of the internal connections of the phyche : Emil Kraepelin
• The magical number 7 plus or minus 2 George Armitage Miller
• People do what they are told to do: Stanley Milgram
• What happens when you put good people in an evil place? : Philip Zimbardo

The book will bring me to the world I didn’t pay much attention to before i.e. how the minds work. For example, I always wonder what really happened during the famous “Stanford Experiment” (which also inspires a film called “The Experiment”), this book gives me the insights on how it was done and the professional opinion on why people acted what the way they did. 

Normally, when I read a book, I normally finish it before I start another one but since the topics in “Psychology Book” are quite unconventional to me, I use the “bed-time story reading method” i.e. read only couple of topics a day. Personally I think I comprehend more by using this routine. 

It’s a good reference book to have it in your library because I believe it’s important to learn something new everyday. 

8.5/10

Cheers 

book review # 27 InGenius , A Crash Course on Creativity

Book review # 27 InGenius

“Incredible” was the only word I can think of after closing this book down hours ago. I’m glad that I can now put an early nomination for book of the year 2013 becuase this book is extraordinary. 

I will even give the score now, it’s definitely a 10/10

why? 

Well, let’s say that it’s a kind of book that make you come up with game-changing idea while you turning through pages. Not many books can do this. This is how my book looks like while I'm reading it. The best way to explore the book, in my opinion, is the write, fold, highlight and take notes which is exactly what I'm doing. 

I was able to figure out the new evaluation method that not only will keep my team energized at all time but also will make them have a better experience while working as well. Just to summarize on what I come up with, it’s bi-monthly process with a combination of evaluation and gamification. I hope it will a new plant form to revive creativity and energy in my firm. Frankly, I am so confident that it will. 

Anyway, let’s me tell you a little bit about the author, Tina Seelig, who teaches at Stanford D School. Her famous “crash course on creativity” course is available online which you can apply at stanford.edu. It’s help people in various background to be able to articulate their expertise and finding new ways to solve old problems.

It is such a good book that I think everyone should definitely have one copy for themselves. It energizes you to think far and beyond. As I said not many book can do that. 

The book starts off with concept on frame of reference where most of the time we unintentionally see the world from our usual perspective. And how can we move beyond that and finding new frame to see from different angle. Also, to avoid the trap assuming that the way we do things is the one right way. 

Move further along to how connecting things that seems unconnected is important. The book demonstrate on how it  expands your capability of imagination. Then, it elaborate on some tools to find new idea which this book particularly emphasize on brainstorming therefore you will have detail suggestions for efficient brainstorming session. Personally I found this chapter very useful. Again, the idea (with some slight modification of your company’s culture) can be implemented immediately. 

Next chapter stimulate the importance of observation and how acute observation is a key skill for gaining valuable knowledge about the world around you. The practice of capturing the observations and registered it in your mind is also talked about. Simply stated, focus observation is a powerful way to get the valuable information about the world around us. Armed with that, doors of possibilities are open. 

Then the book gives us the most interesting issues of all time which is the working space and how its influence people in it. Space is one of the key factors in all habitats, along with rules, rewards, constraints which are needed to be carefully laid out. It’s important to notice that space dramatically affects team dynamic and creativity. Most of us never imagined how important it is and how it changes our behavior. The space told a powerful story and each of us are living in it. 

Further, the book touches the most annoying issue in workplace of all time. The “evaluation” and “motivation” process. You will on how “rules”, “carrot and sticks” ,“reward” and “encouragement” played under the masked concept of gamification. This chapter is personally mind blowing for me. I do love the last paragraph of this chapter which is 

“If you want your organization to push beyond obvious answer, then you need to understand that all of life is a game, and you should craft the rules that reward ingenious solutions to both short-term and long-term goals.”

There are issues about teamwork and the power of speed, experimental habit and other issues related to that. 

The book concludes with a very powerful take away, you will have to read the whole book to be able to comprehend it. 

As I said, go get one copy of this book now! the sooner the better. You won’t regret it, I promise. 

Cheers 

Tab