Book Worm

Post the second world war, when the western economies experienced a massive boom, the number of people living and working in high rises increased exponentially. These tall establishments became more convenient with the wide adoption of elevators.

In spite of elevators saving time and effort (that would’ve gone in climbing the stairs), people started complaining about delays and the slowness of elevators.

We, humans, are inherently discontent with what we have, aren’t we? Instead of feeling grateful for the fact that elevator saves us from the pain of trudging up floors on the foot, we get frustrated about having to wait a few extra minutes. Such is the human nature. However, it’s not the waiting that bothers us. It’s boredom.
[Read more…] about Bookworm: Alchemy

Whether you hate numbers or love them, there’s no denying that being in the business of investing you can’t afford being numbers shy. Of course, successful investing doesn’t require you to be a mathematician but having an intuitive feel for numbers goes a long way in making the process of finding great businesses fun and intellectually stimulating.

If you’re reading this I won’t hesitate to make the assumption that you’re a knowledge worker, i.e., someone who gets paid not for the physical labour but for their knowledge and cognitive abilities to turn that know-how into something valuable and useful. And one skill that knowledge workers need the most is the ability to learn quickly and efficiently.

This means you should always be on the lookout to find the best strategies about meta-learning — learning how to learn.

Barbara Oakley teaches an online course Learning How to Learn and it wouldn’t be an overstatement if I say that this course has been the most popular online course in the world for many years.

[Read more…] about Bookworm: A Mind for Numbers

A few years back, I wrote an essay on the mental model of Redundancy. In that article, I mentioned how Bill Gates reasoned using Redundancy that saving lives in Africa will contain the country’s population growth over the longer term. One reader pointed out that Gates’ insight originally came from another guy named Hans Rosling.

A little bit of research revealed that Hans Rosling had a decisive impact on how Bill Gates thought about his philanthropy work in African countries. No wonder, when Rosling’s book came out, Gates was among the first to publish a review. He wrote —

Hans, the brilliant global-health lecturer who died last year, gives you a breakthrough way of understanding basic truths about the world—how life is getting better, and where the world still needs to improve. And he weaves in unforgettable anecdotes from his life. It’s a fitting final word from a brilliant man, and one of the best books I’ve ever read.

[Read more…] about Bookworm: Factfulness by Hans Rosling

Warren Buffett in his 2012 annual letter to investors, recommended William Thorndike’s book The Outsiders. Buffett called it an outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation. The eight terrific CEOs that featured in the book have generated exceptional results across a wide variety of industries and market conditions. We had written about Outsiders in April 2016 as part of VIA bookworm series.

Saurabh Mukherjea’s book is the answer to The Outsiders. Mukherjea writes —

The book [The Outsiders] changed the way I perceived and analysed companies which have been successful over long periods of time (we are talking decades here). What Thorndike helped me grasp was that the truly great companies take the surplus cash flows created by their sustainable competitive advantages and then either return those to shareholders or reinvest those in their core franchise, or — and this is the litmus test of greatness — reinvest those successfully in new activities or markets. It is in those latter set of investments outside the core franchise that a great company assures its future regardless of how economic circumstances and customers’ tastes pan out. Without that insight from The Outsiders, there would be no The Unusual Billionaires.

[Read more…] about Bookworm: The Unusual Billionaires

It was ten years back when I was first introduced to the field of human behaviour and psychological biases. Having read a couple of dozen books on this topic, it has now become hard to find a volume with information which is not familiar to me. However, what continues to amaze (and entertain) me are the examples and case studies of people (including my own adventures often pointed out by others) that confirm the statement — We are not rational beings. We are rationalizing beings.

This aspect of human irrationality — that it can’t be overcome and keeps us mired in a behaviour similar to a kid with her hand stuck in the cookie jar because she refuses to open the fist — is what makes this subject so much fun. Once you’ve learnt enough about the broad spectrum of cognitive errors, it affords you a lifetime of entertainment content, provided you pause and watch your own actions and the way people around you make decisions.
[Read more…] about Bookworm: You Are Not So Smart