Wise Guy

Guy Kawasaki returns with a book about life lessons that is entertaining, fun and yes, wise.

Wise Guy is a very personal book since he uses personal stories to give context to his pearls of wisdom. From the beginning Kawasaki clearly states:

"Before you ask, or wonder, this is not my autobiography or memoir. It is a compilation of the most enlightening stories of my life. Think personal lessons, not personal history."

Wise Guy is a collection of life lessons. We can learn from our own experience or vicariously from other people's experiences and this is what Guy has to offer: "my goal is to educate, not to awe you".

I'm not sure the order the author followed to write the book. He could have thought about a lesson to share and search for an anecdote to enhance or he could have remind a life event and search for lessons in it. Either way Wise Guy is a book loaded with nuggets of wisdom.

Some of the favorites ones are:

"Be a  hard-ass if you are a teacher, manager, coach, or someone who influences people. You’re not doing anyone a favor by lowering your standards and expectations in an effort to be kind, gentle, or popular. The future cost of  short-term kindness is great."

The world is full of PC-ness and being blunt and clear can be a risk worth taking. None wins from  hypocrisy. 

"Don’t consider yourself a victim... If you believe you’re a victim, you’ll truly become one.Take responsibility for your fate. You still may not succeed, but at least you’ll try."

This is a nugget consistent with other authors like Fred Kofman, Joseph Campbell and others. The victim has the benefit of not having to take responsibility but at a great cost, impotence and lack of freedom.

"Make your personal interests known. This provides “hooks” to develop additional and deeper relationships.  These relationships have led to friendships, adventures, and financial rewards. My life would have been a lot less interesting if I had not “opened the kimono” and unveiled my personal interests."

"Cultivate relationships with people you would run to see. Anyone who doesn’t pass the Shopping Center Test may waste your time, and life is too short. Second, be the person other people run to see. This is a useful test for how you treat others."

Living in a connected world is an opportunity to expand and grow. People are more than their jobs and sharing what you love can be a glue to support more and better relationships. But also the myriad of relationships can be overwhelming, Guy's advice is prioritize and spend your time wisely.

"If you provide value, you can ask  for—  and  receive— reciprocation. This is the glue that holds society together. You may not care about reciprocation, but the important concept is to help people so much that they would gladly reciprocate."

Adam Smith (and others before him) stressed the value of social cooperation. The division of labor works only in a cooperative environment. It is a mistake to think that competition is the opposite of cooperation, competition is the freedom to provide more value than others.You can't get value from society if you don't provide value, unless you are a parasite.

"Smile. The more you smile and laugh, the more you will smile and laugh. The more you smile and laugh, the easier life gets. You can never go wrong being nice, and there’s no such thing as being too nice."

This is one of the best ones. People live such dull lives that being playful seems as a sin or a crime (as Bernie DeKoven used to say). Believe in humanity and enjoy life more.

I found one of the last chapters, Ohana, quite special. Guy was humble and brave enough to ask his family and close acquaintances to share a pearl of wisdom they acquire from interacting with him. They share nice personal stories and what they learned form them.

Everybody should take the time to do what Kawasaki did with Wise Guy. Reflect on your life and what you learned, thank the people who touch your life and gave you a lesson, and ask those around you how you have made their lives better. 

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Currently we see everywhere from the news to the dinner table people complaining about video games and screens. What most people don't realize is that video games have been part of life for over 40 years. Many of the ones complaining used to spend hours at arcades or playing with early video consoles. Video games are part of reality and no matter how much we disagree they will not go away anytime soon. According to a Newzoo report "2.2 billion gamers across the globe are expected to generate $108.9 billion in game revenues in 2017".

Jane McGonigal is a game developer who shares her 10+ yrs experience developing video games. She explains how for gamers Reality is Broken because when they contrast their real life (school, work, etc.) and their virtual worlds they find in the later a lot of the values reality no longer provide.

"Gamers want to know: Where, in the real world, is that gamer sense of being fully alive, focused, and engaged in every moment? Where is the gamer feeling of power, heroic purpose, and community? Where are the bursts of exhilarating and creative game accomplishment? Where is the heart-expanding thrill of success and team victory? While gamers may experience these pleasures occasionally in their real lives, they experience them almost constantly when they’re playing their favorite games."

Games have some characteristics that are more or less common. A sense of purpose, a goal. They have rules that define boundaries and within unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking. Games have a feedback system that keep games engaged and motivated. Finally, McGonigal includes voluntary participation that is important for community formation. A fifth characteristic not included in the book is competition. Which is interesting because as later explained in the book, gamers are good at cooperation. Even in games that are about winning gamers find more motivation in collaborative modes.

McGonigal explains how game developers not only are good at games but have a better understanding of positive psychology and human motivation than most reality developers. Schools, companies, communities and even play spaces and parks miss those elements. No wonder when people have a choice digital easily wins.

“Game designers and developers are actively transforming what once was an intuitive art of optimizing human experience into an applied science. And as a result, they are becoming the most talented and powerful happiness engineers on the planet.”

But the most amazing insight is the power of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) Role-playing game (RPG). For instance, World of Warcraft gamers had spent over 5.93 million years solving challenges over the first six years. McGonigal proposal is to tap the power of MMO to tackle world problems. Not only local problems but those that require massive efforts such as pandemics, food supply, energy, network security, and migration. Through Alternate Reality Games - ARGs (ARGs are games you play to get more out of your real life, as opposed to games you play to escape it.)" players can bring all the good of video games to the real world.

Throughout the book, Jane McGonigal suggests 14 fixes to reality, in other words; how can we bring the excitement and motivation to our regular lives and more? With ideas such as:

"(Fix #2: Activate extreme positive emotions). That’s why games can put us in a positive mood when everything else fails—when we’re angry, when we’re bored, when we’re anxious, when we’re lonely, when we’re hopeless, or when we’re aimless.” 

“We’ve discovered how game designers help us achieve a state of blissful productivity: with clear, actionable goals and vivid results (Fix #3: Do more satisfying work). We’ve seen how games make failure fun and train us to focus our time and energy on truly attainable goals (Fix #4: Find better hope of success). We’ve seen how they build up our social stamina and provoke us to act in ways that make us more likeable (Fix #5: Strengthen your social connectivity), and how they make our hardest efforts feel truly meaningful, by putting them in a much bigger context (Fix #6: Immerse yourself in epic scale)." 

"We’ve considered how points, levels, and achievements can motivate us to get through the toughest situations and inspire us to work harder to excel at things we already love (Fix #8: Seek meaningful rewards for making a better effort). We’ve looked at how games can be a springboard for community and build our capacity for social participation (Fix #9: Have more fun with strangers). " 

“crowdsourcing games that successfully engage tens of thousands of players in tackling real-world problems for free (Fix #11: Contribute to a sustainable engagement economy).”

Instead of fighting against video games people should learn and incorporate their best practices to life. In addition, this could empower people to collaboratively solve big world problems.

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Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book

Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book by Jeff Warren
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dan Harris became famous for his candid, sometimes raw, story of how meditation changed his life. He didn't oversell meditation by honestly recognizing that a 10% happier life is realistic and a big win.

In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris comes back along Jeff Warren. The book is a narrative of the 10% tour, an idea to promote the benefits of meditation to common people in different cities across the US. But the book is more than a narrative, the "How to" part includes practical ideas and tips to overcome the most common challenges of starting a meditation practice.

The good and the not so good. Harris' description of the typical objections and struggles of common people trying to start a meditation practice is relieving. The image of a buddhist monk or quasi Indian yogi meditating in an spectacular retreat is a barrier for people to try. The image of a blank undisturbed mind is also an obstacle. In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics we find people struggling, trying, giving up, and succeeding.

The problem with the book is that it may feed the "cheapening" of meditation. Yes, it is good to be accessible to common people but I'm not sure if running a tour like a rock star is the best way to transmit the message.

Overall, Harris, now with Warren, makes it again with an entertaining, blunt and honest book on meditation.

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