waido's reviews
24 reviews

The books does contain some useful bits of insight about Stoicism. The author brought up stories about well-known practitioners of Stoicism and the lessons we can learn from them. The book has a good key message - overcoming obstacles and try to use them to your advantage. However, some parts of the book exhibit that self-help "feelgood" tone that can gets a bit annoying. Furthermore, this sort of feelgood tone dilute the content of the book and distracts the reader from the actual insights.

Regarding the stories, most of them are quite inspiring, and fits to the overall theme of the book. However, some of them are just a bit cliché and follow the motif of "Person no rich, person do X, therefore you should do X (to be rich)". Although the author did not explicitly stated that you should do that to be successful, I think that is kind of implied from the way he tell the stories. For example, in the Rockefeller story (1st chapter of Part I: The discipline of perception), it is emphasized that "they (people) all attended the same school of bad times. But few reacted as he did. Not many had trained themselves to see opportunity inside this obstacle, that what befell them was not unsalvageable misfortune but the gift of education—a chance to learn from a rare moment in economic history." Well, and there are those who did reacted as he did as well, where are they now? To attribute Rockefeller riches to his action alone and say that people was not as rich just because they didn't "react the way he did" is  a big inaccuracy. I think having these kind of success stories really undermine the key message of Stoicism, because Stoicism is not really about becoming rich or successful. The Stoics care more about living a good and "virtuous" life, aiming to achieve true self-fulfillment and happiness.

The book also contains some parts that are just plain wrong. An example would be in the 2nd Chapter of Part II, there is a part where he mention that "While you’re sleeping, traveling, attending meetings, or messing around online, the same thing is happening to you. You’re going soft." If sleeping is going soft then we are being "soft" for 1/3 of our life. Let's give the author the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that he doesn't mean the normal act of sleeping for 8 hours a night itself but rather the extra sleep that one gets throughout the day. In this case, sleep/napping still has its value. Power napping for example, can help improve focus, alertness, and make it easier to overcome that post-lunch slump (which is one big reason why some cultures take naps after lunch time). Same for traveling, I think that people doing "fun" things in life is not necessary them going soft, it's called enjoying life. Having a hobby or doing fun things boost creativity because it allows you to have a bit of child-like exploration here and there, which creates new and interesting perspectives that you can brought back to your work. It's not always about "pressing ahead" and "always moving" like the author suggested, sometime you need to move backward in order to move forward, and some other time, you need to stop to take a break, check your map, or just enjoy the scenery a bit before continuing your journey. You are not "going soft" by doing so, you're simply playing the long game.

TL;DR: Good introduction to Stoicism and how to apply Stoic practices in life to overcome difficulties. However, there are some  inaccuracies here and there, and an ever-present self-help feelgood tone that can gets annoying at times.

I love it, it was pretty much what I look for in this type of book. Like most people, I know about this book from exurb1a's YouTube channel and like his content, the short stories have a way of getting you quickly invested in the world and the characters in them. My favorite is The Bridge to Lucy Dune, I just find that

There is something quite poetic (and perhaps tragic) about the idea that out of the billions of people who's living and has ever lived, your perfect match is out there somewhere, in some place and some time period, but you will likely never get to meet them.

I would say that a good way to know whether you would like this book or not is to check out his YouTube channel. If you like the stuffs there then I think you will most likely like this book.

A fantastic book with a unique approach to note-taking. I think that the slip-box technique presented by the author is extremely useful for anyone in need of a system to help them write, think, and create. The power of the technique lies in it's ability to help you build up a network of interconnected notes and turn that into your idea generator. In a way, it allows you to have discussion with your past-self to find good ideas, correct mistakes, develop your arguments, and improve your own thoughts. This bottom-up approach, as the author argued, not only make it easier to trace back your train of thoughts and see where the idea clutters have built up, but also allow you to be more flexible compare to the top-down approach of starting out with an idea/topic and fill in your notes under sections and subsections. 

One small thing I dislike about the book is that the pacing could be a bit faster for an informative book. There are a few chapters and sections that just repeats something already mentioned before. But I suppose that it could also be a positive thing that helps us understand the concepts better, and you can always skim over those parts so it's not really a big problem.

Another thing that can be improve is the lack of example. Although the idea behind the slip-box is relatively simple and easy to implement, I am quite curious to see some actual cases of what an ideal slip-box looks like. 

All in all, a really solid book on note-taking. I find the slip-box technique to be very useful as a thinking and creative tool. The book aims towards writers and researcher, but I think that the technique will be useful to anyone. As the author said, we all think, reads, and write, so why not take some smart notes along the way to improve ourselves and make our lives easier?

A decent beginner's guide to presentation. The author walk us through the fundamentals of a successful presentation and give actionable advice and tips on how to give a presentation. My favorite one is about the similarity between stage fright and excitement, and how easy it is to pull your brain away from feeling stage fright. The tips helped me be much more confident now whenever I have to present in front of a large crowd.