My year 2020 in Books

I think that year 2020 was one long school session focusing on re-evaluating our priorities, values and future plans. Some could say that 2020 was a lost year, but ultimately it proofed that people can tackle any challenge, when they come together. As each one of us, our governments and our companies are facing ever increasing set of challenges, it would be too easy to give up and state that it used to be so much better in the past. Luckily the "facts" state otherwise. There has never been a time in history, where there would have been more prosperity and opportunities as right at this very moment. The reality is that we all just have to create or find our own path forward. Here are top 5 theme, from the books I read in 2020, which I believe are relevant when we evaluate how we should approach the year 2021.

1. First and foremost, we the people are physiological beings and we should not forget to pay attention to our Physical or Mental Health. If we want the best well being, work or negotiations results, we need to work in harmony with our very own biology.
2. We need to become more fluent and critical evaluators of data and information aka "facts", as the most commercially or politically driven outlets tend to tell us what we want to hear and not what we should hear. Companies need to focus on getting their data strategies right as well if they want to survive and leverage capabilities such as AI, Robotics, and Machine Learning.
3. Almost 50% of our jobs will be impacted by automation and robotization in the near term future. This trends is creating unprecedented business and work opportunities. Moreover, companies will see increasing challenge to attract and retain the best talent. Only way to thrive is to create winning corporate cultures and make salary levels transparent across the positions and industries. 
4. As a result of increasing automation, selected service jobs will become crucial sources of employment for the majority of population and to keep the service sectors viable, governments need to do all they can to support private income and wealth growth as these two factors fuel the service industries. 
5. Public sector's role will also increase globally as a result of the increased level of automation and robotization, which make many work functions obsolete. Hence, every country needs to rethink their universal basic incomes schemes and make them conditional meaning that money is paid out only in exchange of work contribution. Otherwise, there is a risk of collapsing public budgets and mental wellbeing of general population. 

In conclusion, what these books taught me was that better solution is always a result of better information and understanding of it. Hence, we should learn to love the challenge before we rush to create a solution.

Random Quotes from the books

• “Everything you can do or want to do is controlled by physiological rhythms, whether you realize it or not.”Hence The most disruptive event in the history of bio-time occurred on December 31, 1879. At his research lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison introduced the long-lasting incandescent lightbulb to the world. He famously said, “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
• “An inner clock embedded inside your brain has been ticking away, keeping perfect time, since you were three months old.”
• “but no matter how we dress up our negotiations in mathematical theories, we are always an animal, always acting and reacting first and foremost from our deeply held but mostly invisible and inchoate fears, needs, perceptions, and desires.”
• “It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. Listening is the cheapest, yet most effective concession we can make to get there. ”
• “People will take more risks to avoid a loss than to realize a gain. Make sure your counterpart sees that there is something to lose by inaction.”
• "A serious problem requires a serious database. Moreover, The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone. ”
• “Factfulness is … recognizing when a story talks about a gap, and remembering that this paints a picture of two separate groups, with a gap in between. The reality is often not polarized at all. Usually the majority is right there in the middle, where the gap is supposed to be.”
• “I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche. The point here is that Google didn’t dominate search merely by collecting more data than everyone else. They did it by finding a better type of data. ”
• “The news media, often operate like every other industry on the planet. Just as supermarkets figure out what ice cream people want and fill their shelves with it, newspapers figure out what viewpoints people want and fill their pages with it.”
• “And Big Data does not eliminate the need for all the other ways humans have developed over the millennia to understand the world.”
• “Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier.”
• “When things aren’t working, the natural inclination is to throw more at the problem. More people, time, and money. All that ends up doing is making the problem bigger. The right way to go is the opposite direction: Cut back”
• “All companies have customers. Lucky companies have fans. But the most fortunate companies have audiences. ”
• “The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear: if you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.”
• “In perfect competition, a business is so focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future”
• “The most successful companies make the core progression—to first dominate a specific niche and then scale to adjacent markets—a part of their founding narrative.”
• “Thiel’s law”: a startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.”
• “Besides, the perfect time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.”
• "Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonalds, stated that McDonalds is not technically in the food business, they are in the real estate business. Real Estate still is today the most stable engine of creating private sustainable wealth " 
• “Albert Einstein made the same observation when he stated that compound interest was “the eighth wonder of the world,” “the greatest mathematical discovery of all time,” or even “the most powerful force in the universe.” 
• “After all, less than 1% of new businesses started each year in the U.S. receive venture funding, and total VC investment accounts for less than 0.2% of GDP. But the results of those investments disproportionately propel the entire economy. Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP. Indeed, the dozen largest tech companies were all venture-backed. Together those 12 companies are worth more than $2 trillion, more than all other tech companies combined.”
• “Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture”
• “Create a work culture of financial transparency, making every aspect of the business visible to every employee."
• “For a high-performance culture, a professional sports team is a better metaphor than a family. ”
• “Only say about someone what you will say to their face.” 
• “The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete”
• “As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.”
• “ACCEPT OR DISCARD: You will receive lots of feedback from lots of people while at Netflix. You are required to listen and consider all feedback provided. You are not required to follow it.”
• “Creative work requires that your mind feel a level of freedom. If part of what you focus on is whether or not your performance will get you that big check, you are not in that open cognitive space where the best ideas and most innovative possibilities reside. You do worse.”
• “No one should know your market range better than (first) you and (second) your boss. Hence, the rule at Netflix when recruiters call is: “Before you say, ‘No thanks!’ ask, ‘How much?"
• “IF A PERSON ON YOUR TEAM WERE TO QUIT TOMORROW, WOULD YOU TRY TO CHANGE THEIR MIND? OR WOULD YOU ACCEPT THEIR RESIGNATION, PERHAPS WITH A LITTLE RELIEF? IF THE LATTER, YOU SHOULD GIVE THEM A SEVERANCE PACKAGE NOW, AND LOOK FOR A STAR, SOMEONE YOU WOULD FIGHT TO KEEP.”

Books

• No Rules - Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
• The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller
• A World without Work by Daniel Susskind
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson
• Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
• The Power of When by Michael Breus