Jesse Itzler

practical take aways from this book that I really love are the ideas that: 1. When I am doing a task like doing the dishes, instead of rushing through them and trying to focus on rushing through it and anticipating how many are left, instead focus on just doing the one dish in front of me. Then, when I see weeds in my lawn, I can just focus in on just the one weed to pull out instead of being overwhelmed by all the weeds that need to be pulled out. 2. The monks did only one task at a time. 3. They planned their days the night before. 4. The monks pray and sing and also eat in silence. 5. Itzler shared that the monks were training the dogs and just like they need to train the dogs not to be distracted, we also need to try our best to stay focused. 6. The monks where Itzler stayed with, had minimal internet connection and only had one emergency landline, which means that they had large blocks of time to think and thus it would be so good if we could have large chunks of time to think without interruption.… (plus d'informations)

A fairly uninspiring "inspirational book". I read this since it was on a pmarca top books list, and generally Marc's recommendations have been excellent. This one just didn't seem very interesting, and also didn't have a great message. It's the story of a sort-of-gratingly-annoying rich guy from entertainment and "deals" who decides to hire "Seal" (an unnamed Navy SEAL and ultra endurance athlete who is actually David Goggins) as a live-in personal trainer for 31 days. The parts focused on Goggins were a weird mix of repetitive/boring (100 pushups, 1000 pushups, 10 miles run, whatever, again and again) and strangely artificial/clueless (hyping up his paranoia and extreme modern reverence for anything military by everyone else). "Seal" is not particularly representative of Navy SEALs generally -- he is his own special thing.

I definitely would read the biography of Goggins, however.… (plus d'informations)