Notes from Nassim Taleb's Antifragile

Antifragile by Nassim Taleb has to be one of the most interesting books I have read this year. It presents a plethora of concepts that are worth discussing, and carry meaning for one's personal life, as well as for business, society, and science. From this standpoint I paraphrased and extracted some of the topics that resonated with me the most when reading the book, and put them in a presentation. Originally I did this to start a discussion about these concepts with my colleagues, but I have now also uploaded the presentation to SlideShare.

I recommend reading the entire book, but if you are uncertain about whether or not you should, this should serve as something of an overview.

The Supermarket Meditation

During the past week or so I have been entertaining the thought that if something requires industrial or chemical processing to make it edible, it simply will not be healthy nor nutritious. It is easy to say this of packaged foods, sweets, cookies, soft drinks etc. and it also applies well with things like soy products, cereal and margarine. So far I have not been able to think of anything that would contradict this "rule." Can you?

Photo by: Tara Whitsitt

On another note, I have been very eager to start reading more philosophy of late. I am currently finishing The Code of the Samurai with works of Seneca coming up next. I also happen to have a book called Less Is More which made it to my Best Books of 2009 list and contains hundreds of quotations and thoughts about simplicity, minimalism, and conscious living. I was leafing through it earlier today and discovered the following piece from 1972 called The Supermarket Meditation by Theodore Roszak. I think it rings very much true even today.

Those who anguish over a starving mankind on the easy assumption that there just is not enough land and resources to feed the hungry might do well to pay a special kind of visit to their local supermarket. Not to shop, but to observe and to meditate on what they see before them and have always taken for granted. How much of the world's land and labor was wasted producing the tobacco, the coffee, the tea, the refined cane sugars, the polished rice, the ice creams, the candies, the cookies, the soft drinks, the thousand and one non-nutritional luxuries one finds there? The grains that become liquor, the fruits and vegetables that lost all their food value going into cans and jars full of syrups and condiments, the potatoes and corn that became various kinds of chips, crackles, crunchies, and yum-yums, the cereals that became breakfast novelties less nourishing (as a matter of scientific fact) than the boxes they are packed in, the wheat that became white breads and pastry flours... How many forests perished to package these non-foods? How many resources went into transporting and processing them? (And the less nutrition, the more processing.) How much skilled energy went into advertising and merchandising them? There they stand in our markets, row upon row, aisle upon aisle of nutritional zero, gaily boxed and packed, and costing those fancy prices we then gripe about as the high cost of living.

It is out of such routine extravagances that the technocracy weaves its spell over our allegiance... and then assures us we are the hope of the world.

What do you think? Having to live without coffee and tea would make me a sad boy, but other than that I have to agree with Mr. Roszak. It is extremely ironic how much effort humankind has put into destroying itself. We do not call them diseases of civilization for no reason.

The best books of 2010

Like my best books of 2009 post, this is not about books that were released in 2010, but about the ones I actually read during this year. Last year there were ten books worth mentioning, but this time the number is smaller.

Almost exactly a year ago I started dating a girl (who’s sitting opposite to me in a coffee shop as I am writing this), spent the spring balancing between school and work, and since August we have been living and studying together in Seoul, South Korea. With so much things to do and see and a new language to learn, there simply hasn’t been that much time to focus on reading.

Nevertheless, here is my TOP 5 of 2010:

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes

It took me a long time to finish this book, and after reading so much about nutrition already I had a hard time immersing myself into “just another diet book”. However, Good Calories Bad Calories caught me completely by surprise. This is not a diet book. It is a book about science in nutrition research, obesity, and disease prevention by dietary means. And not just any book, but the most extensively researched and scientifically backed book that I have ever read in my life.

If you have read my original post about weight loss, the consequent three posts about where caloric balance hypothesis goes wrong, what actually causes us to accumulate fat, and what we should do in practice to get fit, and you still have doubts about the whole thing, then read this book!

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

I finished this small book last night at 2am, just a few days after getting it. For over a year now I have thought about starting my own business without actually getting anywhere closer to it, besides scribbling a few business ideas on my notebook in the middle of the night when my brain is on overdrive and I can’t get any sleep. I just thought that I’d figure it out after my studies in South Korea are finished and I have two months of holiday to work on it before returning to Finland.

However, earlier this month partly by luck, whim, and coincidence I ended up getting a small role in a Korean TV show called Athena, and it had much more profound effect on me than I had dared to imagine. I loved the feeling of everyone in the set putting their hearts and minds into making the show as good as they can - even though it meant spending the whole night in the shoot.

I want to part of something like that, and therefore once again I got stuck with the problem of what I actually want to do “when I grow up.” I am halfway through getting a Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship, yet I am thinking about throwing myself into movies. More precisely writing and directing. Storytelling.

The War of Art is about an inner force that Pressfied has named ‘Resistance’. It is what keeps us from realizing our potential and pursuing our dreams. It is what stops writers from writing and entrepreneurs from starting companies. It makes the songwriter watch TV, surf the Internet and play video games when she should be writing and composing instead.

Not only does Pressfield’s elegant prose describe and help you recognize the enemy, but within this book one can find a way to beat it.

Where the Good Calories, Bad Calories is the most important book of the year with the potential to even change public policy, The War of Art has been personally the most significant book I have read.

The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

This book looks into what separates the very best athletes in the world from those who are by all means great, but never seem to reach the top of the mountain. It then applies these principles into business world. It is a productivity book that does not focus on methods, techniques and systems, but on how to feel being at your optimal level of focus, concentration, and productivity.

I started applying the Full Engagement principles in my own life already before reading the book and even wrote an article about them for Lateral Action blog. These principles emphasize rest and recovery for superiorsustained performance, and the amount of energy we have depends on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strength. These aspects need to be in balance and they need to be nurtured in order to achieve both high productivity and satisfaction in one’s life.

SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham

If you are at all interested in selling and sales techniques, this is the book to read. It carries way more weight than most of the books written by sales ‘gurus’ because there is actual scientific evidence to show why and how the SPIN method works.

The book makes a difference between small one-time sales and large corporate selling, and shows through actual research why methods that work for small scale sales are causing the other type of sale to fail. It provides a clear method on what to do in different phases of the sale in order to succeed.

The Element by Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson has been a speaker in TED for two times, and his first talk about how schools kill creativity may very well be the most watched TED talk of all time. In fact, some of the case examples in the book are the very same Robinson mentions in his talk - using the exact same wording.

The Element is partly about creativity, finding your passion and pursuing it, why it is important and how to do actually do it, and partly about the outdated western educational system that is failing to prepare children to face the challenges of 21st century.

It is an easy and entertaining read, but when it comes to finding your passion, well, I am still looking.

I’d love to hear about the books you have read and would recommend to others!

Have a good 2011 everyone!

PS. I just realized couple days ago, that I forgot to mention arguably the most beautifully written book I read the whole year. That book is The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. It is basically about being a man, and what it means in the modern age. I can easily recommend it to any guy for its content, and to anyone interested in books simply because of the writing style:

"Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man's true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place."

The best books of 2009

I don't think I've ever read as much as I did in 2009. On top of hundreds of blog posts I've finished somewhere around 40 books. This year has also shaped me a lot as a person. A year ago I was way more shy, overweight guy spending days at work and nights playing World of Warcraft. Now I've started to take much more control over my social life and ambitions, lost 10kg's, and gotten very excited about how the human body and mind works.

This is my list of ten best, most influential books of 2009. Some of them have been published already earlier, so 2009 stands for the year I read them.

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

"The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition," writes Jim Motavalli. Yes, it is a waste, but not for the reasons he thinks. As we have seen in abundance, growing that grain will require the felling of forests, the plowing of prairies, the draining of wetlands, and the destruction of topsoil. In most places on earth, it will never be sustainable, and where it just possibly might be, it will require rotation with animals on pasture. And it's ridiculous to the point of insanity to take that world-destroying grain and feed it to a ruminant who could have happily subsisted on those now extinct forests, grasslands, and wetlands of our planet, whilebuildingtopsoil and species diversity.

This book is arguably the most important one I read in 2009. No other book has carried such a profound message about how and why agriculture has driven species extinct and destroyed ecosystems. Most importantly, this book has taught me about the meaning of topsoil, and because agriculture is destroying topsoil instead of building it, agriculture in itself is not - and cannot be - sustainable.

The Vegetarian Myth also contains a great chapter that puts together information from many books on nutrition, and this book alone provides enough good information about how humans are meant to eat that I deliberately left out all the nutrition-specific books of this list in favor of The Vegetarian Myth. This book is also very beautifully written.

I wrote a longer summation of The Vegetarian Myth earlier this year, which can be read here: Food, justice and sustainability.

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss

It's lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming. It is easier to raise $10,000,000 than it is $1,000,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.

2009 has been huge for me in terms of personal growth and trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, and I have The 4-hour Workweek to thank for propelling me to this path. This book got me to question many of the things I took for granted in life - mainly that for most people life seems to be a drudgery of birth-study-work-retirement-death. That pattern can be broken, and this book gives you a lot of ideas on how to do it.

The 4-hour Workweek is also an easy, fast, and captivating read. Many of the concepts and advice in the book - and that you could actually have a 4-hour workweek in practice - need to be approached critically. This book is definitely not providing a sure-fire way to achieve success or another "how to get rich quick" sham, but it can give you a lot of motivation to rethink your own life, and for that reason alone I recommend reading it.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody else observing the event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too. And because we all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, we are likely to search for that evidence placidly, with brief, camouflaged glances at those around us. Therefore everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, and by the principle of social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a nonemergency. This, according to Latané and Darley, is the state of pluralistic ignorance "in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming calm of others, would react."

Cialdini's Influence is a must-read for anyone interested in marketing and sales, but it can also be an eye-opening experience for those who just want to know more about how their minds are being manipulated. I remember reading it with my jaw on the floor as I realized time and again how I had acted on different situations, and with the book in my hand I could see the actual triggers that had caused me to behave a certain way. It's slightly unnerving to say the least when you realize that you're not in that much control of your own decisions as you think.

Cialdini demonstrates how our minds are on autopilot most of the time, and how other people - namely marketers - can take advantage of that. Other forms of influence are also covered, such as how we react to authority figures (e.g. the notorious Milgram pain experiment), and how people in general are looking to be lead.

Mistakes were made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson

The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions - especially the wrong ones - is an unpleasant feeling that Festinger called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as "Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me" and "I smoke two packs a day." Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don't rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. In this example, the most direct way for a smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting. But if she has tried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself that smoking isn't really so harmful, or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in many such ingenious, if self-deluding, ways.

Similarly to Influence, this book will be an unnerving read. It will explain why it is so difficult to change the way you believe about something, and how our thoughts manipulate the reality we see in order to make it fit in the frame we have created. Mistakes were made continues to explain how we justify our decisions in order to reduce cognitive dissonance, such as when we purchase something we don't really need we tend to create all kinds of rationales to justify that action.

There are also very disturbing cases about corruption, and how practically everyone can be corrupted by pulling the right strings. Even more disturbing are the accounts of how police interrogators can make you believe you did something, even though you didn't, and how our minds form false memories that seem very vivid and life-like.

The Game by Neil Strauss

There are certain bad habits we've groomed our whole life - from personality flaws to fashion faux pas. And it has been the role of parents and friends, outside of some minor tweaking, to reinforce the belief that we're okay just as we are. But it's not enough to just be yourself. You have to be your best self. And that's a tall order if you haven't found your best self yet.

Just like The 4-hour Workweek, this book also propelled me towards a change in my life. Where The 4-hour Workweek got me to reconsider my life goals and how to achieve them, The Game got me to re-evaluate dating and relationships.

The book tells the true story of how the author Neil Strauss transformed from a shy, balding geek into Style, one of the world's greatest pickup artists; a guy who could get any woman fall for him. It also gives a thorough overview of how the pickup community (group of guys who turned meeting women, attracting, and seducing them into a form of science - breaking down the whole social interaction into specific steps that need to be taken to get inside her panties) got started in the first place, and how it evolved and changed over years.

I read The Game first when I was flying from Beijing to Helsinki, and I remember finishing the whole book in just two days despite it being close to 500 pages long. It's a roller coaster ride and impossible to put down after you start reading it. The Game is also the only book I've read twice this year, mainly because the first time I read it I was so sleep deprived and didn't have a chance to process it properly, but also because it introduced me a whole new perspective on relationships, which I started to study and research more in-depth.

Reading The Game the second time I had quite a different take on it. The story is still as sexy, captivating, and thrilling as it was on the first time, but on the second reading it became more and more evident how dysfunctional and incomplete most of the people portrayed in the book are, and how their obsession over women causes them to neglect all the other aspects of their lives. It also seems, that most people who became professional pickup artists were trying to validate themselves through women without first figuring out who they themselves really are, and what do they want to achieve in life.

I really recommend The Game for everyone - men and women alike. It will change the way you see social interactions between the sexes.

The E-myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Now you understand the task ahead: to think of your business as though it were the prototype for 5,000 more just like it. To imagine that someone will walk through your door with the intention of buying your business - but only if it works. And only if it works without a lot of work and without you to work it. Imagine yourself taking the potential buyer through your business, explaining each component and how it works with every other component. How you've innovated systems solutions to people problems, how you've quantified the results of those innovations, and how you've orchestrated the innovations so that they produce the same results every single time.

This is definitely the best business book I've read the whole year. It's very heavily focused on how to build systems and structures that support your business, drawing inspiration from how McDonald's and other franchise models work. It explains why most small businesses fail, and how to avoid the common potholes on the way to create a successful company that is not dependent on the individuals working there.

Lila by Robert M. Pirsig

The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their situation. The animals Dynamically invented societies, and societies Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge for the same reasons. Therefore, to the question, "What is the purpose of all this intellectual knowledge?" the Metaphysics of Quality answers, "The fundamental purpose of knowledge is to Dynamically improve and preserve society." Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose and become an end in itself, and this growing away from original purposes towards greater Quality is a moral growth. But those original purposes are still there. And when things get lost and go adrift it is useful to remember that point of departure.

Since reading Lila my world view has not been the same. This book builds on the Metaphysics of Quality, which the author Robert M. Pirsig introduced in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I've read both books this year, but Lila was by far easier to understand of the two, and it felt like only after reading Lila I was able to really grasp the concepts that Pirsig was talking about in Zen. However, I'd still recommend reading Zen before Lila, as it contains the background information that is necessary to get the most out of this book.

The Metaphysics of Quality is a philosophy, a theory about reality. It asks questions such as what is real, what is good and what is moral. Pirsig draws on evolutionary biology, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, theology... and even quantum physics to make his case about why the Metaphysics of Quality is more fit for understanding our world than e.g. subject-object metaphysics. 

Less Is More by Broeck Vanden

So deeply rooted are past ideas that demanded a further increase in income that questioning this approach is still unfashionable except in certain very limited circles. It is difficult to accept that our income could be sufficient and that our feeling that we do not have enough comes from our failure to use the available resources well, rather than from our need for more.
- Robert Theobald, 1961

Less Is More contains quotations, thoughts, and maxims on the art of conscious living. The content ranges from western to eastern philosophy, from ancient philosophers to modern-day economists. It is an easy read that contains more food for thought than pretty much any other book I've read the whole year, and I heartily recommend it to everyone who is interested in finding true happiness and wants to control material possessions instead of being controlled by them.

Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown

Cold-reading is at the heart of the psychic's apparent skill. It is the key to understanding how a psychic is seemingly able to know so much about you. If you have ever had a convincing experience with a psychic, or you know someone who has, this is the non-paranormal explanation of how it all can happen. It is fascinating, powerful and hugely manipulative. It can be used covertly in personal and business relationships as well as for pretending you can talk to the dead or read minds. Knowledge of cold-reading techniques can protect you from abusive scum who would happily exploit you in your most desperate hour to put you in touch with a child you have just lost.

I think Derren Brown is by far the best illusionist on the planet; mixing suggestibility, hypnosis, magic and showmanship to pull out some pretty amazing tricks. This book is a very good introduction to topics such as why and how magic works, how we memorize things, what exactly are hypnosis, suggestibility, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming etc.

What I liked most, though, is that the author takes a very rational and skeptical approach to all these things. He does not claim to possess special powers, but instead is very well rooted in critical thinking, of which there is a separate chapter in the book where he also talks about anti-science, pseudo-science, and how our minds work very badly and are easily mislead in certain kinds of situations.

The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler

...The majority of college people haven't pinpointed their calling in life. Yet they're presented with a list of choices: medicine or law, art or engineering? They're asked to choose whether they want to spend the next 50 years examining toes or livers, divorcing couples or prosecuting criminals, photographing or painting, building bridges or calculating impellers for pumps.

Alas, by the time they finish college and come to work at places like Semco, GE or Amazon.com, they've been trained to ask why only when solicited, and then only in the strictest sense. They've lost the capacity to question everything from scratch, because they've learned the first and most important lesson in getting along in the system: 'Don't rock the boat.' We wear suits and ties because that's what we do.

The last book I finished reading in 2009 proved very interesting to someone who studies business. Ricardo Semler's ideas about how - and based on which principles - corporations should operate resonated deeply within me. Personally, I hope that values and ideas such as democracy, letting every employee find their own talents and interests, pursue them, and spreading out the responsibility for the company's success to everyone involved in it will become more common in organizations around the world as my generation gets older and starts taking over businesses.

I would be very interested to know what you have read this year. What books have had the biggest impact on you, and what would you recommend to others? I currently have somewhere around 30 books listed that I want to read in 2010, but there's always room for a few more.

Food, justice and sustainability

This is the holy trinity around which Lierre Keith's new book The Vegetarian Myth revolves. I have to say, that I have read a dozen incredibly good books this year alone, but none of them matches the importance of this one. The Vegetarian Myth is not only a joy to read, but its message should be heard by anyone who eats.

Keith was a vegan for 20 years, driven by compassion and her drive for kindness and justice towards all living creatures. In the process, however, the vegan diet destroyed her health: Six weeks from becoming one, she had hypoglycemia. Three months into it and she stopped menstruating, was constantly exhausted and cold. Her "skin was so dry it flaked, and in the winter it itched so badly it kept [her] up at night." In two years she developed a degenerative joint disease which eventually reached her spine, and later gastroparesis which lead to fourteen years of constant nausea. On top of the physical ailments there was also depression and anxiety, for which she puts most of the blame on the vegan diet.

You would think, that the book is about what the vegetarians eat, but I would say its main focus is on how to grow food that is rich in nutrients, sustainable and with compassion towards other living creatures. And, as Keith constructs piece by piece, that the vegetarian assumption that agriculture can feed the world is a misconception.

One of the carrying themes of The Vegetarian Myth is that agriculture is actually the most destructive thing humans have done to this planet. Entire ecosystems have been destroyed to obtain more land for annual monocrops (wheat, corn, soy...), and the real heart-wrenching issue is that growing annual monocrops cannot be done sustainably: it destroys topsoil, and without topsoil, rich in nutrients and bacteria, plants won't grow and eventually the land will turn into a desert.

This is an acute problem, too. According to Keith the topsoil in North America is only inches deep, down from the twelve feet it used to be. And the only reason why agriculture is still possible to such extent is through the use of fossil fuel, turned into fertilizers. When we run out of oil, there will not only be an energy crisis, but a food crisis as well.

Keith also discusses the history of agriculture and the related politics. How this situation of factory farming has come to be, how it is controlled just by a couple huge companies, how it destroys societies in developing countries etc. All of which proves interesting reading about what happens behind the scenes of getting the food on your plate.

In fact, even the modern dietary guidelines such as the food pyramid - built to endorse low-fat diet and complex carbohydrates - are simply serving the business interests of large corporations producing cheap grain. According to Keith, hundreds of millions of public dollars were spent on five huge studies that tried to link dietary fat intake and coronary heart disease. All of them failed to prove causality. Did this stop the endorsement of low-fat, complex carbohydrate diet? No.

Phil Handler, the president of the National Academy of Scientists even asked Congress, "What right has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so very little evidence that it will do them any good?" Yet here we are. Low-fat craze has spread from The U.S. to the rest of the world and obesity related illnesses such as diabetes are on the rise.

Although the majority of the book is about sustainable and morally justified food production, as well as the nature of nature - how nutrients flow from plants to grazers to carnivores and back to the plants - it also contains a very good chapter about nutrition, explaining in detail what is wrong with the vegetarian diet and what kind of food humans have evolved to eat.

This chapter provides a great starting point if you just want to find out more about how different foods affect your body. The Vegetarian Myth was published in 2009 so it contains very recent information. This chapter is heavily based on more recent research about nutrition and on bestselling books such as Protein Power Lifeplan and Good Calories, Bad Calories. After reading just this one chapter you will know more about nutrition than 95% of people, and from there it's easy to move into more specific books in case you want more information.

In my opinion the only drawback of The Vegetarian Myth is its last chapter about how to save the world. It is the weakest one in argumentation and heavily colored by feminist ideology. However, all the other chapters make reading this book more than worth your while.

I understand, that this book can and will cause strong resistance especially in vegetarians, but it could have been also written from any other point of view, without diminishing the importance its message; that agriculture is not sustainable and that something has to die for another creature to live. It is only natural, that Keith uses her own experiences as a vegan to carry the narrative forward.

I can't recommend enough that you read this book. And to get a bit better idea of its contents, check the below clip from Keith's book tour talk, and read the first few pages of the book.

How reading changed my life

This is a little difficult post to write, as it is rather personal one. I'm trying to describe the events that have taken place in my life during the past 8 months, which has changed me as a person more than probably any other period in my life, yet keep it all constrained around one specific topic; reading.

I guess it's safe to assume that you are an avid reader. If you weren't, I doubt this blog would hold much interest to you. And as I'm writing this I wonder what it is exactly that you like to read? Is this the only blog or are there others you follow? How about popular novels such as those by Paolo Coelho, or do you enjoy the twisted and bizarre tales of Chuck Palahniuk? Perhaps you like adventure, fantasy, sci-fi... Or maybe you are like me and have discovered the joy of reading non-fiction.

When I was a kid I loved books. I could easily read over 300 pages a day in our summer cottage where I had little else to do. The books I read were mainly popular sci-fi and fantasy aimed at the youth. Books by David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, Terry Pratchett and Raymond E. Feist (by the way, I still think that the Empire trilogy by Feist is one of the best series ever revolving around political intrigue - despite the fantasy setting!).

As I grew older I still enjoyed an occasional fiction book, but I didn't really value reading as a pastime activity. I just read a little bit when I was about to go to sleep, or when I was traveling and needed to kill time.

I don't know exactly what happened in the beginning of 2009, but one could say that I was bored with my life. I was not in the physical condition I wanted to be (and had been before). The work I was doing seemed to drag onwards with no surprises or major changes on the way. I guess you could describe the situation as a sort of surface stillness, with everything appearing calm and good from the outside, but on the inside the stillness itself was creating a turmoil. The longer the status quo would continue, the more turmoil it would create.

It was this feeling of inner turmoil - feeling of being able to reach higher, not being satisfied with what I had - that got me to open my mind and actively search for ways to change the status quo. What happened in reality, though, was pure coincidence and luck. A small ripple that caused an avalanche. Then again, I doubt that the ripple would have had such a profound impact if it were some other time in my life.

What happened was, that I was watching Diggnation one day in February, and there was a small off-topic mention about "a guy who built huge amount of muscle in just four weeks". I was intrigued and wanted to know more as I was struggling with my weight at the time. The guy in question was Tim Ferriss. After finding and reading his article about muscular hypertrophy I was even more intrigued. I really liked his writing style and argumentation, so I read more of his stuff and couple weeks later ordered his book The 4-Hour Workweek.

That book was an eye-opener. It got me to question certain things that I had taken for granted, and really made me realize that this is my life. It is up to me what to do with it. And if I want to be true to myself I should do everything I can in order to make it enjoyable and find meaning in it. This was the first non-fiction book I had ever come across that was impossible to put down after starting to read it. I was thoroughly captivated, and hugely enjoyed both the reading experience and the impact it had on my way of thinking.

I realized, that if reading one non-fiction book can be this enjoyable, there must be more of them out there! Books that provide knowledge, change the way you perceive the world and positively affect your happiness. All the while being also joyful and entertaining to read.

I felt like an explorer who had just reached the top of a mountain, looking over a vast landscape with entirely new sights, sounds and sensations. I realized that there are so many things that interest me and of which I want to learn more. But most importantly, I realized that acquiring that knowledge does not need to be an anxious experience.

I have been pondering why I did not discover these great non-fiction books earlier. I suspect, that the main reason for it is the way modern education works. When schools and universities force you to read prescribed material that lacks soul, personality and joy, you get conditioned to the belief, that learning itself is tedious, boring and takes a lot of work. And the only way you can see a non-fiction book is through the eyes of a student; that those books are no different from the ones you had to read at school. That they are anything but entertaining.

As I was reading The 4-Hour Workweek I also discovered few new blogs to follow. The good thing is, that many great books get recommended by bloggers who have read them. I checked those that intrigued me, read the Amazon reviews and started ordering ones I found the most interesting. A list of recommended books in The 4-Hour Workweek also helped. You could, of course, use the local libraries instead of buying the books yourself, but I have always had a soft spot for actually letting the author know how much I appreciate their work, so I don't mind paying a small price to own a copy.

At first my interest was in books related to personal development, business and nutrition. Since then I have also started reading about psychology, philosophy, and most recently photography and graphics design. All this on my own spare time after work and on weekends - simply because those books can be so damn enjoyable! In less than a year I feel like I have acquired more applicable knowledge than I did during my whole time as a university student. On top of which I've gotten myself into better physical shape than ever before as a result of increasing my understanding of nutrition and the inner workings of human body.

Since March I have purchased around 30 non-fiction books (and couple fiction ones) and read all but five of them. I have to admit, that there have been couple stray arrows, but most of the books I've read have been simply amazing. Nowadays, if I consider buying a new book, I'll try to find an excerpt of it (Amazon is great for this!) to verify that I also enjoy the writing style of the author, and that the contents of the book appear to meet my expectations.

There is a huge difference in learning about something you are genuinely interested in, finding the material that intrigues you the most and has gotten the best reviews from fellow readers and academics, as opposed to reading a soulless textbook that no one in their free mind would pick up unless being forced to.

Learning on your own can be truly enjoyable and useful. You just have to give it a try. Find a topic that interests you, search for blogs that match your interest, read some articles and see if there are any recommended books or links to other related blogs. When you find a book that seems interesting, check the Amazon reviews (I usually check both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for wider perspective). Sometimes a better book on the topic might be suggested in a review, or you may be able to find a book that is more suited to you by browsing the Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought -list.