Getting Started

I’ve started to work on the structure I laid out on the last blog. I got a free trial with audible in order to listen to audio versions of the books that I want to absorb information from. This has greatly increased my actual retention of knowledge from books because I always find it very difficult to sit down with a book for an hour and fully absorb and understand what information it has that is useful to me. Now I can tune into keywords, read at a steady pace, and multitask.

Book criteria I care about: 

  1. How long was the book?
  2. How specific was it when referencing its concepts?
  3. What did I get out of the book?
  4. Is it revolutionary or related to something similar?
  5. Can I use concepts I learned from the book in real life?
  6. Would I recommend the book to others? 

Review of, “How to Win Friends, and Influence People”, by Dale Carnegie: I enjoyed the book, it was a great listen. It lasted a total of 7 hours and 19 minutes, which is helpful for me because I definitely could not have read the book itself in that short of time.  The pacing was great, and the narration was awesome. The meat of the book was really applicable to common work or life situations and had a lot of simple problem-solving methods. I personally found it easy to connect a lot of principles from the bible to this book, which made it even more cohesive for my learning experience.

“A drop of honey does more good than a gallon of gall” very closely follows, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Proverbs 15:1-2

I wanted to read books that gave me more insight into sales and I think that dealing with people or problematic situations is a great place to start, and that’s exactly what this book did for me. Studying this book helped me to achieve a personal goal of mine; to be able to better connect with people and create/cultivate valuable relationships. Over-all I would recommend this book to people looking for a very comprehensive guide to dealing with coworkers, superiors, or people in general. 

9/10

The reason I did not give it a perfect ten was that I felt as though some of the concepts may have been simplified too much, and could be classified as common sense. Like “be a great listener”, its something I heard all the time growing up and its necessary to have a decent conversation. But I made a list of some of the most reinforced concepts throughout the book and my most valuable takeaways.