Campus Book Rentals Reviews: Written

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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Book Summary: Better - A Surgeon's Notes on Performance - Written by Atul Gawande

Dr. Gawande is an excellent author. Anytime I can learn from a Harvard graduate then I will spend the time on it. "Better" talks about certain simplistic conclusions from complex problems. Being a positive deviant is how Dr. Gawande characterizes being successful and making progress in medicine or any endeavor.

Why is this important to me? Inevitably you will come across complex issues in your life. Taking a diligent approach to solving these issues will usually result in simple solutions. Better talks about how to do that. What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless? Dr. Gawande tells a story of one of his patients that was admitted under his care when he was in medical school. The patient was stable and needed to be put under observation. She complained of insomnia and sweats the night before. The senior resident told him to keep a close eye on her and he agreed to see her mid-day. That one simple assumption almost cost the patient her life. The senior resident checked on her first and she had a fever and needed to be put into the ICU. She lived and was sent home fine a few days later. The point of this story is that a simple assumption to check on the patient in a couple hours could have cost her - her life. One simple thing to do separates life and death.

Better is broken down in three main parts which I will touch on briefly and then we will talk about Dr. Gawande's recommendations for becoming a positive deviant.

1. Diligence - Each year 2 million Americans acquire an infection in the hospital and 90,000 die from that infection. Infections are complex as you can get. Where did they come from? How did it happen? When did it start? What type is it? All of these questions are valid and are part of the complex puzzle. After much study, the proper solution is WASHING YOUR hands. Now there is a strict procedure that doctors should follow, key word here is "should" and most don't.

There are little improvements that make HUGE differences that are profiled in the book. Here is a simple example. The nurses in the operating room would routinely run out of supplies and have to go get more. Thus they leave the room and come back in. Simple solution, make sure the supplies are fully stocked so you do not have to leave. This simple solution of just-in-time supply system eliminated infections by 90% in hospital surgical rooms that employed it.

2. Measure - Another part of diligence is measurement. In the Vietnam War, when a soldier was wounded, their average time from field to the U.S was 45 days. Today it is 4 days. Gunshot mortality dropped from 16% in Vietnam to less than 5% today. The reason is not technology. It is in the process. Today there is FSU's (Forward Surgical Units). They follow the troop battalions. Now when a soldier is hurt they perform mini-incomplete surgeries to make sure they live and then the rest of the surgery is completed after. This seems counter intuitive but it works.

The key to understanding why Forward Surgical Units work is to measure things. It became known that the time from wound to care is in direct correlation to life and death. Minimize the time - Maximize Life. Knowing this allows them to minimize the time in several areas.

3. Simplistic Relentlessness - Ingenuity is bread from measurement and diligence. Once your eyes are opened then the solution appears. This is slight edge daily behavior that creates huge results. Using simplistic relentlessness on identified problems creates explosive returns. This is the 80/20 rule on steroids. Most people would not look at the little things but a simple check list can save lives.

A great quote from the book is: "What the best may have, above all, is a capacity to learn and change-and to do so faster than everyone else." To that end I want to talk about the five recommendations to becoming a positive deviant. This is the term for using your ingenuity to solve complex problems.

1. Ask unscripted questions 2. Don't complain 3. Count Something 4. Write something 5. Change - These 5 things are designed to leverage the "collective know how!"

I hope you have found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days.

One thing you can take away from this book is count something. If you don't measure it then you can't manage it. This is a big deal. Spend time and measure things that are important especially if you need to solve a complex problem.

Joe Mosed invites you to subscribe to http://www.successprogress.com/ to receive free video book summaries. Our vision at Success Progress is to provide relevant & meaningful content to our user community. To view the video summary of this article please visit http://www.youtube.com/successprogress

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Book Summary: Boomerang - The Meltdown Tour - Written by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is a very popular author with writings including - The Big Short, Liars Poker and the Blind Side. Boomerang is a review of the sovereign debt crisis. This is a global problem that 90% of Americans are clueless about. This problem and the U.S. debt have the ability to be as fatal to our society as a third world war. Our government is trying to kick the can farther down the road so they don't have to deal with it. Boomerang will open your eyes to the issue from a few of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) perspective.

Why is this important to me? In this summary, I don't have to ask this question because the sovereign debt crisis affects everyone and it is everybody's problem. Unfortunately, herd mentality invites the slaughter. I recommend you get educated on this and start protecting yourself.

1. Doom / Gloom - I am not a doom and gloom world ending person but logic dictates that the debts accrued by the US and the European Union cannot be sustained. The question is - what happens when the defaults start. You really need to get educated and start protecting yourself

2. Savers are losers - Robert Kiyosaki from Rich Dad Poor Dad always states that savers are losers. He does not mean this as a derogatory statement. What he is referring to is that $1 dollar today is the equivalent to 4 cents in 1913. This means that the dollar has lost 96% of its value. So if you keep your savings in dollars then you are losing money due to inflation. In 2008, 100 year old institutions were sold in a weekend (Merrill Lynch). Money and currency are two different things and it makes sense to protect yourself so that you do not have counter party risk. What this means is that if your money is in the bank and there is a bank run then you have counter party risk. If you own real money like Gold or Silver then there is no counter party risk.

Michael Lewis travels the world and investigates the sovereign debt crisis by talking and seeing the effects first hand. The book is a good story; I only wish it was fiction.

Kyle Bass is the investor who shorted the big banks and predicted Fannie Mae would go bankrupt. He made millions of dollars by shorting the mortgage industry. When asked what the average person should do to protect themselves from the potential financial carnage, he says buy Guns and Gold. This is a scary prophecy from a guy who got it right once.

Look around and listen to the politicians. President Obama in August raised the debt ceiling right in the last hour to AVOID CATESTROPHIC consequences to our economy. Those words are powerful but I guess the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is more important. The U.S. masses are sleeping while this is going on. Remember that the first thing Hitler did with his population is take away the guns before WWII. The bankers and Wall Street are taking away the value of our currency and nothing is being done to fix it. There have been countless domino effects happening right in front of us and the only politician who remotely understands it is Ron Paul. Unfortunately he will not be elected, but if he was, he would fix it.

The fixes involved will be painful. Greece for example WILL DEFAULT because you cannot change a whole culture of people overnight. The GREEKS do not pay taxes. They are required too but it is culturally acceptable to not pay your taxes and there are no consequences if you don't. In America, we were paying an average sales person $32 million per year to trade garbage securities. Most of these traders would starve if they sold technology solutions yet they made millions of dollars while leveraging our future and country. The mortgage bubble and derivatives can be blamed on less than 100 people. A select few created these leveraged instruments and we are still caught in the middle of bailout talks.

Question - if you are drowning, does it make sense to throw more water on you? If not, then why is the only solution to our debt problem, more debt? This picture sums it up. What the U.S. proposes is to increase spending and hope the economy grows. The current solution looks like this - you make $43,000 per year and have $78,000 in credit card debt thus the logical answer is to open another credit card to pay for the credit card debt. We are borrowing money from China so we can fight in Afghanistan and Libya. - Unbelievable!!!

I hope you have found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is to get educated. A lot of people are going to be hurt by this debt problem and I hope you are not one of them.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Art of Non-Conformity - Set Your Own Rules - Written by Chris Guillebeau

It is interesting how things fall into place. I read the 4-Hour work week by Tim Ferriss and was skeptical until I read it. Then this book shows up on my desk. Needless to say Chris Guillebeau has the right idea. People are sleep walking through life. They get up, work, go to bed and get up again. Before they know it, they are 60 years old and wondered what the heck happened. When you're a kid and followed the crowd typically you got in trouble and were told - "If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you follow?" Now when you are older you go to school, get a secure job, buy a house and die. If you do not follow all the people off the bridge then you are an outcast. Chris is an outcast of excellent stature. This is a great book. Let's dig in.......

Why is this important to me?
Well let's consider some things: Education today in the U.S. is a bit of a joke. We rank 25th of all the industrialized nations. This is horrible. Worse than that, kids are graduating college with mountains of debt and not getting jobs. Education cost is the only market that has been rising steadily and far exceeding growth in other areas.

You may ask: Why is Education so expensive and not really helping in the job market? There is so much loan money out there that the universities know they can charge more because there is money to be borrowed. It sounds like a bit of a paradox - students cannot afford college so let them go get money and pay for it for the rest of their lives. Worse than that for every engineer/tech person that makes stuff, our universities graduate 18 Lawyers and 50 MBA students. This means that one person creates actual utility and 68 people manage it.

With stats like this you really need to evaluate what you want out of life and the direction you need to take to solidify your future.

This book will show you some absolute great ideas and concepts that you can utilize but it all comes down to - What do you really want out of life? In the book Chris talks about 11 ways to be average. I highlighted three kickers

1. Accept what people tell you at face value. This is a classic one and you need to question everything. Remember half the knowledge we know today will be proven wrong in the future.

2. Don't try to learn another language, everyone else will learn English. This is just simple I-centered crap. I will admit that I only speak one language and frankly I am ashamed of it. This is currently being remedied.

3. Get the largest mortgage you can and spend the next 30 years trying to pay it. I can follow this one only if your money will be put to something with more utility. Remember that your house is a liability because it does NOT spit off monthly cash flow.

Don't be average because - "Tomorrow is promised to know one.

Chris's book is packed with excellent ideas and a ton of non-conforming thinking. I will touch on three key points for the sake of time.

1. Remarkable work - You need to define what this means for you. We touched on in the last slide how you can be average. The remarkable life needs to be defined in terms of health, happiness, relationship and work. Give this some thought and cut out the clutter.

2. Reclaiming Work - Chris tells a story about a person who was interviewing for bosses. Instead of putting a resume together and hoping to be picked out of a 100 people, she put out a blog post for an ideal boss and decided to work at that level. This is classic out of the box thinking. To reclaim your time, you need to use the stop doing list. This is a powerful tool for cutting away the clutter. Once you define what it is you want then you want to cut away all the crap and focus on what is important. If you work for other people then this exercise will free up your time and get you promoted. This is contrary to popular belief because people think there boss just wants them busy. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. If you work for a company that cares at all about growth then they want you to focus on the 20% of the work that creates 80% for the results.

3. Alternative Learning - For those of you that don't know me, I am a big fan of self-learning. With all the tools out there and the internet the possibility for learning is unlimited. The key is to focus on what you want to learn. I realize that some of you are going to want the degree which is ok but if you are smart about it and short of cash then there are several ways to get it without going into major debt.

Here is a great quote from Malcolm Forbes - "The dumbest people I know are those who know it all"

One way to leverage your learning is the following. If you want to learn Spanish then you can subscribe to a language-learning podcast and listen to each 20-minute episode, five times a week for 1 year. You can do this and watch movies you like translated in Spanish. Things like this make it easier to learn. Also, if you follow Tim Ferriss's advice from the 4-Hour Work Week, then you can get 95% of the conversational language in 3 to 6 months by focusing on the most frequently used words.

I hope you have found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days.

One thing you can take away from this book is eliminating clutter by using the Stop Doing List. This will leverage the 80/20 rule for you. Start by eliminating one activity that has no meaningful output each week and focus on the top 5 things each day. Your production and paycheck will increase 5 fold.