Monday, December 25, 2017

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Cal Newport
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One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

每天最重要的2小時 : 神經科學傢教你5種有效策略, 使心智有高效率表現, 聰明完成當日關鍵工作 (Two Awesome Hours)

喬許.戴維斯 (Josh Davis)
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Amazon.com商業理財/個人成長類百大暢銷書

本書結合神經科學和心理學的研究,引據十數項研究成果與大量文獻結論,提出5種有效策略,配合人體生理系統的最適運作狀態,我們每天至少都能創造出2小時的高效率心智狀態:

• 辨識每個決定點:妥善利用做完一件事或被打斷後的5分鐘,想一下後續該處理哪件事;別擔心「浪費時間」的問題,想趕快做事的急迫感,有時會讓我們先把時間誤用在不重要的事上,消耗我們的心力。

• 管理心智能量,善用好情緒與壞情緒:所有事都會消耗心智能量、引發情緒,學會在心智疲勞之前,先集中精神做最重要的事。全球流行天后碧昂絲(Beyoncé)說:「緊張,讓我表現得更好」;正面情緒是養分,但負面情緒不必然是毒素,正、負面情緒都可以用來提升工作表現與成果。

• 停止對抗分心,學會放自己一馬:專注是成功的要素,但人類的注意力系統天生善於留意分心事物,這是演化的生存必要策略之一。學會讓心思漫遊,東想西想、作作白日夢,對提升創意和思考未來都有幫助。

• 妥善利用身心關連性:掌握運動和飲食的訣竅,能讓你表現得更出色。適量、溫和的運動可以提升專注力和心智能量,吃什麼、怎麼吃、一次吃多少,也會影響你的表現。咖啡因有助於提升效率,但不是喝多就有用,少即是多,無效時小睡10分鐘更好。

• 打造對自己有益的工作環境:辦公環境中的噪音、光線和桌邊雜物,都會影響你的工作效能。斷斷續續的談話聲,是專心工作的頭號勁敵,但戴耳機聽音樂並非最佳解方。較昏暗的光線可催生創意,辦公空間大一點,則有助於多冒點險、展現領導自信。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)



Monday, December 18, 2017

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro (石黑一雄)
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From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is the universally acclaimed novel—winner of the Booker Prize and the basis for an award-winning film.

The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

未來簡史:從智人到神人 (Homo Deus)

尤瓦爾·赫拉利 (Yuval Noah Harari)
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進入21世紀後,曾經長期威脅人類生存、發展的瘟疫、飢荒和戰爭已經被攻克,智人面臨著新的待辦議題:永生不老、幸福快樂和成為具有“神性”的人類。在解決這些新問題的過程中,科學技術的發展將顛覆我們很多當下認為無需佐證的“常識”,比如人文主義所推崇的自由意志將面臨嚴峻挑戰,機器將會代替人類做出更明智的選擇。

更重要的,當以大數據、人工智能為代表的科學技術發展的日益成熟,人類將面臨著從進化到智人以來最大的一次改變,絕大部分人將淪為“無價值的群體”,只有少部分人能進化成特質發生改變的“神人”。

未來,人類將面臨著三大問題:生物本身就是算法,生命是不斷處理數據的過程;意識與智能的分離;擁有大數據積累的外部環境將比我們自己更了解自己如何看待這三大問題,以及如何採取應對措施,將直接影響著人類未來的發展。

(摘錄自amazon.cn)


Monday, December 11, 2017

Lab Girl

Hope Jahren 
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Lab GirlWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
Winner of the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books
Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

10秒內言之有物的即答思考法:5天打造你的獨特觀點,立刻放大工作能見度!

齋藤孝
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「立即表達」自我想法,是現在及未來最需要的能力。
無論是求職面試、開會討論、主管提問、企劃提案……
想要在職場中勝出,你必須懂得瞬間思考,說、寫出與眾不同的獨家觀點!

‧你的臉書都在轉載文章?要寫出自己的看法,總是有點困難?
‧開會討論,怎麼擠都只能說:「還好」、「沒意見」?
‧主管突然問:「你怎麼想?」是否能在10秒內提出看法?
‧對方忽然提出一篇報導、時事,是否有自信立即發表評論?

同事、主管甚至是朋友,多半從你網路發文、聊天、面試、會議及企劃提案中……
偷偷觀察你這個人有沒有想法。
沒有一個主管,會重用只懂得照本宣科、聽話辦事、工作等待他人指示的員工;
反過來說,只要10%帶有獨家觀點的「說、寫能力」,
就能讓別人覺得你「不太一樣」,工作上勢必比別人掌握更多機會。

但獨立思考、10秒內即答,並不是要你無中生有。
想要讓人忍不住讚賞:「這個觀點真精采」、「這個人有深度」,
日本知名企業教育大師、溝通專家──齋藤孝,要教你,
5天利用「平常就在做的事」,社群網站發文、看電視偷學、
運用即答思考技巧,開闢出新的想法!

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, December 4, 2017

Swing Time

Zadie Smith
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A New York Times bestseller * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction * Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize  

“This is a story at once intimate and global, as much about childhood friendship as international aid, as fascinated by the fate of an unemployed single mother as it is by the omnipotence of a world-class singer…Smith’s attention to the grace notes of friendship is as precise as ever…’Swing Time’ uses its extraordinary breadth and its syncopated structure to turn the issues of race and class in every direction…We finally have a big social novel nimble enough to keep all its diverse parts moving gracefully toward a vision of what really matters in this life when the music stops.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post

“A dance itself, syncopated, unexpected, and vital…Swing Time may not parse easily and fits no mold, but it is uncommonly full of life.” —Claire Messud, The New York Review of Books

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

微權力: 從會議室、軍事衝突、宗教到國家,權力為何衰退與轉移,世界將屬於誰? (The End of Power)

摩伊希斯.奈姆 (Moisés Naím)
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掌權者為什麼失勢?失去的權力到誰手上?
國家未來領導人必讀,關心社會的公民必看

Facebook創辦人祖克柏強力號召粉絲共讀,全美緊急再版!
每周銷售破萬本,強勢擠進亞馬遜暢銷TOP10!

權力的演變正在改變世界
人人都可以更有權力

本書做了幾項大膽預言:
1. 壟斷社會的「大巨頭」與新興的「微權力」之間將出現角力,「微權力」將逐漸取代傳統的社會結構。
2. 權力不單被分散,甚至被蠶食。當權者行使權力要更加克制,否則失勢的機會將會大大提高。
3. 權力不再只掌控在菁英手上;發明家、社運分子甚至恐怖分子的影響力將大大提升。
4. 「微權力」可以推翻政權、打倒壟斷事業、開發新市場。但也可能帶來混亂,令社會癱瘓。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)