3 books you must read

To become a better verison of yourselves in your workplace

Our work is strange. We have lots of enthusiasm when we start. And then, with time, that enthusiasm erodes. There are various reasons for this erosion, like getting stuck with a bad boss, intricate situations, expectations not being met, overloaded with work, personal issues, and many other issues. I firmly believe reading good books helps us cope with such erosion. It helps us to bounce back with a renewed perspective.

Because of workplace issues, things go to extreme ends — people go into depression, have spoiled relationships, end their careers, and sometimes even suicide. Just recently, a friend of mine from my college has resigned from his job. He joined his present employer with great zeal and a commitment to make difference. In the quest for greater challenges, he quit his previous company and then joined a new company. But after joining the new company, things change. He started losing his interest because of various factors. I personally believe we should not stay in a place that brings in negativity. There is nothing worth the cost of your happiness.

Everyone teaches us how to be a good father, good student, good citizen, but when it comes to our workplace, we are on our own. No one teaches us how to sail through difficult situations and intricate issues at the workplace. But if you have a reading habit, you will find plenty of authors addressing various workplace issues. I am shortlisting these 3 books because they address relevant issues and offer a good solution to those issues.

Here is a compilation of 3 books which I believe you must read: Here is a compilation of 3 books which I believe you must read:

1. The Ostrich Paradox

Why do we hide from clearly present dangers? Professors Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther put disaster preparation in the context of how people think and where they tend to stumble due to common cognitive biases.

People share six common systemic biases that weaken their thinking and introduce error. Those systemic biases are:

• Myopia: being shortsighted and seeing things in the near future more clearly than things that will happen much later
• Amnesia: Failing to remember history
• Optimism: Focusing on good outcomes hinders crisis preparations.
• Inertia: People’s inaction
• Simplification: Oversimplification of the factors involved
• Herding bias: Following the social bias

2. The Advice Trap

Everyone hates to receive advice, but everyone loves to give it. Unfortunately, most advice is useless. To stop giving other people a piece of your mind, Michael Bungay Stanier — author of the best-selling The Coaching Habit — urges you to corral your “Advice Monster.” Stanier’s guidebook, which he describes as “a manual, a playbook, a studio, a dojo,” tells you how to make the transition from gratuitous meddler to helpful coach.

Key points

• Learn to shut down your advice monster and become more like a coach
• How to develop a quality “coaching habit.”
• The 3 principles of quality coaching. — Be Lazy, Be curious, and Be Often
• Ask seven types of questions: “kickstart, AWE, focus, foundation, strategy, lazy,” and “learning.
• How to Move past the myopic “Present You” to become the sagacious “Future You.”

I find myself in this trap of giving advices to people. I am calling it a trap, because people don’t listen and they do what they want to do. That’s how thinks work. We all know it. But why is it that we still fall in the trap of giving aadvice. A must read if you have realized you want to stop giving advices.

3. Deep Work

Professor Cal Newport presents a multipart argument for deep, concentrated work. He explains that work that demands your full focus is intrinsically valuable and rewarding. You need to be able to handle “deep work” to succeed in an information economy. Yet, people face increasing distractions or social pressure that drive them toward shallow work. Newport develops his ideas with a blend of formal research, stories, and personal accounts about the challenges and rewards of deep work. He provides tips for arranging your life to support deep work, which he sees as valuable, productive, and rare. He makes his case persuasively and even poetically. His guidance will help anyone who is seeking flow, creativity, or focus.

• “Deep work” is professional work that requires intense focus and concentration.
• How much elite work you produce equals the time you spend on your task multiplied by how intensely you focus.
• Evaluate your habits and ideas to structure your time to protect the attention you need for deep work
• 4 rules of Deep Work — Work Deeply, Embrace boredom, Quit Social Media and Drain the shallows

My point is simple; there is no workplace where there are no issues, no conflicts, easy people to deal with, where you will have full freedom to do what you want to, where you have limitless authority. Even in the prime minister’s job, there are issues, and he doesn’t have a free hand in all his decisions.

So what should we do when we get stuck in such situations. The first thing is to accept that these situations are everywhere, and there is no escape to them.

Leaving a job is one thing, but why we are leaving a job and how we are leaving job matters a lot. You may decide to stay in a rut, but if that rut is making you a better person, then your time spent in the rut is worth it. It’s because it’s only in the difficult situation, we become a better version of ourselves. It’s always a choice for us, whether we want to become wiser or wounded.