Drive - Daniel H. Pink.

Sometimes you come across a really good book which you can't put it aside till you finish devouring every insight it has to offer.  Drive is completely that book.  The big question that no one even seemed to ask; does the current business operating system still work in today's time of immense change?  People's lifestyle, attitude and behaviour have greatly evolved due to the pervasiveness of information, communication and network technology, yet when they assume their job in whichever organisation they work for, they fall back into a medieval system that seems to be obsolete in this day and age.

Why?
Open this book and find out why :)

The Social Animal - David Brooks.

This is one of the most profound books I have ever digested.  EVER.  And I mean no exaggeration.  The Economist touted it as 'a fascinating study of the unconscious mind and its impact on our lives' and it has certainly lived up to the name and dare I say beyond it.

The Social Animal is a narration on the life story of two protagonists and everyone in between from their foetal conception right up to their grave.  I'm not exactly a fan of fiction, but what Brook did was ingenious.  He interspersed general fiction of these characters which are very possible lives of anyone in today's world with facts, data, sound researches, hypotheses to back almost every behavioural decision made by these said characters - in short, he proved that as we go through life from cradle to grave, we think we are the ones making the decisions but most often than not, it is our unconscious that's been steering the ship.  We processed millions of data and stimuli to make a decision even before we realized we've already decided, the conscious was just a matter of executing it.  And what Brooks did was not to let the course of his work turn airy fairy - just because there're still no definitive scientific researches today that can prove the workings of our brain, let alone our mind - instead he meticulously weaved in relevant scientific facts and insightful literary prose that would justify even our most shameless subconscious behaviour or actions that we might have taken and to be so dumbfounded as to why.

To be honest, this book was almost like a mysterious answer that fell from the sky, right onto my lap.  But less dramatically, it just caught my eye on one of Border's shelves in the 'self-help' section.  Have you ever felt like there are two people living inside you and you don't know why?  And worse, when one of them misbehaves, the other deeply resents that, and you're stuck in the middle not knowing which one to side?  In The Social Animal, Brooks introduced many characters (that I'm assuming can be generalized into a representative segment of the general population) that I resonate with.  It feels like every character has a little bit of me at different parts of the narration.  And by him 'dissecting' actions, choices, decisions, thoughts and showing a path to how our everyday unconsciousness could be leading and making the decisions for our own best interest, I suddenly understood what it means to 'surrender'.  The word 'surrender' in a religious context - surrender to God - has always felt more like giving up and being defeated.  Put it in a non-religious context then it sounds a tad too new-age for me - surrender to what?  It felt to me we could easily replace it with an indifferent 'whatever' and it would still work.  But after this intense journey, I realized that 'surrendering' simply means letting my unconscious take over and trust it to make the best decisions for me based on its unexplainable unscientific unfounded way of processing simple and complex information.  I've got strong intuitions, and I've always allowed it to point me to some kind of direction - at work, in relationships, in sports, in travelling - but once the course is set, logic will simply take over and say, "Good job, but we don't need you anymore".  I suppose when it comes to highly objective matters (as in business) being less emotional and more logical would be appreciated.  But now I'm curious.  I'm curious if, when and should my 'unconscious' take over - would the decisions be the same?  If love was something that falls entirely in the 'unconscious' segment, would my unconsciousness be able to guard my heart and protect me like what I've been so consciously doing?  If I'd play badminton more intuitively, would I be a better player serving more strategic shots without actually needing to learn how to do that in theory?

This is truly tricky if you ask me.  As I mentioned, I've always been highly intuitive.  Not always but most of the time, I could foresee outcome A or B because of XYZ so that I now can decide to pick solution C or D accordingly, but never really thought about letting my intuition take the entire course.  Because it is scary to not know what you're doing.  Since I've learned that the unconscious will and is capable of making the best decision, I should hold back less, analyse less - all these presumingly points to better balance and inner peace.  It is truly liberating to know now that I didn't trust myself enough to make certain decisions and now I can actually change that ;)

The Social Animal is highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in psychology, social science, behavioural economics, sociology or simply an interest in their own mind and thoughts.  The last time I read an over-500-pages book in 3 days time was the last instalment of Harry Potter.  A good book is one I consider, after an intense back-to-back reading, you feel rejuvenated (or have some kind of closure - as in the case of Harry Potter 7) instead of feeling exhausted.  You know, the amazing thing is I feel like re-reading The Social Animal simply because it carries so much insights.  Some blatant on the lines, some hidden in between.  I feel like I want to take it slower this time and make sure I've really digested everything.  Awesome :)

The Invisible Gorilla - Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

The Invisible Gorilla checks and rechecks many myths that have been governing our minds. I won’t be as far fetch as to say that they’ve successfully debunked these myths, since the cases which are brought up in this kind of psychological thesis are isolated cases. Which means, you argue one way, it goes one way. You argue the other way, and you find that it could be a possibility too. But the interesting thought here is that their argument is pretty substantial when it comes to how our misconceptions of various truths about ourselves led us to perhaps make less than accurate decisions. It may not seem like very much of a big deal when it’s menial day-to-day business but take instances from the courtroom, sometimes it may cost a lot more than saying, “Oops, I guess I thought wrong”.

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons both received the Ig Nobel Prize for Psychology in September 2004 “for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it’s all too easy to overlook anything else”. Sometimes we’re too quick to jump the gun, too eager to close the case that we forget about other perspectives and possibilities, and start drawing conclusions based on our own intuition, our own experience, confidence and even memory. But if you realize, take memory as an instance, it is written by ourselves with absolutely no details of how the outcome might be to someone else. When a situation happens, the track involves multiple ‘actors’ and almost always, we’re just one of them. When we record the situation through lenses which are tinted by our own expectations and previous experience, we cannot remain neutral in saving that piece of memory. Which really means that even if the same incident happened to both you and I, there could be a discrepancy between your story and mine simply because we processed the information in different ways which are entirely biased. If there was a shootout on the street, we would have captured totally different images that are sometimes drawn from our own biasness. You see a black guy shooting. I recall clearly it was a white guy. So who’s right and who’s wrong? Memories, like history is written by the winner and in our story, who else but us take the leading actor role? And this is just one of the many ‘illusions’ that we base our everyday decisions and judgments on.

In their words: The Invisible Gorilla is a book about six everyday illusions that profoundly influence our lives: the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause and potential. These are distorted beliefs we hold about our minds that are not just wrong, but wrong in dangerous ways.

Pick this book up. It’s a must read if you, like me, like them, enjoy Malcolm Gladwell.

Here's a sneak peek on what to expect: