Reading list for Jan-14

Wish you all a great 2014:

- May you find time to read all the books you always wanted to read
- May you find time to summarize your insights of the books that you just read
- May the books you published get into more reprints
- May you start/complete your next book

I've come-up with my reading list for the whole year 2014. One new year resolution is NOT to buy new books till I've completed reading the unread ones (about 150+ at the last count), so that I can stick to my reading plan. Here are the books that I plan to read in Jan.



Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How we Live, Work and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
“Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena—from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books—into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.

In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards. Big Data is the first big book about the next big thing.

Confidence: The Surprising Truth About How Much you Need - and how to get it by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

We're told that the key to success in life and business is confidence: believe in yourself, and the world is your oyster. But building confidence can be a challenging task. And, as leading psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues confidence can actually get in the way of achievement - self-esteem is nothing without the competence, the core skills, to back it up. Confidence is feeling capable. Competence is being capable. None of the figures whose success is put down to supreme self-belief - Barack Obama, Madonna, Muhammad Ali - could have achieved their goals without the hard-won skills (and years of training) behind the confidence mask. Successful people are confident because of their success, and not the other way around.

 

Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind  - Jocelyn K. Glei

 Stop doing busywork. Start doing your best work.

Are you over-extended, over-distracted, and overwhelmed? Do you work at a breakneck pace all day, only to find that you haven’t accomplished the most important things on your agenda when you leave the office?

The world has changed and the way we work has to change, too. With wisdom from 20 leading creative minds, Manage Your Day-to-Day will give you a toolkit for tackling the new challenges of a 24/7, always-on workplace.