Here’s what I’m listening to right now
It’s been a helluva week.
We’re in lockdown. We’re homeschooling. All six of us have really bad bronchitis, which in a pandemic makes us about as welcome as a wet dog in a clean house. Oh, and the baby is teething.
So on Tuesday my wife announced she’d booked me in for a telehealth doctor appointment.
The doctor’s first comment surprised me: “You don’t sound like your normal self.”
“But … you’ve never met me before. How would you know?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m listening to your audiobook at the moment … it’s actually very engaging.”
Right.
If I’d had a voice, I would have screamed, “Just give me some antibiotics so I can hide under my blanket for the next week!” Yet I could only manage to squeak out a feeble “thank you”.
Still, the good doctor gave me an idea: after bingeing on my usual diet of podcasts, I decided to get more beef by tucking into some audiobooks. Here are three that got me through my week from hell.
Billion Dollar Loser, by Reeves Wiedeman
This is the story of Adam Neumann, a young, egotistical entrepreneur who thought he was the Jesus of business.
It explains how he convinced some of the largest investors in the world to worship his creation. What was it? Well, he called it “a tech-enabled physical social network”. Otherwise known as WeWork, a company that takes large office buildings and rents out desks to freelancers.
In 2019 WeWork was hemorrhaging cash, with annual losses of $US1.9 billion per year. Neumann and his Wall Street bankers tried to sell it to the general public (via a stock market listing) for a ridiculous $US47 billion. Just six weeks later it would be fending off bankruptcy. Billion Dollar Loser is a beautifully bonkers business story.
Business Adventures, by John Brooks
Bill Gates says this is the best business book he’s ever read. (Okay, so Bill has been in the weeds lately, yet, as long as he’s not recommending romance books, I’m in.) This audio actually felt like a podcast, in that it tells 12 fascinating business stories. While the book was first published in 1969, the brilliance is they could have been written today. My favourite? “When Piggly Wiggly Tried to Stick it to the Short-sellers on Wall Street.”
Indistractible, by Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal wrote the ‘Bible’ for Silicon Valley — Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Perhaps he was looking for a shot of redemption, but he followed it up with an equally powerful book that I’ve been listening to this week: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
He argues that people have always been distracted: once it was television rotting our brains, and before that parents were worried their kids were glued to the gramophone. In other words, it’s not the device but your own internal hardwiring that needs to be mastered. The ability to stay focused is a competitive advantage, and the book lays out a framework for being — as he calls it — indistractible.
Oh, and for the kids, the audiobook of Tashi has been in high rotation. Tashi goes on epic adventures and overcomes all sorts of foes (but nothing like facing off against four bored, sick kids in lockdown.)
Tread Your Own Path!