Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and it's all small stuff - Richard Carlson (1997)

I will refrain from writing a review on this book as this book is small stuff as well :-). Well the point is not that. Very nice book and will suggest if anyone is interested in knowing about life it has good potential of introducing life skills. Surprisingly, the moral is very similar to the Karma yogi philosophy "Karmanyebaadhikaraste Ma phalessu Kadacha na" and nothing more. Once, one learns to be a karma yogi the book is just too obvious.

But in any case, I will add my own view points on the subject. I think over a period of time as we become more and more competitive in the society we have tried to evaluate everything. Things we like or may not like. We want to evaluate it against a set of metric and dissect everything to small stuff which we can extract. That person is like that. This person is nice. I think we have started comparing every feeling we encounter to the best feelings we ever encountered in life. In fact, no one is away from this neither the author nor the summary writer. We have to learn one life skill to accept things as they are. Accepting does not mean killing to fire to change. But, not to complain about it. One more point I feel is important is not to be non-competitive. I guess the less we know the more we try to compete.

If you have read chanakya niti sometime in your life you might have heard "Namrati Phalanti Briksha, Namrate Gunina Janaah" - You will find a fruit bearing tree bowing down, wise men are egoless as well. However, we do not see that in real life with the wise men we know of. One reason could be, in society we have created the system we have a competitive means of identifying the wise. Eliminating the competition is important. Bringing in competition with self will probably eliminate some of that. Am I a more learned man than I was yesterday? Am I a better person than I was yesterday? are probably some questions we should ask.

Finally on the book: Must read. But will be hard to digest if you still are battling with the small things. I could not accept all the points in the book. I feel they are because I am not yet out of those illogical needs in my life and not that the book is wrong.

HBR on The Mind of the Leader (2005)

Good and nice book to read. However, it will not give a quick tip to become a great leader. Ultimately you will realize you are a leader if you have followers. There is no 2 minutes leadership skills available to train. Why should one read this book? To open your horizon is all this book can offer. Like most HBR articles and collections this is doing no more. There are all kinds of leaders in the world. Morality and leadership again are not related. In the political circles we know there are corrupt leadership at various levels. Yet, there are highly moral leadership as well. Couple of articles like the one on Manager and Leader can arouse your mind. This clearly distingguishes those differences. From most part there are some salient points that are clearly coming out if you analyze each of these text deeper.

• Every Leader has a viewpoint or focus
• Every Leader has followers
• Every Leader has an ability to influence

Beyond this I guess any discussion on leadership is dissection of facts, which will definitely open your mind and may make you immune to surroundings and styles of leadership. I guess that is what for most we learn from life anyway.

Overall good read if you just look at it from a perspective of gaining additional viewpoints. Not recommended if you look at it as a self help and leadership guide.