10 books to read right away to change your life

If one could read only 10 books their entire life these are the ones....

1. Linchpin, by Seth Godin @ThisIsSethsBlog 

Tells you how to become indispensable.

Not just at work.

In life.

Powerful book!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon. LINCHPIN https://amzn.eu/d/3p7Kcr8

#1 bestseller in Self-help for the workspace 

2. Sapiens by Yuval Harari @harari_yuval 

Tells you how did we as humans come to dominate this planet.

What made agriculture, money, religion happen.

What made us happen!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind https://amzn.eu/d/0ANrbq8

#1 bestseller in History of ideas

3. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma @RobinSharma 

Tells us the miracles and wonders of living a fulfilling life, through the life of Julian.

But this is not Julian's story.

It is our story.

Everyone's story!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari https://amzn.eu/d/1UosrhP

4. Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl

Shows us the way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living.

Tells us that our deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose.

Incredible!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust https://amzn.eu/d/6oWaYIw

#1 bestseller in US History 

5. Atmamun by Kapil Gupta @KapilGuptaMD 

This book is possibly the most powerful one I have read till date. 

The book is for everyone.

But everyone is not ready for it!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

Atmamun: The Path to Achieving the Bliss of the Himalayan Swamis. and the Freedom of a Living God. https://amzn.eu/d/99xAlSC

6. Courage to be disliked by Ichiro Kishimi @kishimi and Fumitake Koga @fumiken 

Tells us how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others.

Life-changing book!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness (Courage To series) https://amzn.eu/d/6t1te95

#1 bestseller in Society and Culture 

7. Rework by Jason Fried @jasonfried and DHH @dhh 

Tells us how to reimagine work, breaking most notions that have been set by the world, fed by the world. 

Possibly the most unique business book one will read!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever https://amzn.eu/d/dxvNoXj

8. Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel @morganhousel 

Tells us that making money isn't as much about knowing how to, as it is about how you behave with money.

Possibly the only money book one needs to read!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

The Psychology of Money https://amzn.eu/d/fIanpM4

#1 bestseller in Personal Transformation 

9. Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson @EricJorgenson 

A terrific compilation of @naval's thoughts on building wealth and creating long-term happiness.

A book that will inspire you to create your own path, as against follow someone else's!

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness https://amzn.eu/d/dIUxu36

#1 bestseller in Psychology 

10. Atomic Habits by James Clear @JamesClear 

Tells us the power of tiny habits, that slowly and steadily bring about massive changes in one's life.

One of the most liberating books one will read.

Here is where you can buy it from Amazon.

Atomic Habits: The life-changing million copy bestseller https://amzn.eu/d/6KqrnaL

#1 bestseller in Healthy living and Wellness

You can read this thread by Ankur Warikoo on Twitter here.

How to give feedback the right way

How to have difficult conversations the right way.

For the longest time, I struggled with giving direct feedback.

I felt I was being too harsh, I felt they will feel hurt, they might not like me, they will confront me and I will not know how to defend.

A million things used to go on in my head.

Until, I read the book 'Radical Candor'.

In this brilliant book by Kim Scott, Kim explains 4 types of feedback and how only one of them is effective.

To explain that, she uses two determinants.

One, do you care personally about the person you are giving feedback to - whether your friend, your relative, your colleague, whosoever!

Second, are you direct with that person or not? Or do you twist and turn or sugar coat your feedback?

Basis these 2 determinants, Kim showed the four types of feedback.

Let's try and understand them:

Bottom Right Quadrant:

If you challenge the person directly, but you do not care for the person - then that is obnoxious aggression!

This is when you are harsh, you are rude, you are not being helpful.

We all know how that feels, because we have felt it.

The end result of such an approach is instant defensiveness. With little change in the person we gave the feedback to.

Bottom Left Quadrant:

If you do not care about the person but you do not challenge directly either, instead sugar coat and pretend to be all nice and warm - that is manipulative insincerity.

Most toxic relationships lie here.

This results in mistrust and again, no change!

Top Left Quadrant:

If you do care about the person, but do not challenge directly, it is ruinous empathy.

It results in ignorance (people do not even know what to fix, if at all to fix anything) and thus no change.

This is what I was guilty of, for the longest time!

Top Right Quadrant:

It is ONLY when you challenge directly AND you care personally about the person you are giving feedback - that it is Radical Candor.

RC leads to instant change and needless to say, profound in nature!

The book hit me hard.

Because now I had a way of managing my guilt of being harsh towards someone I cared for.

So today, before giving any feedback to any of my known ones, I ask these 3 questions:

Question 1: Am I saying this because I feel anger or frustration?

In hindsight - none of those remarks ever helped.

It just made them more defensive or exercise authority if they could.

Now, I ask a different question:

“What is it that they know that I do not?”

That helps me see their side and approach it from that direction.

Question 2: Do I want the other person to truly win, or would I feel happy watching them lose?

I found myself in situations where I wanted the person to lose, so that I could pin point their mistakes, go one up on them and thus establish authority the next time I said something.

Today, I make sure that I want them to win by whatever I say.

For ex:

"You do not even know why I am angry" - is an unfair statement to make.

It makes it sound like you WANT the other person to forget, and use that as an excuse to remind them of their failure.

Question 3: Will this feedback help them or help me?

Things that I said which, in hindsight helped only me and not them, was not feedback.

It was just my need to express myself.

The chart above helped me a lot.

I am most guilty of ruinous empathy.

It’s my biggest weakness because I still fall in that trap.

Of wanting to help myself (they should feel I am a nice person), than helping them!

I have come to believe that most relationships falter because they never engage in Radical Candor.

I hope this helped you realize where you could be going wrong.

Or, where someone you know could be going wrong and you can now, through Radical Candor, help them see it :)

Candor is a compliment.

It implies equality.

It is how true friends talk.

- Peggy Noonan

You can read this thread on Twitter by Ankoor Warikoo here. 

10 rules to change your life

These 10 rules will change your life today… (guaranteed):

Don't Neglect Your Health

To be at your best, you need to take care of your mind, body, and soul.

Every day I:

• Do a mindfulness meditation

• Stretch

• Lift

• Eat healthily

The best investment you will ever make is your own health.

Cut Toxic People Fast

Beware of energy vampires. 

They suck the life out of you and hold you back.

Create a Personal Board of Advisors:

Experiences > Things

We're all going to die.

You can't bring things to your grave.

Over the past 6 months, I traveled to:

• The Grand Canyon

• Costa Rica and went surfing

• Sedona and hiked the Red Rocks

Take a "mental vacation" every 6 weeks.

You deserve it.

Focus on The Process

Fall in love with the journey.

We all have our ups and downs. 

The path to success is a marathon. Slow down and enjoy the ride.

The goal isn't just to get there. 

It's to have fun along the way.

Find Your Calling

Find the intersection of your:

• Passion

• Mission

• Vocation

• Profession

You only live once.

Make sure you're doing work that feels like play.

If you're checking the clock, quit.

Here is an Ikigai template for inspiration:

Experiments > Perfection

I used to be obsessed with making things perfect.

I learned it's more important to continuously improve:

• Write

• Ship it

• Learn

• Iterate

• Repeat

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Edison

Learn Like Your Life Depends On It

The best entrepreneurs are lifelong learners.

I spend 6 hours a day learning from:

• Books

• Twitter

• Mentors

• Podcasts

• YouTube videos

Follow your passion. Be curious. Have fun.

Live By the 5-Second Rule

Start now. Don't waste any time. 

You are one action away from changing the trajectory of your life.

Hesitation is the kiss of death.

Have a bias for action.

“Your feelings don’t matter. The only thing that matters is what you DO.” - Mel Robbins. 

Do Things That Are Obvious

Eliminate distractions.

You must say no to things that are not in your calling.

Focus is the scarcest resource in life.

It's either a "Hell Yes" or a "No."

Make Something People Want

I've wasted 1,000+ hours working on shit no one wanted.

Seek feedback. Ask for advice. Listen.

You need 3 things to be successful:

1. Unbelievable people

2. Spend as little money as possible

3. Make something customers want

Let's win together 🥇

You can read this thread on Twitter by Matt Gray here. 

13 extremely useful websites

13 free websites that are so useful they feel illegal to know:

1. Removebg

Remove the background from your image and add in any background you like in 5 seconds.

2. 12ft Ladder

Want to read an article, but there’s a paywall?

Simply:

• Insert URL into 12ft ladder

• Click remove wall

• Access content

3. TinyWOW 

Get free versions of tools you usually pay for!

Including:

• Adobe Acrobat Pro (PDF editor)

• Photoshop (image editor)

And more!

4. PDF Drive

81 Million eBooks for you to download for Free.

It is the biggest search engine for PDF files.

5. Temp-mail

You get a temporary email and inbox to help you sign up for websites and avoid all the spam down the line.

6. Quillbot 

Paraphrasing tool that rewrites and enhances any sentence, paragraph, or article using AI.

7. Gamma App

The fast alternative to slides. 

Present like a deck. Share like a doc.

8. Namelix

Need a name for your business?

Namelix will generate a short, brandable business name for you using artificial intelligence.

9. Mixkit

You can download high-quality:

• Stock Video Clips

• Stock Music

• Sound Effects

• Video Templates.

All are available for free.

10. Excel Formula Bot

Stop wasting hours creating Excel formulas.

Transform your text instructions into Excel formulas in seconds with the help of AI.

11. Hemingway App

Improves your writing style and readability by catching 4 basic writing issues: 

• Adverbs

• Passive voice

• Complicated words

• Complex phrases

A must-have tool for all content creators.

12. Scribe How 

Record your screen going through any process.

And Scribe automatically creates a how-to guide, complete with:

• Screenshots

• Instructions

• Clicks

13. WeTransfer

The easiest way to send your files around the world. 

You can share large files and photos. Transfer up to 2GB free.

British made famines in India killed 15 million Indians

There were 31 artificial Indian Famines under British Rule that killed almost 15 million Indians, some estimates say upto 29 millions.

While at the same time 3 lakh tonnes of wheat were exported from deccan plateau in India to England?

Here’s a pic of starving Famine victims under British Raj.

In 1899-1900, the monsoon rains failed in central India causing drought to parch crops impacting almost 60 million people.

Photographer William Willoughby Hooper showing a starving man protecting family from other starving cannibals.

Yes, people actually turned into cannibals due to this famines created by British.

Despite the fact that Britain had been looting India for more than a century, The British Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon,was concerned about his budget and feared that aid to the starving Indians would cause them to become dependent on hand-outs.

Drawing of Indian famine victims by Barbant.

The British stood aside and allowed millions of Indian people in the British Raj to starve to death. 

Photograph of a mother helplessly watching her children dγιng in the street during Bengal famine under colonial rule.

What even more cruel was that the “white” tourists started pouring in like vultures seeking thrilles at photographing the misery of Indian people. The invention of highly portable box cameras allowed tourists to record the sights.

A French editorial cartoon lampoons western tourists Well-fed and complacent who came to India to gawk at the skeletal Indian victims of the famine.

Many Indians still hear about these famines through their parents and grandparents.

Most horrible was the famine in AD 1900. It was so horrible people of Gujarat hasn't forgotten about it. They call it "chhapanio dukaal" as it was in vikram savant 1956.

Do read this this whenever anyone tells you that Britain brought civilization and development to India.

Here is an extract from a book that documents how the British took away food grown in India for war and to fill European food coffers for NEXT year as Indians continued to die in the present. Food imports to India were denied by the Royal Crown citing lack of ships.

The British monarchy and specifically, the Queen has never apologized for this mass murder of Indians at the hands of the colonials. This death count of Indians at the hands of the British was more than the people killed in the holocaust.

In the 18th century, India accounted for a quarter of the global GDP. By the middle of the 20th, colonialism ensured that India was one of the poorest nations in the world. 

Over 200 years of exploitation, depredation and loot and destruction reduced India to a poster child for Third World poverty.

When the British left India in 1947

- 90 percent of the population was living below the poverty line

- Literacy rate was below 17 percent

- Life expectancy of the average Indian was 27 years. JUST 27 YEARS...!! Read this again. 

This is how the British treated Indians.

In the name of free trade, the British came in and destroyed the free trade that made India the leading exporter of textiles.

There is simply no comparison between the accomplishments of India rising from the ashes that the British left India in and what was done in the 200 years before.

Why India can't trust the US to be fair

When it comes to Pakistan, US government assessments aren't worth the paper they're printed on, toilet paper shortages notwithstanding. 

Thread on Twitter by Shaunak Agarkhedkar.

Between 1983 and 1989, the US government sold 40 F-16 aircraft to Pakistan. At first glance, that might not seem like a lot.

In order to get Congress to approve these sales, Reagan's Defence Department assured them that these aircraft could not be used to drop nuclear bombs.

After that initial sale, Congress passed what's known as the Pressler Amendment. This required the US President to certify to Congress that Pakistan didn't possess nuclear weapons. Reagan was delighted to lie to them, and issued annual certifications.

After George Bush became president, an intelligence analyst named Richard Barlow was commissioned by Dick Cheney to write an assessment on Pakistan.

Barlow, who had worked in arms control and was familiar with Pakistan's shenanigans, reached out to the DIA for a technical assessment of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. He asked them to focus on the F-16 aircraft.

The DIA's and Barlow's conclusions in 1989 were stark: the Pakistanis had modified their F-16s to carry & drop nuclear bombs.

Not only had Pakistan done this, but they had also used components supplied by the US government to do it.

At the time when Barlow's assessment was circulated in Washington, the Defence Department was getting ready to sell 60 more F-16s to Pakistan.

Soon, Barlow found that information he needed for further analysis had gone missing.

Right about this time, German Intelligence arrived at the same conclusion as the DIA about Pakistan's F-16s.

Der Spiegel carried a report on this on 24 July 1989, noting that Pakistan had even tested the modified F-16s in wind tunnels.

Barlow took this information to his boss, Gerald Brubaker. For his efforts, Barlow was attacked by officers within the Pentagon. 

They accused him of sabotaging the F-16 deal and ordered him to stop all investigations.

Eight days later, the public was informed about the new F-16 deal. When questioned in Congress about the possibility of these aircraft being used for delivery of nuclear weapons, US officials lied through their teeth.

Barlow was appalled and offered to brief these officials about how Pakistan had already done what they claimed couldn't happen. Less than a week later, Brubaker fired Barlow from his job.

The sale went through but ran into trouble a year later with the Pressler Amendment when Bush refused to issue a certification to Congress. 

Today, Pakistan has 75 F-16s in its inventory. A significant number of those are much more modern than those of 1980s vintage.

Not only did F-16s alter the balance of power in the region, but the Pakistanis also have modified those very aircraft to deliver nuclear weapons with support from elements within the US government. 

Richard Barlow paid dearly for speaking the truth about Pakistan. 

His career was wrecked by his own superiors. 

Barlow managed to get by with contractual work for years but was also unemployed for more than a decade.

how to read a balance sheet

If you pick stocks, you MUST learn how to read a balance sheet.Here’s everything you need to know:

The balance sheet is one of the 3 major financial statements. 

It shows: 

▪️Assets: What a company owns

▪️Liabilities: What a company owes

▪️Shareholders Equity: The net worth attributable to its owners (shareholders)

At a fixed point in time

That “at a fixed point in time” part is key!

A balance sheet is a SNAPSHOT of a company’s net worth at a POINT in time, usually measured at the end of a quarter/year.

That differs from an income statement or cash flow statement, both of which are measured over a PERIOD of time.

Most public companies show their balance sheet in their quarterly earnings press release, but not always

Find them by looking at:

▪️10-Q (quarterly report) 

▪️10-K (annual report)

▪️Aggregator websites like @theTIKR

All balance sheets follow the same formula:

Assets = Liabilities + Shareholders Equity

This formula must be in balance at all times

(Hence the term “balance sheet”).

Companies get leeway in how they categorize each item on their balance sheet

This graphic shows some of the most commonly used categories & terms

Let’s start with assets, which is what a company OWNS

Assets are listed in order of LIQUIDITY, which means how quickly a security can be turned into cash

The most liquid assets are at the top, the least liquid on the bottom.

There are two categories of assets:

Current assets:

▪️Assets that are expected to be used in <1 year

Long-term assets:

▪️Assets that a company will benefit from for >1 year

Common current assets:

▪️Cash: Checking account, t-bills, CDs w/ <3 maturity

▪️Marketable Securities: Stocks, bonds...etc that can easily become cash

▪️Accounts Receivable: Money it is owed by its customers

▪️Inventory: Unsold goods

▪️Prepaid expenses: Insurance, rent, etc…

Long-term assets come in 2 forms:

1: Tangible Assets (You can touch them)

▪️Buildings

▪️Equipment

▪️Property

▪️Stores

2: Intangible Assets (You can't touch them)

▪️Trademarks

▪️Goodwill (premiums paid to make an acquisition)

▪️Patents

▪️Stocks/Bonds held >1 Year

Now for Liabilities, which are what a company OWES

There are 2 categories of liabilities:

1: Current liabilities:

▪️Bills that will be paid in <1 year

2: Long-term liabilities:

▪️Bills that are due in 1+ years

Common current liabilities (due <1 year):

▪️Short-term debt

▪️Accounts payable (money owed to suppliers)

▪️Interest

▪️Unpaid Wages

▪️Dividends

▪️Taxes

Common long-term liabilities (due 1+ years):

▪️Long-term debt (also called "Notes")

▪️Customer pre-payment

▪️Taxes

▪️Pension

Finally, there is "Shareholders Equity

This is money attributable to the business owners (shareholders)

It's kind of like a company's "net worth"

Common categories:

▪️Common Stock: Money invested in the company

▪️Additional Paid-In Capital: Amount shareholders have invested beyond common/preferred stock

▪️Retained Earnings: Net profits a company reinvests in the business

▪️Treasury Stock: Money used to buy back stock

Here's an example of a real balance sheet

This is taken from $HD's balance sheet as of July 31st, 2022

Notice that $HD's Shareholder Equity is really low?

Don't worry -- that's just because of the company's massive stock buyback program ($84.5 billion spent so far)

Treasure stock is listed as a negative number in shareholder's equity. 

Credit : Brian Feroldi on Twitter.