“So many books, so little time.” — Frank Zappa
Welcome to the Sources of Insight Book Summaries page.
My book summaries are focused on answering one question well:
“How can you use this?”
You can browse book summaries by latest or you can browse by categories below.
Latest Book Summaries
Book Summaries by Category
Career
Advice is for Winners
Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level
The First 90 Days
When Can You Start: How To Ace the Interview and Win the Job
Entrepreneurship
Business Techniques in Troubled Times: A Toolbox for Small Business Success
businessThink: Rules for Getting It Right—Now and No Matter What!
The Six-Figure Second Income
Squirrels, Boats, and Thoroughbreds
The Innovative Team: Unleashing Creative Potential for Breakthrough Results
The Power of Starting Something Stupid
The UnStoppables: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Power
Happiness
10 Steps to Finding Your Happy Place
Interpersonal Skills
The Complete Guide on How To Negotiate
Leadership
42 Rules for Your New Leadership Role
It’s Already Inside: Nurturing Your Innate Leadership for Business and Life Success
Intelligent Leadership
Leadership on the Line
Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams
The Leader’s Guide to Speaking with Presence
The Leader’s Pocket Guide
The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus
What Keeps Leaders Up at Night
Management
Green Beans and Ice Cream: The Remarkable Power of Positive Reinforcement
Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You
Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations
StoryBranding: Creating Standout Brands Through the Power of Story
The Disney Way
Personal Development
Fearless Speaking
Living Space: Simple Steps to Transform Your Home
One Year Lived
Personal Development for Smart People
Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future
The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives that Make You Feel Alive
The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership
The Real Rules of Life
Psychology
Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes
The Undefeated Mind
Book Summaries A-Z
10 Steps to Finding Your Happy Place
42 Rules for Your New Leadership Role
Advice is for Winners
Business Techniques in Troubled Times: A Toolbox for Small Business Success
Fearless Speaking
Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level
Green Beans and Ice Cream: The Remarkable Power of Positive Reinforcement
Intelligent Leadership
It’s Already Inside: Nurturing Your Innate Leadership for Business and Life Success
Leadership on the Line
Living Space: Simple Steps to Transform Your Home
Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes
One Year Lived
Painting with Numbers
Personal Development for Smart People
Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future
Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams
Squirrels, Boats, and Thoroughbreds
Stories that Move Mountains
StoryBranding: Creating Standout Brands Through the Power of Story
The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives that Make You Feel Alive
The Complete Guide on How To Negotiate
The Disney Way
The First 90 Days
The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership
The Innovative Team: Unleashing Creative Potential for Breakthrough Results
The Leader’s Guide to Speaking with Presence
The Leader’s Pocket Guide
The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus
The Power of Starting Something Stupid
The Real Rules of Life
The Six-Figure Second Income
The Undefeated Mind
The UnStoppables: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Power
What Keeps Leaders Up at Night
When Can You Start: How To Ace the Interview and Win the Job
Featured Book Summaries
Here are my featured book summaries…
The Undefeated Mind
by Dr. Alex Lickerman
Defeat comes not from failing, but from giving up. An undefeated mind is one that never feels discouraged or despairing; it’s one that continues on in spite of it.
One way to stand strong is to have a personal mission you believe in because a personal mission gives you strength and, while a strategy might fail, you can always find another way to continue your mission.
The First 90 Days
by Michael Watkins
The goal in a transition is to build momentum by building momentum, buidling credibility, and avoiding cycles that damage credibility. The root causes of transition failure are always in the interaction between the situation and the individual.
The key is to better manage opportunities and pitfalls of a situation, while playing to your strengths and being aware of your vulnerabilities.
One Year Lived
by Adam Shepherd
Remind yourself how to inspire yourself to create great adventures in your life. Learn how to use travel as a way to gain perspective and expand and explore what you’re capable of.
Do something uncommon and choose your own adventure.
The Charge
by Brendon Burchard
You were born for something more. Do what makes your soul sing and bring out your best in all arenas of your life.
Your inspiration and zest for life comes down to embracing 3 questions: “Did I live?”, “Did I love?”, “Did I matter?”
Leadership on the Line
by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksky
The single most common source of leadership failure is treating adaptive challenges like technical problems. With technical challenges, you can apply know-how.
With adaptive challenges, you have to learn new ways , and the people with the problems do the work– and this is the key to creating buy-in, while dealing with the tough stuff.
The Innovation Team
by Chris Grivas and Gerard Puccio
Anybody can innovate. Map out the problem space, use open-ended questions to elaborate on ideas, then spread a limited set of votes across the ideas — get agreements and clarity on the problem, focus team thinking and build convergence on which problem(s) to work, which solution(s) to run with, and how to move forward in a way that brings the team along in a way that supports their cognitive style and how they like to solve creative problems.
When you understand the process that the team is working in, by making it explicit, you create awareness, which leads to self-awareness and more effectiveness across the team.
10 Steps to Finding Your Happy Place
by Galen Pearl
Grow a joyful spirit. Risk everything to blossom. Bloom where you are planted–Our happiness is grounded in our habitual thoughts, words, and actions.
Personal Development for Smart People
by Steve Pavlina
Truth, love, and power are universally attractive traits. With a rebel yell, you can break free of the chains that bind you. Follow the path with heart.
The Inner Edge
by Joelle Kay
Personal leadership can be your source of renewable strength, clarity, focus, and fulfillment. Personal leadership is your commitment to take the lead in your own life.
You take the opportunity to design, create, and achieve your ideal ways of living and leading.
This is one of the primary books that I recommend to friends and family that want to get started making money online, or to supplement their day job.
It’s a great guide for how to make money on the Web because it paints the big picture, without getting lost in all the rabbit holes.
Today’s game is about reinventing yourself and building your brand to work for you, so you can get the jobs you want, and do more of the work you love.
Are you where you want to be professionally in your career, or at least on track?
Don’t let your brand stop you.
