There are more books coming out every year than I can read in a lifetime. One of the ways I filter for great books is, I ask the most effective people I know, which books had a significant impact on how they think, feel, or act. I like to find the books that really made a difference, not just in theory, but in practice.

Recently, I reached out to several Microsoft leaders, past and present, and up and down the ranks. The beauty of Microsoft is the extremely high concentration of smart people and I like to leverage the collective brain. In this case, I posed a simple question to find out which business books actually made a difference:

I’ve long been a fan of writing things down to free myself up. A while back, a friend of mine got me in the habit of carrying a little yellow sticky pad everywhere I go. It lets me jot things down, wherever I go, so I never have to keep things buzzing around in my head.

Curiosity killed the cat, but it helps an old dog learn new tricks. John Medina of Brain Rules says curiosity is the most important thing. It’s what brings you joy and it’s how you achieve mastery.

While I’ve always been curious and a natural seeker, I’ve really improved my curiosity over the last few years using 3 ways …

How do we “know” something? … I think you’ll like this as a simple model to help answer the question – how do you know something to be true? There are 3 main ways:
1. Experiential (empirical)
2. Cognitive (Rational)
3. Constructed (Creational)

Bill Gates has an amazing ability to find the flaws, or see opportunities, or connect the dots.

I’ve been exploring mindsets for a while as a way to improve effectiveness, and I thought it would be helpful to share some latest thinking from the book I’m working on. A mindset is a mental attitude. It shapes your actions and your thoughts, as well as how you perceive and respond to events. A common example is whether you see the glass “half empty” or “half full.”

Here’s a lens you can use to lower your anxiety and lead yourself and others more effectively.  It’s balancing connection and conviction.  It’s a good, simple model, with a lot of depth behind it.
The key is to be able to take a thoughtful position while staying connected to others who disagree.  I learned this model a few years back during my Doing Leadership @ Microsoft training.  While I liked the model right from the start, I came to appreciate it more, as I put it into practice.  It’s also a …

While reading Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life , by Martin Seligman, I thought it was great to see how the explanation of human behavior has changed over time.  In the earlier days of psychology, popular opinion was that people are the product of their environment.  Eventually, psychologists figured out that habits of thinking can be changed and that individuals can choose the way they think.
I didn’t realize how many competing schools of thought there were.  I also like the fact that eventually it was possible …

Some books and authors change how we think.

I was catching up with an old friend and I was distilling some of my favorite books into one-liners to show the contributions of various authors. He suggested I share them as a post, so here it is …

Do you lean towards analysis or do you lean towards action? When I first heard the metaphor, describers and doers, it resonated immediately. It suddenly connected a lot of dots. I thought of all the people I know that have a bias for analysis and I thought of all the people I know that have a bias for action.

Don’t break yourself against your own expectations. The square peg won’t fit any better into a round hole by thinking the hole should be square or wanting the peg to be round. First know what you’ve got. Seeing things the way they are, isn’t limiting, it’s enabling. When you know how things are, you can deal with them more effectively and find a way forward.

Here’s a bit of insight you can see in action every day. Do you ever feel the need to yawn, when somebody else yawns? Do you ever know exactly what somebody is going to say next? How about the situation where the the word is on the tip of your tongue, but neither of you can remember what it is, yet you both know exactly what you mean?

When your spider sense tingles, how do you know whether to trust it? Intuition is a wonderful thing and it can serve you well. It can also fail you. The key is to know when it helps you, and when it works against you. It’s taken me a while to connect some dots but now I have a much better sense of when my intuition is on, and when it is off. It comes down to whether I have relevant experience or patterns to draw from.

Here are 3 simple thinking techniques I tend to use each day. There are some more advanced thinking techniques, but here I’m boiling down to a set of 3 you can use today. In fact, you can even use them while you read this post.

Thinking is probably one of the simplest things to improve that can improve you’re overall impact. At Microsoft, I’ve seen first hand the impact of skillful thinking. I like the fact that with a few techniques, people can change their game when it comes to analyzing, assessing, and responding to problems. Here’s what I’ve noticed among the smartest people I know: they control their emotions, they know what to look for, they know the right questions to ask, they know how to test assumptions, and they know how to find a way forward.

I was listening to a Tony Robbins Power Talk the other day about guarding your mind. In it, he mentioned a simple formula: (I) X (F) = Personal Reality. I is information and F is focus. In other words, your personal reality is based on the information you focus on. I think the simplest thing to remember is just like you are what you eat, you are the information you feed on.

I’m going to give you a hat. Whenever you need it, simply put it on. This hat will help you get the best results in your life.

When triggers happen that cause you to react, add a pause, and put on your metaphorical hat of effectiveness. When you put this hat on, you’re shifting gears. You’re shifting from reacting to responding.

At Microsoft, we use the term “frame” or “framing a problem” in the context of project management. You might hear somebody ask, “what’s the frame?” or “how have you framed the problem?” A Frame is simply a way to partition a problem. The heart of a frame is coming up with a context to understand the dimensions that matter and figure out how to prioritize and scope. I use frames a lot here on Sources of Insight to chunk bigger problems down, as well as to organize and share information. It’s a lens.

Do you choose your response or act on impulse? Impulse says, “eat the M&M” or “pull the lever”, or “hit the snooze button.” It feels good in the moment. It’s bad for you in the long run.

This is a follow up to my previous post, Influencer Training Day 1. These are my notes from day 2 of Influencer training. It turned out to be way tougher to write up than I expected. I had a lot of notes and we covered a lot of material and I wanted to boil it down as simply as possible. This is actually my third variation and I think it’s the cleanest so far. Why would I spend so much time trying to get this right? Because I think it’s some of the most powerful information for changing you, your environment, your team, your work, or the world.