Limitless - Jim Kwik

Sometimes, you want to do something, and yet you can't. As long as it's within your control, this book will help you get it.

Content: Kwik understood what exactly it means to fail, and why people fail. By diving deep into those reasons, we can begin to unravel the pathway to success. Several factors impede our path to achieving what we want, and they were clearly spelled out in the book. For example, how to read quickly, how to achieve the state of flow to improve your productivity, and the 8 forms of intelligence.

Estimated reading time needed: 6-7h

Key takeaways: 
1) You make mistakes, mistakes don't make you. This is an extremely important piece of advice that anyone can receive. The only failure there is is the failure to learn.

2)  The very famous Golden Circle by Simon Sinek has one crucial word in the bullseye - why. It's used everywhere. If you want to truly exceed your current self and sustain this path of improvement, your why must be strong.

3) "I am" are the 2 most powerful words in the English language.  Kwik says that what you say after these 2 words defines your fate. Who do you want to be?

4) Only 3 things can change a person's behaviour over the long run - an epiphany, changing your environment and "taking baby steps". I can't pin which book I saw this quote "we are the sum  of all choices we make", but it's a similar concept. Slowly, as we change our choices, day by day you'll end up becoming someone else. Make the right choice from TODAY.

Recommendation: This book is slightly too long - there were some points I feel that the author tried to overcomplicate things. Nonetheless, the book is still a great one to read, especially if you feel like you are stuck somewhere. It isn't a be-all-end-all kind of tool to help you move forward in life, but it gives you a perspective that you might have never thought about before. With Kwik's personal background, it would probably inspire you to be limitless in your own right as well. Do give it a read!

The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel

People overreact when they fail because they forget how normal it is to fail. 

Housel wrote this book with the audience in mind - people who want to know about money, and the minds of people when it comes to money. He understood that people didn't want to read hundreds of pages for a single point, so he condensed what he knew into many short points.

Content: Housel provided multiple digestible points about how people treated money, how they acted when it comes to money and how they thought about money. There are so many learning points in this book that it's hard to pick and choose which are most important.

Estimated reading time needed: 10h

Key takeaways: 
1) Our personal experiences with money make up a tiny tiny fraction of what's happened in the world, but make up the bulk of how we believe the world works. Most of what we know are thus extremely little, and our perception of what is "supposed to be" and what isn't will be very different with that of others. 

2)  What we focus on are usually the "tails" (think of a normal distribution curve). These tail events, although extremely unlikely, are more focused on in the world. Housel opined that "the more extreme the outcome, the less likely you can apply its lessons to your own life, because the more likely the outcome was influenced by extreme ends of luck or risk". Whether you agree with luck/risk or not, we have to recognise that most of the people we've heard of on the news are the tail ends (Bezos, Gates etc). In essence, pay attention to broader patterns rather than individuals.

3) Enough - how much money we want to have, how much money we need to have the life we want. All these differ depending on the individual. Housel pointed out that if our expectations rise with results, it doesn't make sense to strive for more because we will constantly feel disappointed by this gap in between. 

4) Happiness is just results minus expectations.

5) Progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore.

6) Having a margin of safety lets you live happily with a range of outcomes.

7) In a book "30 Lessons for Living" by Karl Pillemer, a thousand elderly Americans were interviewed on the most important lessons in life. None of them said to work hard to make more money, or to be as wealthy as others, or to choose a career based on how much money you want to make.

8) Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.

Recommendation: As a finance student, this book spoke to me deeply and made me reflect on what wealth means to me. Without a doubt some people might think that money is extremely important to them (it is to me as well), to each their own. There is no right or wrong when it comes to money, it's just a matter of preference, and everybody plays a different game. People born in 1920 think the stock market is a terrible game to play, but people born in 1990 will think the stock market is an easy game to play. A great book on money, good read!