What I am reading on vacation

All of you who follow my blog and weekly email newsletter The AI Weekender might have noticed that I tend to post a lot of books. I even keep a huge list of AI-related books that I recommend. The reason behind this is that one of my rules (that I stole from Ramit Sethi is to not have a spending limit on books (or any other education material for that matter).

Of course, this leads to many books that I've merely started but never finished - but I'm fine with that. I'm taking the risk of “wasting” money on books I don't like or don't find interesting for the chance I find the occasional gem. And finding them, I do. It appears to me, that especially within the last years, an exciting amount of really good, insightful and helpful books becomes available. For example, I've put together a collection of productivity books I've binged on, because I kept telling everybody about them (and then had to dig out the link to Amazon each time).

I've just been on vacation, traveling through China, all the way down to Guilin. My vacations always must include some leisure time for me to increase my book intake - it's one of the things I enjoy most while on my own time. Does that sound nerdy? Maybe ;)

During this trip, leading me through places like Xi'An (home of the famous Terracotta Army, Chongqing (the War Capitol of China during WWII) all the way down to Guilin, I've inhaled quite some books out of which I want to introduce 4 to you - really, if you don't read much else, go for these.

Disclaimer: These are Amazon Affiliate links and I'm making a small amount if you buy the book through them.

MATTHEW WALKER - WHY WE SLEEP

"Amazing breakthrough! Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It enhances your memory and makes you look more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and the flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You'll even feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious. Are you interested?"

I must admit, my sleep habits suck. I work as a management consultant (with the according work load and late-night working hours), I travel frequently to Germany (out of Beijing - easily 12-15 hours travel time), I party on the weekends, I get up at 5:30 during the week to do my workouts. Before I came to Beijing, my average time asleep (your iPhone tracks that from the setting of DnD and whether it is plugged in) was 5.5 - 6 hours. And honestly, I was f*cking proud of it, seeing sleep merely as a waste of time.

Admittedly, this blog is (mostly) about Artificial Intelligence, but I find our own natural neural networks an equally interesting topic of research. Sleep by itself is fascinating - why did evolution include a function into every(!) species that leads to an individual being unconscious for a certain amount of time, making it vulnerable to attacks? Come to think of it, this must be really really necessary, otherwise it would have been weeded out millions of years ago.

After reading through the book, I'm scared - honestly. The science and research available in the field of sleep overwhelmingly tells us that even a deviation of 1 hour from our 8 hours sleep requirement has devastating consequences. Increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular problems, mental illnesses, diabetes, infertility, all bad things are associated with a lack of sleep. To me, especially the detailed analyses in regard to memory and cognitive function impairment is most striking, posing a counterintuitive approach to the whole "let's prepare this backup this evening since it's only 11pm" mindset. There even seems to be a process resembling backpropagation in our brains that is executed during sleep hours - and it gets severely off track if we lack our 8 hours. Without regarding all the other incredible health hazards (and believe me, you REALLY want to sleep more after reading the book), for a society that prides itself of transitioning more and more into a mind worker-based one, not recognizing the negative impact sleep deprivation has on our most important tool leaves me speechless.

I'm actively thinking how to rewire my life around 8 solid (!) hours of sleep. Go read the book - if you read nothing else, seriously GO READ THIS ONE.

Mark Manson - EVERYTHING IS F*CKED

I'm having frequent conversations with my Dad about how the world has gone to shits in recent years - despite all the evidence to the contrary. Fewer people than ever are malnourished, fewer people than ever die in armed conflicts or through murder, people travel more than ever and more people than ever are connected to the internet. I could keep going for a while with this list. Yes, we still haven't done much about global warming, but we've gotten quite ahead on some other pressing issues.

Why is it then that we perceive everything as f*cked? Why are nationalist governments on the rise? Why do we seem to tear each other apart over political debates? Why do I need to convince my Dad that actually, not everything is fucked? And, most of all, why do we care?

Mark Manson has changed my life with his last book already. This one changed my perspective on a lot of things again: for example the myth that the rational thinking part of my brain is in charge of my actions and my emotions only needed to be stopped from interfering. In fact, it is exactly the other way round: you are driven by emotions and you need to find ways to hand over the steering wheel to your rational brain more often. This closely connects to one main point from above (the whole "the less you sleep, the more awesome and productive you are" myth) - some things I thought to be "cool" and "mature" are actually not based on scientific evidence, but apparently more on wishful thinking that does more harm than good.

Mark Manson has an awesome writing style that makes complicated things easy to read. He backs his claims up with lots of scientific data and philosophical knowledge, both of which I appreciate a lot. While the book above this one is a wakeup call regarding your health, this one gets you thinking - and opens an opportunity for personal growth.

SARAH KESSLER - GIGGED

I'm a big fan of Freelancer platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. They make my life easy in regard to finding people to do small things for me, like designing a logo for my home-brewed beer. In fact, I've used Upwork to find a designer for my neural-network t-shirt project. But the platform is only a symptom of a much larger shift in human labor, meaning that people get more and more dragged out of employment from a bigger company into freelancing work - think Uber (Didi for those of you in China), Udemy or Amazon Mechanical Turk. Wether it is mono-tasked platforms like Uber (driving people from point A to B) or multi-faceted ones like Upwork, these systems channel specific packages of work (nicknamed 'Gigs') to people willing to complete them. Sometimes those people are fully employed and do this as a side hustle (or to make ends meet), sometimes they are stay-at-home moms and sometimes this is their main work.

But while companies like Uber once sold this as the dream job to virtually everybody ('Be your own boss! Work on your own schedule!'), growing protests and lawsuits show that this is rarely the case. The book is very interesting as it takes a look not (only) into the inner workings of those Gig-distributing companies, but follows a couple of people involved in them. Dan Teran founded an office-cleaning company (Managed by Q) as a gig-company, but later switched to a traditional employment model. There's that one Uber driver ‘Abe’, who vigorously supported the company only to later become a major opponent to the system. And there's the stay-at-home wife who completes that many simple tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk that she now developed Carpal tunnel syndrome. Finally, you'll meet a programmer who left a well-paid job to only go completely freelance.

I highly recommend this book to anyone, whether you're a freelancer right at the center of the Gig-economy, a startup-founder building up the newest Uber-for-X or simply someone using these kind of services now and then. It gives a very interesting insight into the workings of this economy - and tells a compelling story of what works and what doesn't.

DANIEL H. PINK - DRIVE

Did you know that providing too many benefits and hard cash as bonuses can hurt productivity and employee satisfaction? And why did Microsoft Encarta - an expensive product, built by hundreds of well-paid professionals - lose against Wikipedia, a collection of articles thrown together by volunteers? Why do we stay motivated to complete difficult and complex tasks, even if there's no apparent benefit attached to them? While we can easily get distracted by high-paid by boring work?

I've just read To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink and was already hooked to his writing style: clear, no BS, facts-based and loaded with information. Drive is like that, but for a whole different topic: motivation. Although you might have heard about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, Pink goes the extra mile in his book. You'll learn how work evolved throughout history and why we ended up with the current version - and where it falls short. You'll also learn how to motivate people for what specific purpose and even how to correctly motivate your children (Spoiler alert: it's NOT by paying them 10 bucks for every A in school). And finally, you'll learn how to motivate yourself. I can really recommend this book to anyone, regardless what your job-type is, but especially if you're in charge of others, if you have children or if you find it hard to motivate yourself for your work.