cal3b
I'm writing a review about this, but tl;dr it's really long and the end is kind of amazing but the first half is a slog, but still good, but also bad. But in many ways good.
The best book i've read in the last year. it was so cathartic reading this, and described so much of what i disliked about university. It's also a page turner! I was finding reasons to walk around so i could listen to it. Which, btw, i would highly recommend because Tim has the most soothing voice and the way the images are linked makes it easy to pull up your phone when you get a chance to see the visuals.
I also genuinely think this made me a better thinker, even though it's about political tribalism I could feel how so much of this applied to more than political tribalism and just _thought_ tribalism in my own life, ideas that i had become an attorney for, for no reason i could think of.
It has made me so much more self aware about the areas of my life i am closed minded and in unconvincable land and given what feels like a path forward to leaving this kind of attachment to idea behind me.
Overall a pretty interesting description of a fast takeoff event. I really enjoyed the moments just before the change and I really liked how this fleshed out some possible motivations of a godlike ASI more than just something that wants paperclips. But the torture porn was a bit dramatic.
3.5
It was pretty good, however a a significant chunk of the book was focused on what I would consider quite basic functions of omnifocus and I was more interested in the last few chapters where the authors went over how they personally used omnifocus.
I liked this a lot.
Asimov has a way of writing about mysterious things in a really interesting way, you always feel compelled to reach the next page just to see what happens. This gels particularly well with the detective story in this book. There's lots of questions you want to see answered in an fun way and they all are.
The ending made the book worthwhile. It was very special and worth wading through some of the more boring bits in the middle!
There was a surprising amount of duplicate stories from the version of stories of your life I read. However, this was on the whole so much better than stories of your life. I remember overall really liking stories of your life but skipping a 2 stories at least. With this one, however, I don't think I skipped any. And not only did I not skip any but I think I basically also loved all. Like really loved.
Off the top of my head my favorites (in order) were:
- The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
- Omphalos
- Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom
Sooooo good. The first chapter is probably my favourite in any book. Super quirky and really picks up a quarter of the way through.
So good, in a way that's hard to describe. Nearly the majority of this book feels like it is technical instructions on formally practicing zazen, yet it's really so much more than that. Every page feels like it has something beautifully relevant to your own life despite the fact that it came from a chapter on the right posture you should hold during meditation. Going to be reading random pages from this for conceivable future.
I watched the movie then read all the other books years ago, now is the first time I've read the first book and wow so different than I expected.
My only complaint is the title. This books is meant for everyone and everyone should read it, whether you're a student, book writer or not. Perhaps those groups of people will find it the most useful, I certainly wish I has read this before university. But I truly do believe that almost anyone will find the slip box useful in an extremely significant way.
I really can't explain how much I like this book but I like it in this unexplainable way because it gives you such a helpful and useful system for organising raw knowledge. Before this book I had never even considered that this is something that should be organised, even though in GTD terms it definitely has represented an open loop in my mind for a very long time.
All I can say is: the sooner you read this book the better. The more books and articles and youtube videos you realised you could have watched with a slip box will depress you all the more after you finish Smart Notes.
The arguments for having a slip box really do seem sound, and after reading the book I can't think of an alternative.
IMO reading the book and the manga is compulsory, if you plan on reading the book, the manga perfectly compliments the book with incredible illustrations, which really help given the visual nature of what Kon Mari is trying to teach.
I liked it!! However exactly half of it. In my opinion you could stop reading at the start of the mask chapters. I listened to the entire things but they made zero sense to me.