Books for Impact

Maximize Your Chance Possibilities & Get Lucky

April 27, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi 2 Comments

British psychologist Richard Wiseman’s Luck Factor (2003) explores what makes some people lucky and others unlucky.

Being lucky is a mindset to bring to life. Lucky people maximize their chances of creating and noticing a lucky opportunity. They listen to their intuition when they get an opportunistic hunch.

The book’s core premise is whether you’re generally lucky or unlucky depends on your attitude—an optimistic mindset is a self-fulfilling prophecy, indeed. Lucky people expect good fortune; they expect good things to happen in their life. When they do have a run of bad luck, they adopt a resilient attitude and somehow turn that into good luck.

Idea for Impact: Lucky people aren’t lucky by sheer accident. To maximize your chances of getting lucky, get more opportunities and feel luckier. Get out there more often, produce more work, and talk to more people. Be open to the world and ready for new opportunities.

An Olympian History of Humanity // Book Summary of Yuval Noah Harari’s ‘Sapiens’

September 10, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari’s bestselling 464-page Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) retells the 13.5 billion years-long odyssey of human evolution from the Big Bang to the near-future. Harari accounts for how Homo sapiens (the ‘wise man’) overcame the most extraordinary odds and numerous arbitrary inevitabilities to dominate the world the way we do at present.

Harari’s narratives span the cognitive revolution (70,000 years ago,) agricultural revolution (11,000 years,) scientific revolution (500 years,) industrial revolution (250 years,) and information revolution (50 years.) The first of these epochs, the cognitive revolution, coupled with a genetic mutation, was the real game-changer: Homo sapiens didn’t evolve efficiently from stooping apes to standing individuals. There were previously no less than six distinct homines, of which Homo sapiens came out top.

Sapiens argues that what made Homo sapiens special was our ability to develop networks and communities and tell stories, i.e., to organize and build large, connected communities around “shared fictions” or narratives—religion, nationalism, capitalism, trade groups, social institutions, for example. It was only through such intangible beliefs—not biological realities—that Homo sapiens were able to get the better of the physical world.

Homo sapiens’ talent for abstraction set us apart

Language made it easier to dwell upon abstract matters and flexibly cooperate in ever-larger numbers. Harari’s examples cite how Homo sapiens—from our ancestors all the way up to today—are so willing to create and believe in such conceptual paradigms that have been the key to our success and the key to our problems.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation—whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe—is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.

Harari’s inquiry is extensive. His scholarship is rigorous, and his interpretation creative. Yes, most of the book restates familiar facts and theories. Harari does an excellent job synthesizing a lot of information. What makes Sapiens exceptional is it gives culture a starring role in the human drama—something that many in science and sociology are hesitant to do, instead preferring to depict culture as transient, nebulous, and “soft.”

Harari builds on some provocative ideas about Homo sapiens, but sets out his anthropological interpretations with vim and vigor:

The emergence of agriculture—especially livestock farming—is “the greatest crime in history … The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueler with the passing of the centuries.” [Harari has said that he became a committed vegan while writing Sapiens.]
Organized religion is predictably contemptible, “You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.” The emergence of religion “was one of the most important revolutions in history, and made a vital contribution to the unification of humankind.” But the notion of supernatural being is increasingly inconsequential as humans are acquired divine abilities and relying increasingly upon ourselves for creating life forms and averting death and destruction. Then, “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”
Consumer capitalism is a dreadful prison. “For better or worse, in sickness and in health, the modern economy has been growing like a hormone-soused teenager. It eats up everything it can find and puts on inches faster than you can count.”

Recommendation: Read Harari’s astonishing history of the species, from insignificant apes to rulers of the world

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015) is a must-read. It is a brilliantly executed examination of who we are and of our behaviors. Notwithstanding the seeming overstatements and the occasional drift to sensationalism, Sapiens is extremely interesting and thought-provoking. It is written elegantly, in a clear and engaging style, with a skeptic’s eye and irreverent—and sometimes-sarcastic—sensibility.

We are more powerful than ever before…Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one.

Harari is implacably cold and literal, abstaining from political correctness and pro-Western predispositions. Sapiens concludes with spine-tingling predictions about the future. Perhaps as a cliffhanger to his subsequent Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016,) Harari contends that we’re the primary destructive force.

Homo sapiens are sowing the seeds for our own destruction. The forthcoming biotechnological revolution, Harari speculates, may signal the end of sapiens. Bioengineered “amortal cyborgs” may replace us. These post-human organic and inorganic organisms won’t necessarily be immortal but, absent an accident, can live forever. Homo not so sapiens?

Lessons from the World’s Worst Aviation Disaster // Book Summary of ‘The Collision on Tenerife’

November 5, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Jon Ziomek’s nonfiction history book Collision on Tenerife (2018) is the result of years of analysis into the world’s worst aviation disaster on Tenerife Island in the Canary Islands of Spain.

Distinct Small Errors Can Become Linked and Amplified into a Big Tragedy

On 27-March-1977, two fully loaded Boeing 747 passenger jets operated by Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines collided on the runway, killing 583 passengers and crew on the two airplanes. Only 61 survived—all from the Pan Am jet, including its pilot.

These two flights, and a few others, were diverted to Tenerife after a bomb went off at the Gran Canaria Airport in Las Palmas, their original destination. Tenerife was not a major airport—it had a single runway, and taxi and parking space were limited. After the Las Palmas airport reopened, flights were cleared for takeoff from Tenerife, but the fog rolled in over Tenerife reducing visibility to less than 300 feet. Several airplanes that had been diverted to Tenerife had blocked the taxiway and the parking ramp. Therefore, the KLM and Pan Am jets taxied down the single runway in preparation for takeoff, the Pan Am behind the KLM.

At one end of the runway, the KLM jet turned 180 degrees into position for takeoff. In the meantime, the Pan Am jet was still taxiing on the runway, having missed its taxiway turnoff in the fog. The KLM pilot jumped the gun and started his take-off roll before he got clearance from traffic control.

When the pilots of the two jets caught sight of each other’s airplanes through the fog, it was too late for the Pan Am jet to clear out of the runway into the grass and for KLM jet to abort the takeoff. The KLM pilot lifted his airplane off the runway prematurely, but could not avoid barreling into the Pan Am’s fuselage at 240 kmph. Both the jets exploded into flames.

The accident was blamed on miscommunication—breakdown of coordinated action, vague language from the control tower, the KLM pilot’s impatience to takeoff without clearance, and the distorted cross-talk of the KLM and Pan Am pilots and the controllers on a common radio channel.

Breakdown of Coordination Under Stress

Sweeping changes were made to international airline regulations following the accident: cockpit procedures were changed, standard phrases were introduced, and English was emphasized as a common working language.

In Collision on Tenerife, Jon Ziomek, a journalism professor at Northwestern University, gives a well-written, detailed account of all the mistakes leading up to the crash and its aftermath.

The surviving passengers’ first- and second-hand accounts recall the horror of those passengers on the right side of the Pan Am jet who saw the lights of the speeding KLM 747, just as the Pan Am pilot was hastily turning his airplane onto the grass to avoid the collision.

Ziomek describes how passengers escaped. Some had to make the difficult choice of leaving loved ones or friends and strangers behind.

Dorothy Kelly … then spotted Captain Grubbs lying near the fuselage. Badly burned and shaken by his jump from the plane, he could not move. “What have I done to these people?” he yelled, pounding the ground in anguish. Kelly grabbed him under his shoulders and urged “Crawl, Captain, crawl!”

Recommendation: Read Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife

Some of the bewildering details make for difficult reading—especially the psychological effects (post-traumatic stress syndrome) on the surviving passengers. But Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife is important reading, providing a comprehensive picture of the extensive coordination required in aviation, the importance of safety and protocols, and how some humans can freeze in shock while others spring into action.

The key takeaway is the recognition of how small errors and problems (an “error chain”) can quickly become linked and amplified into disastrous outcomes.

How to Guard Against Anything You May Inadvertently Overlook

October 23, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The World is More Inundated with Uncertainties and Errors Than Ever Before

Checklists can help you learn about prospective oversights and mistakes, recognize them in context, and sharpen your decisions.

I am a big fan of Harvard surgeon and columnist Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto (2009.) His bestseller is an engaging reminder of how the world has become so complex.

The use of the humble checklist can help you manage the myriad of complexities that underlie most contemporary professional (and personal) undertakings—where what you must do is too complex to carry out reliably from memory alone. Checklists “provide a kind of a cognitive net. They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us—flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness.”

Gawande begins The Checklist Manifesto with an examination of the characteristics of errors from ignorance (mistakes you make because you don’t know enough—“much of the world and universe is—and will remain—outside our understanding and control”), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes you make because you don’t apply correctly what you know.) Most human and organizational failures involve the latter.

The philosophy is that you push the power of decision making out to the periphery and away from the center. You give people the room to adapt, based on their experience and expertise. All you ask is that they talk to one another and take responsibility. That is what works.

The surgery room, Gawande’s own profession, is the principal setting for many of the book’s illustrative examples of how the introduction of checklists dramatically reduced the rate of complications from surgery. He also provides handy stories from other realms of human endeavor—aviation, structural engineering, and Wall Street-investing.

Getting Things Right, Every Time

Checklists are particularly valuable in situations where the stakes are high enough, but your impulsive thought process could lead to suboptimal decisions.

The benefits of checklists also feature prominently in the thought-provoking Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition (2012.) The author, Credit Suisse Investment analyst and polymath Michael J. Mauboussin, argues that checklists are more effective in certain domains than in others:

A checklist’s applicability is largely a function of a domain’s stability. In stable environments, where cause and effect is pretty clear and things don’t change much, checklists are great. But in rapidly changing environments that are heavily circumstantial, creating a checklist is a lot more difficult. In those environments, checklists can help with certain aspects of the decision. For instance, an investor evaluating a stock may use a checklist to make sure that she builds her financial model properly.

A good checklist balances two opposing objectives. It should be general enough to allow for varying conditions, yet specific enough to guide action. Finding this balance means a checklist should not be too long; ideally, you should be able to fit it on one or two pages.

If you have yet to create a checklist, try it and see which issues surface. Concentrate on steps or procedures, and ask where decisions have gone off track before. And recognize that errors are often the result of neglecting a step, not from executing the other steps poorly.

In addition to creating checklists that are specific enough to guide action but general enough to handle changing circumstances, Mauboussin recommends keeping a journal to gather feedback from past decisions and performing “premortems” by envisioning that a imminent decision has already been proven wrong, and then identifying probable reasons for the failure.

No Matter How Proficient You May Be, Well-designed Checklists Can Immeasurably Improve the Outcomes

The notion of making and using checklists is so plainly obvious that it seems impracticable that they could have so vast an effect.

Investor Charlie Munger, the well-respected beacon of wisdom and multi-disciplinary thinking, has said, “No wise pilot, no matter how great his talent and experience, fails to use his checklist.” And, “I’m a great believer in solving hard problems by using a checklist. You need to get all the likely and unlikely answers before you; otherwise it’s easy to miss something important.”

Idea for Impact: Checklists can prevent many things that could go wrong in the hands of human beings, given our many well-documented biases and foibles. Well-designed checklists not only make sure that all the can-be-relied upon elements are in place in complex decision-making, but also provide for flexibility and room for ad hoc judgment.

Gambler’s Fallacy is the Failure to Realize How Randomness Rules Our World

September 27, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Gambler’s Fallacy is the misleading belief that the probability of a specific occurrence in a random sequence is dependent on preceding events—that its probability will increase with each successive occasion on which it fails to occur.

Suppose that you roll a fair die 14 times and don’t get a six even once. According to the Gambler’s Fallacy, a six is “long overdue.” Thus, it must be a good wager for the 15th roll of the dice. This conjecture is irrational; the probability of a six is the same as for every other roll of the dice: that is, 1/6.

Chance Events Don’t Have Memories

In practical terms, the Gambler’s Fallacy is the hunch that if you play long enough, you will eventually win. For example, if you toss a fair coin and flip heads five times in a row, the Gambler’s Fallacy suggests that the next toss may well flip a tail because it is “due.” In actuality, the results of previous coin flips have no bearing on future coin flips. Therefore, it is poor reasoning to assume that the probability of flipping tails on the next coin-toss is better than one-half.

A classic example of the Gambler’s Fallacy is when parents who’ve had children of the same sex anticipate that their next child ought to be of the opposite sex. The French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) was the first to document the Gambler’s Fallacy. In Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1796,) Laplace identified an instance of expectant fathers trying to predict the probability of having sons. These men assumed that the ratio of boys to girls born must be fifty-fifty. If adjacent villages had high male birth rates in the recent past, they could predict more birth of girls in their own village.

There Isn’t a Lady Luck or an “Invisible Hand” in Charge of Your Game

The Gambler’s Fallacy is what makes gambling so addictive. Gamblers normally think that gambling is an intrinsically fair-minded system in which any losses they’ll incur will eventually be corrected by a winning streak.

In buying lottery tickets, as in gambling, perseverance will not pay. However, human nature is such that gamblers have an irrational hunch that if they keep playing, they will eventually win, even if the odds of winning a lottery are remote. However, the odds of winning the jackpot remain unchanged … every time people buy lottery tickets. Playing week after week doesn’t change their chances. What’s more, the odds remain the same even for people who have previously won the lottery.

Gambler’s Fallacy Coaxed People to Lose Millions in Monte Carlo in 1913

The Gambler’s Fallacy is also called the Monte Carlo Fallacy because of an extraordinary event that happened in the renowned Monte Carlo Casino in the Principality of Monaco.

On 18-August-1913, black fell 26 times in a row at a roulette table. Seeing that that the roulette ball had fallen on black for quite some time, gamblers kept pushing more money onto the table assuming that, after the sequence of blacks, a red was “due” at each subsequent spin of the roulette wheel. The sequence of blacks that occurred that night is an unusual statistical occurrence, but it is still among the possibilities, as is any other sequence of red or black. As you may guess, gamblers at that roulette table lost millions of francs that night.

Gambler’s Fallacy is The False Assumption That Probability is Affected by Past Events

The Gambler’s Fallacy is frequently in force in casual judgments, casinos, sporting events, and, alas, in everyday business and personal decision-making. This common fallacy is manifest by the belief that a random event is more likely to occur because it has not happened for a time (or a random event is less likely to occur because it recently happened.)

While growing up in India, I often heard farmers discuss rainwater observing that, if the season’s rainfall was below average, they worry about protecting their crops during imminent protracted rains because the rainfall needs to “catch-up to a seasonal average.”
In soccer / football, kickers and goalkeepers are frequently prone to the Gambler’s Fallacy during penalty shootouts. For instance, after a series of three kicks in the same direction, goalkeepers are more likely to dive in the opposite direction at the fourth kick.
In the episode “Stress Relief” of the fifth season of the American TV series The Office, when the character Jim Halpert learns that his fiancee Pam Beesley’s parents are divorcing, he quotes the common statistic that 50% of marriages wind up in divorce. Halpert then comments that, because his parents are not divorced, it is only reasonable that Pam’s parents are getting divorced.

The Gambler’s Fallacy is a Powerful and Seductive Illusion of Control Over Events That are Not Controllable

Don’t be misled by the Gambler’s Fallacy. Be aware of the certainty of statistical independence. The occurrence of one random event has no statistical bearing upon the occurrence of the other random event. In other words, the probability of the occurrence of a random event is never influenced by a previous, or series of previous, arbitrary events.

Idea for Impact: Be skeptical of most judgments about probabilities. Never rely exclusively on your intuitive sense in evaluating probable events. In general, relying exclusively on your gut feeling or your hunches in assessing probabilities is usually not a reason to trust the assessment, but to distrust it.

Books I Read in 2015 & Recommend

December 23, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In addition to a number of Rick Steves’ and Lonely Planet books for my summer-long travels across Europe, here are a few books that I read in 2015 and recommend.

Biography / Business: Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon is an engrossing chronicle of the obsessive hard-driving personality of its founder-CEO and the company that has played the pivotal role in the shift from brick-and-mortar retail to online retail.
Biography / Leadership: Starbucks founder Howard Schultz’s Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul is an interesting depiction of Starbucks’ turnaround after Schultz returned as CEO in 2008. Read Onward for a case study of the founder’s syndrome in action and a self-congratulatory portrait of a charismatic entrepreneur and brilliant corporate cheerleader. Read my summary.
Biography / Business: Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future is a biography of America’s current most audacious entrepreneur and Silicon Valley’s most prominent innovator. While the book details Musk’s bold leadership decisions, it also serves as a great reminder of how an extreme personality and intense success are not without their costs. Read my comments.
Decision-Making: Phil Rosenzweig’s Left Brain Right Stuff delineates distinct but complementary skills required for making winning decisions: logical analysis and calculation (left brain skills) and as well as the willingness to take risks, push boundaries, and go beyond what has been done before (right brain skills.)
Biographies / Mental Models: Physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s scientific curiosity knew no bounds. His academic life, acuity, life-philosophy, and ability to communicate science are inspirational to anyone pursuing his/her own life’s fulfillment. The following biographies capture his many scientific achievements, playfulness, varied interests and hobbies, and—perhaps most notably—his many eccentricities.

Biography / Business: Sam Walton’s bestseller autobiography Made in America is very educational, insightful, and stimulating. Walton inspired legions of other entrepreneurs who thrive on managing costs and prices to gain competitive advantage. Read about an important lesson from this book about cost and price as a competitive advantage.
Decision-Making: Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 Rule advocates considering the potential positive and negative consequences of all decisions in the immediate present, the near term, and the distant future: or in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years. Read my summary.
Biography / Mental Models: Walter Isaacson’s A Benjamin Franklin Reader is an excellent collection of the writings of Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s most beloved founding fathers. Franklin was a polymath renowned for his lifelong quest for self-improvement.
Philosophy: Pico Iyer’s The Art of Stillness argues the importance of taking a timeout from busyness. Iyer contends, “In an age of speed … nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention.” Read my summary.
Biographies / Art / Philosophy: Steven Naifeh and Gregory Smith’s Van Gogh: The Life and Michael Howard’s Van Gogh: His Life & Works in 500 Images paint a vivid picture of the artistic genius and the troubled personal life of Vincent van Gogh. Ever Yours is an absorbing anthology of correspondence between Vincent and his brother Theo. Ever Yours sheds light on Vincent’s shifting moods, turbulent life, and philosophical evolution as an artist.
Management: Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson’s One Minute Manager is a best-selling introductory business book about goal-setting and giving feedback. Read my summary.
Biographies: Tenzing Norgay’s autobiography Man of Everest and Yves Malartic’s Tenzing of Everest portray the personal triumph of a poor and illiterate but ambitious, deeply religious explorer.

On a related note, read my article about reading hacks: How to Process that Pile of Books You Can’t Seem to Finish. Also see books I read in 2014 & recommend.

Books I Read in 2014 & Recommend

January 12, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Other than a number of Rick Steves’ books for my summer-long travels in Europe, here are a few books that I read in 2014 and recommend.

Even though I read few works of fiction, I read a number of Agatha Christie’s “Poirot” books, including the enthralling “Death on the Nile”. Christie describes her characters brilliantly with superb detail.

Books on Business, Operations, & Finance

Atul Gawande’s ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ on eliminating errors, improving safety, and increasing efficiency by adapting checklists, standard operating practices, and work instructions.
Steven Johnson’s ‘How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World’ explores how seemingly simple inventions cause huge societal shifts through the unintended consequences of collaboration and context. For example, the chapter on “Glass” narrates how the Gutenberg printing press led to lens-making, which in turn led to eyeglasses, telescopes and space exploration, microscopes and biology, fiberglass and fiber-optic cables, mirrors, cameras and the present-day selfie obsession.
Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg’s ‘How Google Works’ is a firsthand account of the distinctive ecosystem, culture, people, and decision-making inside one of the world’s most admired companies.
John Mihaljevic’s ‘The Manual of Ideas: The Proven Framework for Finding the Best Value Investments’ describes nine template-themes of value investing strategies along with case studies, checklists, and screening tools.
Cristiane Correa’s ‘DREAM BIG: How Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Beto Sicupira Acquired Anheuser-Busch, Burger King and Heinz and Revolutionized Brazilian Capital’ discusses 3G Capital’s approach to buying companies (including Tim Hortons in 2014; Coca-Cola, Campbell Soup, or PepsiCo are rumored to be next) and then implementing an aggressive management template that’s obsessive about slashing operating costs and expanding organizational efficiency.

Books on Skills for Success

Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking’ on how the world excessively and misguidedly admires extroverts, but should also encourage and celebrate the particular talents, abilities, and dispositions of introverts.
Jocelyn K. Glei’s ‘Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind’ is a compilation of essays on time management, organizing routines, and work-life balance from various authors.
Russ Roberts’s ‘How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness’ is an interpretation of Adam Smith’s less known book, “Theory of Moral Sentiments”
B. H. Liddell Hart’s ‘Why Don’t We Learn from History?’ on the didactic value of history and on the significance of acting on principles deduced from learning from other people’s experience.
Gerd Gigerenzer’s ‘Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions’ describes the many ways we characteristically misjudge risk and how we make bad decisions because we misunderstand risk.
Garth Sundem’s ‘Beyond IQ: Scientific Tools for Training Problem Solving, Intuition, Emotional Intelligence, Creativity, and More’ on how to develop brain power in competencies such as creativity, willpower emotional intelligence and intuition—skills that are not measured by standardized intelligence (e.g. IQ) tests.

Four Timeless Books I Re-Read Every Year

Benjamin Graham’s “Security Analysis”, Benjamin Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor”, and Phil Fisher’s “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” discuss two complementary schools of investment analysis. Graham’s quantitative approach to value investing comprises of buying stocks below what they are worth and then selling them once they are fully priced. In contrast, Fisher’s qualitative approach to growth investing considers the intangibles (products and services, management, competition, growth prospects, etc.) and paying a premium for growth. Graham’s and Fisher’s viewpoints are a significant part of Warren Buffett’s approach to investments. He’s described himself as “85% Graham, 15% Fisher” (I think Buffett is more “15% Graham, 85% Fisher.”)

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is the granddaddy of all self-help books that spawned the self-improvement industry. I discovered that the 2011 update, “How to Win Friends and Influence People Digital Age”, references my blog article on the art of remembering names.

Viktor Frankl on The Meaning of Suffering

November 13, 2014 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Austrian existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl suggested that, generally, the need for meaning is a crucial force in people, from the time we’re born until our last breath. He continued to feel this way when his family was murdered by the Nazis and he himself was sent to Auschwitz. Frankl frequently quoted Friedrich Nietzsche’s remark that “he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”

In “Mans’ Search for Meaning”, Frankl describes suffering as a potential springboard both for having a need for meaning and for finding it:

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves.

Frankl also suggests that the one freedom allowed in us, irrespective of our circumstances, including his horrid subjugation at a Nazi concentration camp, is the freedom to pick our way of thinking in accepting our suffering. This might mean that meaning can be found in becoming a role model for others dealing with similar problems, or utilizing our suffering as a channel for changing for the better in particular aspects of our lives:

It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.

Frankl’s story is worth the read: (1) as a reminder of the depths and heights of human nature, and the nature of hopes and despairs that rule our existence, (2) for the idea that life is primarily about the search for meaning and the kinds of choices we can make to establish significance in our lives (logotherapy technique.)

Book Summary of Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’

May 31, 2013 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl makes the case that the primary motivation in one’s life is neither pleasure (as proposed by Sigmund Freud) nor power (as proposed by Alfred Adler), but meaning and purpose.

Viktor Frankl is the pioneer of “logotherapy,” a psychotherapy system that carries out an existential examination of a person and consequently helps him/her discover purpose and meaning in his/her life.

Principal ideas from “Man’s Search for Meaning”:

Based on his experience as an inmate at many Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, Viktor Frankl observed that those who survived the longest in the Nazi concentration camps were not those who were physically strong, but were those who maintained a sense of control over their environment by finding meaning in their existence and their torments.
Even in the toughest of circumstances, life can be given a meaning, and so too can suffering. A person can learn how to cope with suffering and move ahead with a renewed sense of purpose and meaning.
Meaning in life can be discovered by taking responsibility and through “right conduct” by,

Contributing meaningfully to the world through self-expression and resourcefulness,
Experiencing the world by connecting meaningfully with others and with our environment, and
Probing our attitudes and changing our approach meaningfully when we face situations that we have little control over.

Books for Impact

Wondering what to read next?

Homo sapiens’ talent for abstraction set us apart

Recommendation: Read Harari’s astonishing history of the species, from insignificant apes to rulers of the world

Wondering what to read next?

Distinct Small Errors Can Become Linked and Amplified into a Big Tragedy

Breakdown of Coordination Under Stress

Recommendation: Read Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife

Wondering what to read next?

The World is More Inundated with Uncertainties and Errors Than Ever Before

Getting Things Right, Every Time

No Matter How Proficient You May Be, Well-designed Checklists Can Immeasurably Improve the Outcomes

Wondering what to read next?

Chance Events Don’t Have Memories

There Isn’t a Lady Luck or an “Invisible Hand” in Charge of Your Game

Gambler’s Fallacy Coaxed People to Lose Millions in Monte Carlo in 1913

Gambler’s Fallacy is The False Assumption That Probability is Affected by Past Events

The Gambler’s Fallacy is a Powerful and Seductive Illusion of Control Over Events That are Not Controllable

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Books on Business, Operations, & Finance

Books on Skills for Success

Four Timeless Books I Re-Read Every Year

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?