Welcome to 2022! I hope you enjoyed the last days of 2021 and you had a chance to review that year and reflect on what you would like to achieve in the upcoming 12 months. My review you can find here.

In today’s post, I’d like to close the 2021’s series about my books, podcasts, and other related to personal development recommendations. In the upcoming months I still would like to write about the “things” which can help you in your growth, but more about that in another post.

Tools of titans by Tim Ferris

I treat this book as an Encyclopedia – there is a lot of knowledge, habits, and routines from world-class performers like athletes, businesspeople, actresses, and others. In interviews made by the author, I found a lot of useful information to implement in my life.

Key takeaways (from “Titans”):

• Tony Robbins  – investment in yourself is the best investment that you can make – with the new skills and abilities you understand better and better world around you and open the door to the new possibilities (it’s my rephrasing of his words)
• Scott Adams – instead of being focused on goals, start to develop systems. By that, Scott means knowledge that can be used in many different places (aka universal skills). If you would like to achieve something from a short-term perspective (goal) you can expect two outcomes: success or failure. However, if you start developing systems you can initiate the snowball effect.
• Marc Andreessen – has two favorite principles – that you need to “be so good they can’t ignore you” (from Steve Martin’s biography) and “smart people should act”.
• Stanley McChrystal – talked about maintaining “mental immunity”. Stanley responded that, first of all, we need to face very difficult challenges. By that, you will find a huge power in yourself to overcome them. Secondly, you can join a group of people who are facing the same problems and difficulties and if you will have them in your life, somewhere in the future, you will feel more confident.
• Cheryl Strayed – gives the great tip for writers – if you think that you are not the writer, start journaling and note down your thoughts, because this is the best way to develop your thinking process and explore your ideas.
• Jason Silva – Tim Ferris asked him for advice for people who are 25 or 30 years old. Jason responded – that too many fears that we had were totally unnecessary and he wasted a lot of time and energy worrying about something.
• Kevin Kelly – he said a very important thing – when you meet with someone, that person and relationship with his/her is the most important thing in that moment. It can be also referred to the being focused only on one thing at the same time – no matter is it your task at work, meeting, watching a movie, and so on.

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz

For a long time, I thought that negotiation is the skill reserved for people who are using that in their daily job (sales, dealing with clients, and so on). Actually, the truth is, that everyone needs it in different situations in our lives.

In this, well-written book, Chris Voss presents many useful negotiation techniques which we can use for our benefit. He also refers to other books as well as to stories from real life when he worked as an FBI agent.

Key takeaways (negotiation techniques):

• Labeling – when you try to understand someone’s emotions and label them – by that you can know more about his/her emotional state and underneath motives.
• Active listening – is very crucial to building trust. By that author means to listen to another person closely and repeat what he/she said. It is also called mirroring when you rephrase part of the words said by other parties.
• The tone of voice – matters, especially if you don’t see your conversation partner. Because of that, you need to remember that tone of your voice can make you a winner or loser in the negotiations. The voice, which you can use when talking to someone who is angry is called a ‘late-night DJ voice’ (when you speak slowly and reassuringly).
• Don’t split the difference – which means to don’t accept the bad deal only to solve the conflict – ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’.
• Black Swans (by the way this is the name of the company created by Chris Voss) – the author suggests keeping eyes and ears open to the new information (aka Black Swans) that could change the situation in the middle of a negotiation.
• The Ackerman model – is my the best takeaway from this book. It consists of several steps. The first one is to set a target (for example your price) – it should be ambitious but reasonable. Secondly, establish 65% of your target price, which will be your first offer. When you get the offer from your counterparts propose the counteroffers which will be 85%, 95%, and then 100% percent of your goal. In addition to that, your target should be a non-round number and you should add some non-financial benefit to your final offer. More about this you can read for example here.

Podcasts

This month, I’d like to propose two interesting interviews about becoming an entrepreneur.

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