I got this awesome book from an, even more, awesome author Duane Jackson, after a discussion on Twitter where we realized that Amazon.co.uk decided that Croatia was not on the list of countries that would be eligible for the free ebook (even though the author marked the book as free). In the end, the author said that I should contact him and that he’ll send me a physical copy to my address.

The book arrived:

And I was just joking with my friends after I told them about it: “How awesome would it be if the book would be signed?!”. Aaaaaand, what do you know:

In my book, Duane Johnson is da man! So, thanks again, you really made my day!

Btw, I really liked the book, had a few laughs and learned some valuable things. I wonder if some of my blog readers use his KashFlow (the service that he built and talks about how in the book)?

In the book, the author writes about how he managed to build the business after doing the time. He summarizes it really well at the end of the book:

I hope that by reading this book you’ve found out the secret of how to do this. The secret is that there is not secret. There was no overnight success or magic button to press. It was a case of being determined, working hard and not allowing yourself to be at the mery of fate of other peoples will.

Other quotes (and funny situations) that I liked from this book:

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. ~ Jim Rohn

I’ve never been great at getting up in the morning, but staying up till 3am certainly didn’t make it any easier.

We’re in the infamous Blind Beggar in London’s Whitechapel, where Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell. (Legend; great movie starring Tom Hardy as Kray twins)

Everyone knew I never took drugs, so they quite literally took the piss out of me. My urine became incredibly valuable on testing days.

You can’ hit Jacko said Dodger, That’s like hitting a part of the furniture.

Ben picked me up in his BMW convertible. It was a summer day and the roof was down. I shouted at him to slow down, as I thought he was doing 100 mph but in fact, he was only going at 25. For the last 18 months nothing had gone faster than a quick walk.

I learned the valuable lesson of never doing work without getting paid something up front.

Actually getting started in business wasn’t as difficult as I thought. It really was as easy as finding people who needed what you could offer and agreeing on price.

I’m sorry, Duane he said in ear shot of the others. We won’t be able to have our daily management meeting tonight.

Enerpreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

Duane, it’s your mate will.

The future of boxed software

My notes from the book UR by the master Stephen King, which I marked as favorite and rated  5/5 on my Shelfari account.

Why don’t you just read from the computer, like the rest of us!?

Living well isn’t the best revenge; loving well is.

Can you keep a secret? Say no and I’ll have to kill you.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/673728553876389888

My notes from (currently) free book The Art of Being Unmistakable: A Collection of Essays About Making a Dent in The Universe by Srinivas Rao, which I rated  4/5 on my Shelfari account.

What if you decided to be the one who creates for the joy of creating, nothing more?!

To experience something new, we have to let go of what’s old. We have to remain calm in the face of setbacks.

My greatest sin was to waste my life believing that I wasn’t capable of something more.

How long are you willing to act like a pro without any of the external rewards that come with it?

If you try to miomic, copy er emulate anybody else, at best you will be a pale imitation.

The only way to really stand out online is to be honest.

None of these things define you as a person: Your education The size of your bank account Your job title Your failures Your successes And sadly, we let so many of these things rule our lives. Obsession with crossing off the checkboxes of society’s life plan leads to little other than therapy, midlife crises, and depression.

Worrying about what other people think is a jail of our own creation, and the irony of it is those people are in the same jail with us.

The “No bullshit” version of who you are can work with a compass. Your ego needs a map because it does not quite understand the wise words of Paul Jarvis, “Nobody is successful because they took somebody else’s roadmap and copied it.

To become truly unmistakable I have to be willing to ditch the map, travel without a guidebook, and see where it leads me.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/671227308649353216

My notes from (currently) free book The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You (Epic series Book 1) by Johnny Truant, which I rated  4/5 on my Shelfari account. Actually, the whole series (4 books) is free currently, so you may wanna rush your download 😉

If you knew how small you are and how short a time you have to do what you can, you wouldn’t waste time watching five fucking hours of TV a day.

Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing!

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. What matters is what you do.

It means that even though the universe doesn’t care enough to give you what you want, it doesn’t care enough to stop you from having it, either. So embrace that anarchy, and take those things for yourself.

Just do it. Claim it. Stop waiting for permission.

Fucking hell. Stop whining and just be it already. Be fucking awesome.

Your life is a one-way train, and any second you waste is a second lost forever.

There’s a drinking game in Heaven, where angels do a shot every time humans invest ‘for the long term.

I heard that God watches jewelry commercials and LOL’s when they say that diamonds are forever.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/671216342465437696

My notes from the bestseller book The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by the authors Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird, which I rated  5/5 and marked as favorite on my Shelfari account:

Earth – understand deeply

Fire – make mistakes

Air – raise questions

Water – follow the flow of ideas

Change – universal constant that allows you to get the most out of living and learning

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. ~ B. F. Skinner

In everything you do, refine your skills and knowledge about fundamental knowledge and simple cases. Once is never enough. As you revisit fundamentals you’ll find new insights.

The depth with which you master the basics influences how well you understand everything you learn after that.

As you learn more, the fundamentals become at once simpler but also subtler, deeper, more nuanced, and more meaningful.

One of the challenges of life is to be open-minded about new ideas and new possibilities.

Sadly, many people spend their entire lives focusing on the wrong questions. They may pursue money, when they really want happiness. They may pursue the respect of people whose favor is really not worthy of being sought. So before you succumb to the temptation to immediately spring to work on the answer, always stop and first ask, “What’s the real question here?” Often the question that seems obvious may not be the question that leads to effective action.

Fail nine times! The next time you face a daunting challenge, think to yourself, “In order for me to resolve this issue, I will have to fail nine times, but on the tenth attempt, I will be successful.” This attitude frees you and allows you to think creatively without fear of failure, because you understand that learning from failure is a forward step toward success. Take a risk and when you fail, no longer think, “Oh, no, what a frustrating waste of time and effort,” but instead extract a new insight from that misstep and correctly think, “Great: one down, nine to go—I’m making forward progress!” And indeed you are. After your first failure, think, “Terrific, I’m 10% done!” Mistakes, loss, and failure are all flashing lights clearly pointing the way to deeper understanding and creative solutions.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/670239687009771520

My notes from the bestseller book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) by the author Richard P. Feynman himself (winner of the Nobel Prize in physics), which I rated  4/5 on my Shelfari account:

All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t,’ — which is just another way of saying that you can’t.

I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys–but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!

I learned from her that every woman is worried
about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.

There were lot of fools at the conference – pompous fools – and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them and try to help them out. But pompous fools – guys who are fools and covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus – THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is alright. But a dishonest fool is terrible!

I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.

When I tried to show him how an electromagnet works by making a little coil of wire and hanging a nail on a piece of string, I put the voltage on, the nail swung into the coil, and Jerry said, “Ooh! It’s just like fucking!

I wouldn’t stop until I figured the damn thing out–it would take me fifteen or twenty minutes. But during the day, other guys would come to me with the same problem, and I’d do it for them in a flash. So for one guy, to do it took me twenty minutes, while there were five guys who thought I was a super-genius.

The whole problem of discovering what was the matter, and figuring out what you have to do to fix it–that was interesting to me, like a puzzle.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/670015841719721984

My notes from the bestseller book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Dr. Eben Alexander, which I rated  4/5 on my Shelfari account:

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks it should be. ~ Albert Einstein

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true. The other is to refuse to believe what is true. ~Soren Kierkegaard

If yo would be a real seeker after truth it is necessary that, at least once in your life, you doubt as far as possible all things. ~ Rene Descartes

If tomorrow starts without me – David Romano

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/655834520990687232

My notes from the bestseller book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, which I marked as favorite and rated 5/5 on my Shelfari account:

Pam Rose – My life

Go small by ignoring things you could do, and doing things you should do.

To do things at once is to do neither.

Habits are hard to only in the beginning.

Discipline over 66 days equals habit.

Do what mathers most first each morning when your willpower is strongest.

Nothing ever achieved absolute balance. A balanced life is a lie. Time on one thing means time off on another.

When you’re supposed to be working – work. When you’re supposed to be playing – play.

Don’t be afraid to fail! See it as part of your learning process and keep striving for your true potential.

Don’t let small things cut your life down to size. Think big, be bold, aim high and see just how big you can blow up your life.

The key to success is not in all the things that we do, but in the few things that we do well.

Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers.

Asking questions improves learning and performance by 150%.

What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

Writing down your goals makes it 35.9% more likely to accomplish them.

Time block your time off, your one thing, and your planning time.

Nobody whoever gave his best regretted it.

Time on a task overtime eventually beats talent every time.

If the people know how hard I had to work to gain my mastery it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all – Michelangelo

Meditate and pray. Eat right. Exercise. Sleep. Hug. Kiss. Love. Set goals. Plan. Timeblock your one thing.

Hang out with people who seek achievements.

20 years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the things you did to do.

https://twitter.com/HitmanHR/status/655731461098729472

My notes from a book It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be: The world’s best selling book by Paul Arden, which I rated 4/5 on my Shelfari account.

This was a very short book from which, I guess, the Creatives will get the most out of. Us, more Engineeringly minded types, may just stand and look in wow 🙂

Anyways, a good book, and here are my notes from it, with few of the bookshots.

All creative people need something to rebel against , it’s what gives their lives excitement, and it’s creative people who make the clients’ lives exciting.

Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you.

People who are conventionally clever get jobs on their qualifications (the past) not on their desire to succeed (the future).

There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over again and expect the results to be different. ~ Einstein

True, people do look for something new, but sometimes it’s something new to copy. To be original, seek your inspiration from unexpected sources.

Talent helps, but it won’t take you as far as ambition.

It’s not what you know – it’s who you know.

Blame no one but yourself. If you accept responsibility, you are in position to do something about it.

How you percieve yourelf is how others will see you.

When we attend a lecture, we generally go to see the speaker not to hear what they have to say.

If you show a client a highly polished computer layout, he will probably reject it because he doesn’t feel involved.

The way to get unblocked is to lose our inhibition and stop worrying about being right.

Decide you are going to make the company great; at least decide you are going to make a difference.

Relize that companies’ reputations are also built on one or two people. Aim to be that person or one of them.

If you can’t solve a problem, it’s because you’re playing by the rules.

Lines (slogans) win business. If you can find a way of summing up what the client wants to feel about his company but cannot express himself, you’ve got him.

I haven’t failed. I’ve had 10000 ideas that didn’t work. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Of the 200 light bulbs that didn’t work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.

If we don’t get lost, we’ll never find a new route.

All of them understand that failures and false starts are a precondition of success.

Experience is opposite of being creative.

Give me the same as we had for the last 20 years but not quite. Only one client in 10k will actually mean ‘give me something I haven’t seen before’.

It’s better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. ~ Herman Melville

Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

The first thing to decide before you walk into any negotiation is what to do if the other fellow says no. ~ Ernest Bevin

There are no short cuts to any place worth going. Beverly Sills

Those who lack courage will always find a philosopy to justify it. ~Albert Camus

Some people take no mental exercise apart from jumping to conclusions. ~Harold Acton

What the mind can conceive, the mind can achieve. ~Clement Stone

Of everything seems under control you’re no going fast enough. ~ Mario Andretti

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to a garage makes you a mechanic. ~Laurence Peter

A Technique for Getting Ideas by James Wood Young

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be – Paul Arden http://t.co/ELesySAtxI #books

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) October 5, 2015

 

My notes from a book The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters subtitled “The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness”, which I rated 4/5 on my Shelfari account.

Psychologically mind is made up of three separate brains: Human – you. Chimp – emotional thinking machine. Computer – storage area and automatic functioning machine.

Happiness can be found in many ways. It’s the way you deal with things, not what happens, that gives you peace of mind. Every day is precious.

Person that you want to be is the person that you really are.

Never assume that because you’ve told someone something that they’ve heard it or understood it.

When you find yourself stressed, deliberately slow down your thinking.

At night you are in the chimp mode with emotional and irrational thinking.

If you measure success in life my effort and doing your best then it’s always in your hands succeed and to be proud of yourself.

When you decide to do something it’s commitment, not motivation that matters.

If you were given the million dollars to do the task before the end of the day, could you do it?

People usually love ownership and will take things more seriously when given it.

Commit the small change and do it consistently.

Don’t battle – instead live such lifestyle. For example, don’t battle your sugar eating habbit, instead don’t do it because you “just don’t”, because it’s the way you live.

The #Chimp #Paradox by Dr. Steve Peters http://t.co/NGUvEalJRB

— Nikola Brežnjak (@HitmanHR) September 27, 2015