Incite Your Month: January 2021
At CTQ, we kick each month off with a 5 min collection of ideas & recos from the team’s recent curiosity diet. It helps us ‘incite’ the rest of the month. Here’s this month’s edition.
(You can watch instead of reading this.)
One Two insightful books
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
It's an account of one of the greatest duos of all time - Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, about their collaboration, their contrasting personalities and how they eventually drifted apart.
Top takeaway: Such contrasting personalities can learn to leverage each other's strengths to produce Nobel-winning output!
Check it out if: ...you like reading about human behaviour and want a peek into the early days of research and academic life in Israel.
The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman
If the earlier recommendation was about human behaviour, this one is about the range of surprising and sometimes alarming behaviours of birds. This book is a treat for both birders and non-birders. Many things that we learned from this book were quite funny and also fascinating!
Top takeaway: Magpies can hold a grudge on humans for many years. Some birds of prey can be arsonists!
Check it out if:...you are curious about birds!
One article
A Twitter thread by Chris Herd on predictions related to remote work
What:
Chris Herd, Founder and CEO, FirstBaseHQ spoke to 1500+ people about remote work and wrote about the emerging trends around remote working and made some predictions about what will become mainstream by 2030.
Check it out if: ...you are curious about some crystal ball-gazing on the topic of remote work.
One trend
Collaborative Consumption
The book 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything
by Mauro F Guillen is one of the "15 Leadership books for the summer" by Adam Grant. Among the trends discussed in the book, Collaborative Consumption caught our attention. It seemed to have taken a hit in the early months of 2020 because of the fear of the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But collaborative consumption will be needed for sustainable growth for humankind.
One great podcast episode
Jerry Seinfeld on The Tim Ferriss Show
Seinfeld has been a prolific comedian for over five decades now. We usually hear about systems in the context of efficiency and productivity and not in creative pursuits. In this episode he talks about how he has tried to systematize his life - from his standup comedy acts to physical fitness.
Top takeaway: Our brain is like a dog. Train the hell out of it!
Listen to it if: ...you like behaviour, habits, systems, Seinfeld!
One smartcast
CTQ Smartcast with Stefaan van Hooydonk on 'Why Curiosity makes the world a better place'
What:
Stefaan van Hooydonk is the founder of the Global Curiosity Institute, whose aim is to help organisations foster a mindset of curiosity to inspire them to keep discovering and innovating. That, in turn, they say, will help make the world a better place.
Check it out if: ...you are curious about why organizations need to build curiosity!
Closing with a question for 2021
“What project are you undertaking in 2021?"
We also have a video version of these recommendations here.