Rome wasn’t built in a day... but they were laying bricks every hour

Ricardo Semler - Maverick

• ... our Sultan for HR (Yes, we still love to mock titles)
• Our board meetings have two open seats for the first employees that sign up, and two more for any person in a leadership capacity that cares to show. And we still depate strategy openly schedule meetings on a volunteer basis, and have leaders intervieweg by their future subordinates.
• Instead of ont headquarter building, we distribute identical offices across town
• As I tell our people constantly: we've all learned how to answer email on Sundays, but none of us has learned to go to the movies on Monday afternoon Until we learn that, we are email slaves harnessed to the wicked ways of the Profit and Loss Master.
• all financial information at Semco is openly discussed. Indeed, our workers have unlimited access to our books
• For truly big decisions, such as buying another company, everyone at Semco gets a vote. A few years ago, when we wanted to relocate a factory, we closed down for a day and everyone poiled into buses to inspect three possible new sites.
• If we're afraid to let people decide in which section of the plane to sit, or how many stars their hotel should have, we shouldn't be sending them abroad to do business in our name, should we?
• Semco has a profit-sharing plan. At Semco, profit-sharing is democratic.
• Our workers knew that production would suffer if they didnt coordinate their schedules, so thats what they did
• Well, we dont have as many bosses as we used to. As workers began to excercise more control over their jobs and assume more voice in our polices, the need for supervisors diminished. We have also reduced our corporate staff, which provides legal, accounting, and marketing expertise to our manufacturing untis, by more than 75%.
• Before people are hired or promoted to leadership positions, they are interviewed and approved by all who will be working for them. And every sic months managers are evaluate by those who work under them. The results are posted for all to see. Does this mean workers can fire their bosses? I guess it does, since anyone who consistently gets bad grades usually leaves Semco, one way or another.
• We simply do not believe our employees have an interest in coming in late, leaving early and doing as little as possible for as much money as their union can wheedle out of us. After all, these same people raise children, join the PTA, elect mayors, governors, senators and presidents. They are adults. At Semco, we treat them as adults. We trust them. We dont make our employees ask permission to go to the bathroom, or have security guards search them as they leave for the day. We get out of their way and let them do their jobs.
• In business, effort is too often confused with results
• And we had so damn many numbers, inside so damn many folders, that almost no on e was looking at them. But no one would admit it.
• In either plan we try to think in zero-based terma. Budgets should always be based on rethinking the company; most of the time, though, they_re not much more than last years numbers projected forward, and are about as ood as warmed-up coffee at two in the morning
• we introduced a programme that requires each executive to make an educated guess about the revenues, expenses, and profits for his department at the end of each month. A few days later, the official report is distributed
• People were afraid to sign their name to anything.
• if our executives were ashamed of their salaries, it might be becuase they felt they weren't really earning them, for if they merited their pay they could easily prove their worth, whether it was based on specialized knowledge, experience, education, or the mastery of a large departmene with a big budget and staff. Executives should be proud of what they earn, and their salaries ought to provide everyone with an incentive to rise.
• profit-sharing doesnt create employee involvement, it requires it.
• Man is by nature restless. When left too long in one place he will inevitably grow bored, unmotivated, and unproductive. ... a minimum of two years and a maximum of five years in a job were ample.
• There are so many benefits from job rotation, borh for employees and employer, that is a wonder so few companies encourage it. It obliges people to learn new skills, which makes life interesting for them and makes them more valuable.
• That led us to draw up a form subordinates now use to evaluate their managers twice a year.
• Its always better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission
• Our advances in technologyhave far outstripped our advances in mentality.

Liar Liar - James Patterson

Really bad and boring book. But one quote:

"I have to keep going" ... "If I would have seen what Vada was doing, I could have-"
"If!", Tox spat. "If, if,if. You know how many miserable fucking losers have driven themselves into the ground trying to chase down ifs?"
Whitt shook his head.
"Let me tell you something, Whitt," Tox said. "You can hunt your fantasies about what should or shouldn't have happened in your life all the way back to your daddy knocking your mama up with a future rehab regular. But you know what? I've done you a favour. I've gone down that road already, and I can tell you there's nothing at the end of it."

Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis

• Analysts didnt analyze anything. They were slaves to a team of corporate financiers, the men who did the negotiations and paper work.
• The first thing you learn on the trading lfoor is that when large numbers of people are after the same commodity, the commodity quickly becomes overvalued.
• "Economics" satisfied the two most basic needs of investment bankers. First investment bankers wanted practical people, willing to subordinate their educations to their careers. Economics, which was becoming an ever more abstruse science, producing mathematical treatises with no obvious use, seemed almost designed as a sifting device.
• Studying economics was more a ritual sacrifice.
• Economics was practical. It got people jobs. And it did this because it demonstrated that they were among the most fervent believers in the primacy of economic life.
• what economics students were supposed to know served almost no function in an investment bank. The bankers used economics as a sort of standardized test of general intelligence.
• Many of my classmates had sacrificed the better part of their formal educations for Wall Street
• Set questions were posed to which set answers were expected. A successful undergraduate investment banking interview sounded like a monastic chant.
• For rich people, they didnt look very happy [the investment bankers]
• Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the market.
• A bond was worth only as much as the person who valued it properly was willing to pay
• Good traders tend to do the unexpected
• They were the same as front-row people all over the world [in a classroom]
• I considered myself an exception of course [everyone does it. Majority thinks they are above average]
• A rule of thumb about information in the markets ...: "Those who say dont know, and those who know dont say
• The only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesnt teach us anything
• "I dont do favors. I accumulate debts."
• I spent much of my working life inventing logical lies like this. Most of the time when markets move, no one has any idea why.
• 
  

How to turn down a billion dollars - the snapchat story

• "While standing in line to register at Stanford, I met this guy who asked me what I was reading. I said "What am I reqadin? Classes haven't started." And he kind of rolles his eyes, like, "What kind of an idiot is this?" The new classmate then bought him a copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm. "And I just thought it was fantastic; There hasn't been a day since that I haven't been interested in learning something.
• "When everyone is tired and the night is over, who stays and helps out? Because those are your true friends. Those are the hard workers, the people that believe that working hard is the right thing to do."
• Before smartphones were ubiquous, Facebook had to work extremely hard to build a social graph on the web. But with smartphones, people had a computer in their pockets with a complete social graph - their address book. This allowed Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others to quickly build enormously valuable services.
• Evan wanted his statement to be just three words: "Wecome, Facebook. Seriously." It was an homage to Steve Jobs and Apple taking out a full-page ad in "The Wall Street Journal" saying, "Welcome, IBM. Seriously," when the much larger computer giant started competing with Apple in the personal computer business.
• "The tension between experience for its own sake and experience we pursue just to put on facebook is reaching its breaking point."
• This traditional social media view of identity is actually quite radical: you are the sum of your published experience. Otherwise knows as: pics or it didnt happen
• or in the case of Instagram: beautiful pics or it didnt happen AND youre not cool
• Snapchat: We are who we are today, right now.
• We no longer have to capture the "real world" and recreate it online - we simply live and communicate at the same time.
• Engineers and data scientists can't do anything with "this makes people feel warm and fuzzy."
• The mobile phone as the remote control for life.
• Despite the wild changes in media formats over the past century, the amount of money spent on advertising has generally remained constant. ... made up about 1.3 percent of US GDP
• Evan told reporters he found it annoying when brand tried to act like people on SNapchat by creating an account.
• There's a weird obsession with the idea that data can solve anything. I really havent seen data deliver the results that I've seen a great editor deliver.
• Zuckerbergs "I'm CEO, Bitch"
• The internet is not a friendly place. Things that don't stay relevant don't even get the luxury of leaving ruins. They disappear.
• Dont be to proud to copy
• As young people, we are trying to find our voice. Trying out who we are, again and again, until something feels more accurate than the previous thing... We believe what we see. And we cant be what we cant see. We are so credulous when we assume that everyone else must be the version of themselves they portray in public, even if we are hardly the people we present ourselves as.

The secret

• Your whole life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head
• I am the master of my thoughts
• Your thoughts become things
• There is no greater power in the universe than the power of love. If you could wrap every thought in love, if you could love everything and everyone, your life would be transformed. (Also includes myself)
• To know what you are thinking, ask yourself how you are feeling (often worried - job, money, …)
• It is impossible to feel bad and at the same time have good thoughts
• (Do we need more love in our lives? Does a pet / a dog bring that into the life?)
• Asking the universe for what you want is your opportunity to get clear about what you want. As you get clear in your mind, you have asked
• Most people look at their current affairs and say, “this is who I am.” That’s Not who you are. That’s who you were.
• All that we are is a result of what we have thought (Buddha)
• Ou job is not to figure out the how. The how will show up out of a commitment and belief in the what
• (Don’t think Debt and expenses. Think wealth and prosperity. Set up an automated debt repayment program and then start to focus on prosperity)
• I grew up on “you have to work hard for money”. So I replaced that with, “money comes easily and frequently.”
• Make it your intention to look at everything you like and say to yourself, “I can afford that. I can buy that.” You will shift your thinking and begin to feel better about money.
• How can you ever expect anyone else to enjoy your company if you don’t enjoy your own company?
• There’s something so magnificent about you. I have been studying me for forty-four years. I wanna kiss myself sometimes.
• What you resist persists (we’re adding our energy to it (who knows if it’s good or bad)
• Mother Theresa was brilliant. She said, „I will never attend an anti-war rally. If you have a peace rally, invite me.“
• Instead of focusing on the worlds problems, give your attention and energy to trust, love, abundance, education, and peace.
• I mean that’s almost everyone’s story in some form or not. The real question is, what are you going to do now? What do you choose now? Because you can either keep focusing on that, or you can focus on what you want. And when people start focusing on what they want, what they don’t want falls away, and what they want expands, and the other part disappears 
• Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.
• Be aware. And be here now. - stop listening to the endless commentary and chatter of your mind. Instead, Bebe aware, and be here now (where are you - here - what time is it - now).