Shelfology Book Pairing

Things That Gain from Disorder

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile “Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist “A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek

by Gary Keller

The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results is a 2013 book written by authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The book, The One Thing, explains how the habit to succeed can be incorporated in our life to overcome the hurdles like the lies that will block our success, the thieves that will steal our time and increase our concentration in the purpose, the way we prioritize and the productivity of our business. The book comes in handy for people indulged in business and helps them increase the efficiency of their work and remove the hindering factors. The book is easy to read and substantial in the ideas it conveys. The One Thing is a book that focuses on how to avoid perplexing distractions that come on one's way. By doing this, they can concentrate on the one thing that is the most important at that point of time. The book says that one wants fewer distractions on their daily life, be it professional or personal, so that the most important thing can be heeded. Likewise, one also wants more productivity so that their work flourishes. The book says that one wants less and more at the same time and it can be had by following certain methods. The book assists in reducing daily life stress, triggering one's motivation to get enthused in their actions targeted on their goals, overcome the feeling of exhaustion caused by overwhelming events and achieve better results in an effective time period. The One Thing delivers extraordinary results in every area if your life - work, personal, family and spiritual.