Books: When

In the past few years, the field of behavioral economics has taken off. It is not a surprise when everyone has been busy trying to find the mantra that could squeeze a little bit more from everything and everyone. As behavioral economics comes off age, there has been an onslaught of books describing the "how to" of extracting a little more. In the pursuit of becoming a better person, we end up buying these books. The more we read, the more similarity we find in these books. Most of these books are tend to cross-reference each other. Some of these books are built on concepts which can be better explained in a few pages. When it is blown up into a book of 200 pages, the reader becomes overwhelmed.

Daniel Pink writes this book as a companion piece to most of the books related behavioral economics. The subtitle of this book is the scientific secrets of perfect timing. As the title says, it helps you decide when to start or stop performing an activity. So you learn how to do with the dozens of book and use the knowledge gained in this book to decide when to do what you learned. The book has a small cheat sheet summarising what you read and how to implement those at the end of each chapter. When you are planning activities in the future, you can revisit these cheat sheets.

These books are always an exciting read. If you follow productivity topics avidly, you must have read some of the examples before. But it is still interesting to see another person's perspective of these examples just like how we watch reruns and remakes of successful films. These books are not taxing and hence can be completed quickly. The challenge is to implement what you have read and also recall what you have learned. It is better to revisit the cheat sheets periodically.