[Book Notes] Don't Make Me Think

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 04:48:46 +0000

Some people say this book is quite outdated, but I still made a point to read through it recently.

Here is a summary, as shown in the diagram below:

Since I have also been working in web development for a long time, there were actually many tips worth noting throughout the book. We may understand the big principles, but when it comes to actually implementing them, they are easy to overlook.

After finishing this book, I felt like I had given my own website a round of optimization. Perhaps the one word I took away from it is “usability.” I believe that in a few years, I will have an even deeper appreciation for it.

[Book Notes] Zero to One

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 08:22:12 +0000

I recently rushed through reading “Zero to One.” After finishing a book, I always want to write something, but when I actually sit down at the keyboard, I never quite know where to begin. In the past, when writing summaries or book notes, I would pull out the original book and type up the passages I found interesting, but I feel that approach lacks real substance when you chew on it.

This book has a rating of 8.0 on Douban and is quite a slim volume. Given my limited life experience, I wouldn’t dare to rate this book myself, but I feel that reading it once is certainly not enough.

At first glance, this book seems a bit like motivational writing, yet also a bit like anti-motivational writing. It talks about big principles, but big principles are not necessarily the ones people remember to apply in practice.

The most important impressions this book left on me can be summed up in a few words.

The First: Qualitative Change

In common terms, quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, but this book approaches it from the perspective of innovation: taking that first step is what is truly great – like the first person to eat a crab. Everything that follows is just replication, a less meaningful accumulation.

The Second: Monopoly

Whether in personal life, career, or running a company, the most important thing is to have a unique skill. I remember my advisor once said, “One signature skill can feed you anywhere.” That is essentially the idea. For those in technology, technical ability is king. In recent years (2015), with the wave of mass entrepreneurship, people pitch to investors telling stories like “I have a great idea,” and so on. But the ones that truly survive – whether companies or employees within companies – are those with a distinctive skill. I wouldn’t say they are completely irreplaceable; I have always believed nothing is truly irreplaceable. But when someone creates great value on one hand, and the cost of replacing them is very high on the other, nobody is willing to replace them. That is when a kind of monopoly forms, and this is also the significance of patents. Take WeChat, for example. Current chat apps like Laiwang, Momo, and even a swarm of startups using similar concepts – campus-based, dating-based, entrepreneurship-based, family-based, and so on – are their technical capabilities not strong enough? Are their resources not abundant enough? Are their ideas not fresh enough? Yet WeChat remains irreplaceable, at least for now. This is a form of “monopoly.”

The Third: Secrets

When a person or a company can uncover a secret that triggers qualitative change and creates monopoly, that company has succeeded. This sounds quite mystical, but it makes a lot of sense. As for how exactly to put it into practice? My experience is still limited, and I hope that the next time I read this book, I will have a deeper understanding.

The above are my thoughts after reading this book.

Book Notes on Coinidea's Blog

[Book Notes] Don't Make Me Think

[Book Notes] Zero to One

The First: Qualitative Change

The Second: Monopoly

The Third: Secrets