Category: Society & Culture

The Culture Code examines the dynamics of groups, large and small, formal and informal, to help you understand how great teams work and what you can do improve your relationships wherever you cooperate with others.

What’s your take on talent? Do you think it doesn’t exist and that everything can be learned? Or believe it’s binary, that if you’re not born with it, you can never get it? I think it’s a great example to show we want to judge life in extremes, when often, the truth is somewhere in the middle. A great movie about this issue with talent is The Gambler. Mark Wahlberg portrays a gambling-addicted English literature professor, who divides the world into geniuses and idiots, but ultimately, he learns we do have a choice more often than we think.

In his previous book, The Talent Code, author Daniel Coyle broke down the matter for the real world. Now, having examined the components of great performance on an individual level, he turns to groups and teams. The Culture Code is a thorough analysis of how humans work together and how they might keep each other from doing so.

From his research, he sees 3 skills at the heart of great teamwork:

• Build safety to make everyone feel comfortable in working together.
• Share vulnerability to show no one needs to be perfect.
• Establish purpose through a common goal and a clear path to get there.

We’re all part of countless groups, so let’s crack The Culture Code and make sure we do our best in each of them!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: Form a safe environment so everyone will let their guard down and cooperate.

Remote work is on the rise. Already half of all Americans do at least part of their work from home. And while that wouldn’t be possible without modern technology, it’s still remarkable how many people jump on the opportunity if it presents itself. According to Daniel Coyle, it’s simple: our homes are the safest places we know.

Safety is an important enabler that allows us to do great work. For example, keeping our day job can help us practice our creativity freely in a side hustle. Similarly, a work environment in which you feel safe in acting as you naturally would and speaking your mind is very conducive to group work. It’s only natural: you don’t want to keep looking over your back all the time, because if you need to, you can never really focus on the task at hand.

Professor Alex Pentland at the MIT’s media lab found that if he observed people’s body language, he could predict the outcomes of negotiations within five minutes of starting a session. That’s because how close we are to our co-workers, whether we mimic their behavior, and look into their eyes, are instant tells of how safe we feel. One good way to make others feel safer is to confirm you understand what they’re telling you by occasionally interjecting affirmations like “uh-huh,” “yes,” “got it,” and so on. Just don’t interrupt them.

Instead, when it’s your turn, share one of your flaws.

Lesson 2: Share your own shortcomings to show people it’s okay to make mistakes.

Another researcher, Jeff Polzer, who researches organizational behavior at Harvard, found that when we share our own flaws with others, something amazing happens. He calls it a vulnerability loop, in which other people detect when we signal vulnerability, thus signal vulnerability too, and thus both party become closer and trust each other more.

Other scientists, like Brené Brown, have shown that vulnerability itself is a sign of strength, not weakness. However, because workplaces are usually seen as competitive, especially in the Western world, we think we need to look confident and powerful all the time. But that’s not true. It’s usually the person who takes the first step in admitting they’re not perfect, who’s perceived as a leader, not the one who berates others for being weak.

Vulnerability not just increases trust, it’s also a way to show acceptance: if you admit no one’s perfect, people will feel okay even after making mistakes, which are inevitable in accomplishing a shared goal.

Speaking of which…

Lesson 3: Build a sense of purpose through a shared goal and a simple way towards it.

The last component Coyle ascribes to well-functioning groups is purpose. Put simply, purpose is a set of reasons for doing what you do. In case of a group, it’s the sum of all beliefs and values among your team, as they relate to achieving your common goal. That goal might be something straightforward, like selling the most phones any company has ever sold, but ideally, it’s about something bigger, like making phone users feel special and that they have good taste. Which one do you think Apple’s built on?

Since the goal is in the future, but your group lives in the now, your purpose should be like a bridge between the two. Thus, if you can come up with a simple narrative as to how your purpose will help you go from today to tomorrow and reach your goal, you’ll be able to activate those around you.

A useful tool to accomplish this is a short, catchy, maybe even cheesy slogan. Think of Nike’s “just do it.” It’s kinda cliché, but it works, because it’s easy to remember, and easy to repeat until it sinks in. With safety, vulnerability, and purpose all in one place, it’ll be almost impossible to stop you and your team from accomplishing whatever you set out to do!

My personal take-aways

The Culture Code brings some fresh perspective to a topic that’s often overcomplicated: how humans can function in groups. You don’t need tons of exercises, motivators, or annual team-building events. Coyle explains why our most basic psychological needs are all we need to address, and he does so with colorful examples from all walks of life. Good one!

Homo Deus illustrates the history of the human race from how we came to be the dominant species over what narratives are shaping our lives today all the way to which obstacles we must overcome next to continue to thrive.

As unfathomable as it may sound, the numbers don’t lie: We’re more likely to die of suicide than war, obesity than starvation, old age than poverty. What’s even more astonishing is that we’ve managed to put all these fundamental, human ailments in their place in just the last century. But that begs the question: What’s next for the human race?

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari tries to deliver an answer. After covering our past extensively in his global, multi-million-copy bestseller Sapiens, Harari now turns his eyes toward the future of mankind. Following a brief recap of human history, he describes the narratives we currently use to make sense of the world. He also outlines which ones could mark our demise if we’re not careful.

Here are 3 lessons I learned, one from each section of the book:

Shared narratives are what allow us to collaborate at a large scale and, thus, dominate as a species.

The most prevalent, current narrative is humanism.

Algorithms could eventually replace us, depending on which future narrative takes over.

Are you excited about the future? Then let’s take a sneak peak at what’s in store for us!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: Stories are what make us the strongest animal on the planet.

In democratic elections around the world, millions of people make a concerted effort to agree on choosing a group leader. They’re one of the best demonstrations of our ability to cooperate on a massive scale. This skill is at the heart of why humans have won the evolutionary race. But how did we develop it?

According to Harari, it’s rooted in our communication. Humans have told stories since the dawn of speech. Because we can all decide what stories we believe in individually, the best stories win. Over time, we’ve become more intelligent, which is why, usually, the story that wins in the long run is whichever one benefits us the most as a whole.

Take religion, for example. Back in the Middle Ages, the story of Catholicism brought together many European nations in the Crusades. They abandoned the wars they had with one another to fight a larger one. Today, 1,000 years later, we realize that narrative only served a small portion of our population. Therefore, religion is slowly being replaced in more recent generations.

But with what?

Lesson 2: Today’s dominant narrative is humanism.

Back when the world was less connected, narratives naturally formed regionally. But nowadays, we’re all aware of the many different religions, political movements, and belief systems around the globe. Thanks to the internet, it’s become obvious to many that there is no one, right choice for any of them.

As a result, the story that dominates the world today is humanism. In this view of the world, humans are the central element and our individual freedom our greatest asset. We believe in science, rationality, progress, technology, and self-actualization. There are many variants of humanism, and respecting all of them is important, but the most commonly chosen one is liberalism.

Liberalism allows us to express humanism in everyday life by translating its ideas into specific moral codes, laws, and political aspirations. Even campaigns for a certain cause, like climate change awareness, less waste, or redistribution of wealth are often just liberal narratives in disguise.

The question that remains is what narratives will arise in the future. Currently, there are two major trends forming.

Lesson 3: All our future narratives involve algorithms, but if we’re not careful, they could replace us altogether.

Since their invention, computers have quickly become a big part of our lives. Often more efficient at performing tasks, they allow us to enjoy more comfort in many areas. Algorithms make our work easier, help us monitor our health, and even contribute to our recreation by giving us more ways to express ourselves.

Therefore, it’s not really a question of whether algorithms will be part of our future, just how. Two trends Harari sees appearing at the horizon are techno-humanism, often called transhumanism, and dataism. Transhumanism argues that humans should merge with technology to enhance their capabilities and keep up with the power of algorithms. Dataism, on the other hand, suggests we “get out of the way” and let algorithms become as powerful as they can become on their own.

The former is already manifesting in military technology, athletics, and health, but it also means giving up parts of what makes us human, like empathy. The latter might eventually lead to some Matrix-style scenario, in which the machines get rid of us because we’re just in their way.

No one knows which narrative will win and if it’s even one of these two, but one thing’s for sure: the story of humanity will never be boring.

My personal take-aways

Yuval Noah Harari is a smart man without a doubt. He grounds his arguments in science and his vivid stories add up to a coherent picture. Naturally, what receives lots of praise also must face the scrutiny of lots of critics. While some may say his newer books, which issue warnings to not overstep our bounds, are too gloomy, but I think his ideas are always worth considering. You may not agree with everything he says, but there is definitely a lot to learn from his work. Homo Deus is no exception.

For more interesting ideas about current human affairs, take a look at our summary of 21 Lessons For The 21st Century.

Ghettoside explains the history of homicide in the United States and why particularly black communities struggle with high murder rates, as well as what can and must be done to change the status quo for the better.

Jill Leovy has been a reporter for the LA times for over 20 years. And in those two decades, for one of which she was crime correspondent, she witnessed not only the “homicide epidemic” sweeping through LA’s south, but also discovered that these crimes were poorly documented, turned into faceless statistics and in part, strategically swept under the rug.

How is it possible that a young, black man in LA has a 1 in 35 chance of being murdered and that 50% of all homicide victims are black men, when they make up just 6% of the population?

The answer to this question is a highly complex one, but Jill has done a great job at answering it. Let’s see if we can fit explain what’s going on in 3 lessons:

• Black communities have a history of developing alternate justice systems, which causes crime rates to spike.
• By focusing on crime prevention, the US police spend their money and energy on the wrong end of the problem.
• Solving murder cases is the only way to restore peoples’trust in the system.

Are you ready to jump to the Ghettoside to learn more about one of society’s biggest problems? Let’s go!

Lesson 1: Historically, black communities have developed their own, internal justice systems, which causes higher crime rates.

Usually, the state is the only institution that’s allowed to use violence to ensure the law is held in place, for example by arresting people, breaking up fights and riots, or, worst case, fire back if someone runs amok. In an ideal world, the police wouldn’t even have to use these measures. But even if our world isn’t perfect, in most places where installed, this system works well.

However, because of the complicated history of black people in the United States, with all its racism and discrimination, the supremacist leaders in the late 1800s and early 1900s never made a big effort to popularize the state monopoly on violence model in black communities.

In turn, these black communities came up with their own, alternative systems of justice. Thus, violence became a legitimate tool in solving your issues – if you can’t rely on the police to protect you, you might take matters in your own hands.

And because these systems replace the governmental law where in effect, they make it very hard for police to get access later. For example, the LAPD rarely gets people in South Central to talk about crimes, because being a “snitch” (=traitor) is a death sentence by the law of the street.

In essence, these problems don’t cause disregard for the law, they’re the result of no proper legal system having ever been put in place to begin with.

Lesson 2: Because US police focuses on prevention, they approach the problem from the wrong end.

The best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it, right? Technically, yes, but in this case prevention doesn’t work. The LAPD has a strong tradition of patrolling, mass arrests and punishing little crimes, like possession of marijuana or shoplifting – all preventative measures.

In the case of the high homicide rates in LA though, this carries two problems:

The people in charge of dealing with these bigger issues are underfunded and understaffed. Detectives often can’t solve cases, because they lack the staff, resources and time.

The victims and their families disrespect the police even more, because they punish them for trivialities, but don’t seem to care about the real issues like violence and murder.

If people are so hopeless and desperate about the legal system that they’ve come up with and accepted their own jurisdiction, there’s nothing to prevent any longer. You have to restore peoples’ faith in the original system.

But how do you do that?

Lesson 3: The only way to restore peoples’ faith in the legal system is to start solving murder cases, no matter the race of the victim.

Given the above, this might seem obvious, but with only 1 in 3 murder cases with a black victim solved, it’s worth iterating.

The police must start solving more murder cases, no matter the skin color of the victim.

This would send a signal that the government cares about all its citizens equally, start mending the broken ties with local communities and begin to regain their trust.

With the dedication of more resources, aka money, people and time, this isn’t even as massive of an effort as it might seem. Many murder cases are well publicized within the communities that they happen in, and with the right amount of pressure at the right points, information is easy to obtain (LAPD have even dubbed the local rumor network GIN – Ghetto Information Network – because it’s so well-informed).

This of course a sensitive topic and one that’s tough to draw attention to in the right way, but if we can pull it off, things don’t have to be the way they’ve always been.

My personal take-aways

I had no idea how big the gap in homicide cases was, this was really shocking. I knew from Freakonomics that Black communities had bigger problems with crime than their White counterparts, but I didn’t know the disparity was this big and where it comes from. I love how logically and historically sensical Jill argued her way to the solution here and this is a topic that deserves a lot more attention than it gets, which makes this a definite recommend!

Factfulness explains how our worldview has been distorted with the rise of new media, which ten human instincts cause erroneous thinking, and how we can learn to separate fact from fiction when forming our opinions.

When I first got into reading blogs, learning about self-improvement, and exploring the startup scene, I was a delusional optimist. I read and read, thinking I would somehow make it as an entrepreneur. But that was just blind faith. I never actually did anything. Over the years, I’ve learned to become more of a realist-optimist. I still focus on the positive, but I try not to sugarcoat things.

As it turns out, with fake news and advertising-driven media becoming more and more extreme, this was a good move. Usually, life is better than news outlets make us believe, so focusing on the facts, but staying positive, will help you form clearer opinions. That’s why Bill Gates is such a big fan of books like Enlightenment Now, which bring us up to speed with data about the world.

It’s no wonder, then, that Factfulness is another one of his 2018 favorites. Written by the Swedish, late professor, sword swallower, and public speaker Hans Rosling, it’s a book about the current state of the world. But beyond giving us the facts, it helps us see them for ourselves by diving into ten mental biases that obstruct our thinking.

Here are my favorite 3 and the lessons I learned from debunking them:

• There is no such thing as “the East and the West.” We only have one world.
• Population growth will eventually level off, despite our perception of increasing numbers.
• To see the world accurately, you always need multiple perspectives.
• The world is trying hard to hide the facts from you on a day-to-day basis. Let’s learn how to find them anyway!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: The East vs. West mentality is outdated. We all share this planet.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. What I hope to be a clever Quora answer of mine is also one of the first points Rosling makes. He calls it ‘the gap instinct.’ It’s our tendency to want to see things as black and white. The example he uses to illustrate it is the classic division of the world into East and West.

I, too, have grown up in a time where schools would teach Westerners that their countries are developed, while Asian ones are currently developing, trying to catch up. This instilled an us-vs-them mentality early on. But the truth is, whatever gap there was has almost completely disappeared over the past 20 years. How do we even define ‘developing’ and ‘developed?’

If we use child mortality, for example, only 13 countries could be considered ‘developing’ today. One thing’s for sure: dividing the world geographically to determine its economic, demographic, or psychological state is useless.

Lesson 2: Increasing population growth is blown out of proportion, because it’s likely to level off rather soon.

A second megamisconception, as Rosling calls these ideas that are rooted deeply, but incredibly wrong, is that of our impending doom due to exponential population growth. Books like The World Without Us elaborate on the idea that one day, nature will conceive devastating diseases and catastrophes to rid itself of the growing damage from humans. But while our growing numbers are sure a cause for concern, they might never hit apocalypse-worthy levels.

The UN’s projections for population growth see us hit 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. That’d be a double-up from 6.1 billion in 2000. But in 1900, there were only 1.6 billion humans, which means that in the last century, we grew fourfold, showing the growth rate is already declining. That’s because as countries get out of poverty, people tend to have fewer children. In countries like Germany, populations are even declining!

There are three biases that prevent our feelings from matching the numbers: the straight-line instinct, the fear instinct, and the size instinct. We misplace our primal fears, think trends continue in a straight line, and overestimate their size. That’s why population growth might feel like a huge threat, when actually, it’ll likely not be a big deal.

Lesson 3: The only thing that allows you to see the world as it really is is to look at everything from multiple angles.

Democracy is one of the 21st century’s most popular ideas, because in it, Western countries have thrived. But right now, most of the fastest-growing countries aren’t democratic, indicating it’s not the only political system that works. And yet, we tend to see it as the ultimate end goal for any ‘developing’ nation.

Using only a single perspective to shape our opinions might be our biggest flaw. Sometimes, you come across other viewpoints by accident, but mostly, it’s a matter of actively seeking them out. If you don’t do it, you’re once again stuck in black-and-white land. One of the best remedies, Rosling says, is travel. By exposing yourself to other cultures, you’ll naturally get access to many different points of view.

Also, when getting your information online, it’s always best to read multiple sources, not just one. It’s the equivalent of traveling around the world. Only when we surf the globe can we learn to see it as it really is, so that we may form our opinions based on facts, not feelings.

And that’s what factfulness is all about.

My personal take-aways

Factfulness is only one of many books in a long, recent line of works that help us fight our biases. It delivers its research in a way that’s easy to understand and uses great examples to help us see clearly. If Bill Gates can learn something from it, I’m sure we can too.

A Short History Of Nearly Everything explains everything we’ve learned about our world and the universe so far, including how they formed, how we learned to make sense of time, space and gravity, why it’s such a miracle that we’re alive and how much of our planet is still a complete mystery to us.

What’s the most fascinating thing about our world to you? Is it space, other planets, galaxies far far away? The depth of the ocean and the mysterious, alien-like creatures that live down there? The genetic makeup of all of the species around us?

I’m baffled by all of those things, but I find that even people who don’t show a particular interest in science and history have one or two things they’re absolutely smitten by – and it’s not surprising. There’s so much incredible stuff going on around us, it’s hard to not be starstruck, if you think about it.

This book tries to explain (almost) all of it. At least as much as we know. Bill Bryson has done a tremendous job at it.

Here are my 3 favorite lessons:

• Most of the universe was created in a single, 3-minute moment.
• Given the odds of a planet being livable, it’s a miracle we’re here at all.
• Every day that the world keeps turning is a gift, because there are many things that could potentially end it.

Ready for a very brief look at the miracle we’re living right now? Let’s look at the history of (nearly) everything.

Lesson 1: All it took to create most of the universe as we know it was a single, 3-minute moment.

A singularity is defined as a moment in which nothing is defined and everything is unpredictable. It’s a massive inflection point. When scientists talk about the “initial” singularity, they refer to the moment the universe was created. It’s hard to imagine, but think of a little, compact point, that is infinitely dense – it contains everything that’s in the universe now, but is compressed into a tiny, tiny dot.

All of a sudden, it explodes, splattering all of its contents into the void. This moment is known as the big bang. When it happened, the entire universe was created in the time it takes you to prepare a sandwich. Immediately after the blow, the universe doubled in size every 10-34 seconds – that’s FAST. Within three minutes, 98% of all matter in the universe we know today was created.

With all this expanding, how wide is the universe today? About 100 billion light years – that’s the distance light can travel in a year times 100 BILLION. And light is fast. It travels 300,000 km (or 186,000 miles) per second. That’s this much in a year: 9,460,800,000,000 or about 9.5 trillion.

So 9.5 trillion times 100 billion, that’s the diameter of the universe. In numbers (whatever that means), that’s the span in kilometers: 946,800,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Lesson 2: The odds of a planet supporting life are so low that our presence on earth comes close to a miracle.

If you think about how easy it is to die, it becomes clear how frail human life actually is. I mean, you fall down a couple stairs, hit your head, and that’s it. You dive too deep in the sea, climb too high on a mountain or get stung by the wrong plant or insect, and you’re done.

But an even bigger surprise than us managing to maneuver the dangerous world we live in every day is the fact that we’re here at all.

99.5% of earth’s habitable space is not suited for humans – because it’s either water or doesn’t have enough oxygen. We need land to move and live and even on land we’re limited: only 12% of the total land mass of our planet can host humans.

It’s pretty rare for a planet to be livable on in general, because several things have to come together:

The distance to a star must be perfect. If it’s too close, the surface burns, if it’s too far away, the planet will be iced over.

The planet has to keep out cosmic radiation by building the right atmosphere.

A moon has to keep the planet’s gravity in check, so that it can spin at the right speed and angle.

All of these events have to line up in the right order and timeline.

Talk about once-in-a-lifetime chances! And this gets even more impressive, considering the next lesson.

Lesson 3: There’s a lot that could go wrong for our planet, which makes every new day a gift.

Let’s reconsider the point above. Humans not falling prey to all the dangers in the world pales in comparison to all the dangers that threaten earth’s existence from the outside.

There are around 1,000,000,000 asteroids flying around space close to the earth, and about 10% of them that regularly intersect with earth’s orbit are larger than 10 meters in diameter. That’s 100 million 10m-sized rocks potentially hitting earth at tremendous speeds!

In fact, 2,000 of those are so large that upon collision, we might get wiped out completely. According to scientists calculations, those deadly asteroids could fly by and nearly miss around 2-3 times a week – without us even noticing.

As if that wasn’t enough, there are earthquakes, tornados and volcano eruptions, all of which can have devastating consequences.

So no, it’s totally not normal that the sun rises every morning. Every single day is yet another miracle, waiting for you to appreciate it and take advantage of it. Live like it!