For the last 2 months, my mind has been blown on a daily basis by the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

This is the longest and deepest I've gotten into a book since high school, and I found pretty much every chapter thought-provoking and lifestyle-questioning. I already felt like my mind had been blown, and that was just after finishing the prologue.

"Antifragile" is the word that Taleb coins for the concept of gaining from disorder (the real opposite of fragility, which is not the same thing as "robust"). The book covers the topics of philosophy, finance, math, statistics, lifestyle, food, fitness, education, and history, and it applies various strategies and concepts to finding ways to live more naturally and with more antifragility.

I can see how many people will be angered and offended by the direct manner in which Taleb denounces the professions of consultant, banker, economist, academic, business school professor, soccer mom, and tourist. I think books that question a lot of fundamentals are the only ones that bring actual progress to our lives as human thinkers, and this book does exactly that.

Overall, I took 47 pages of notes on the book (see below), and that sheer quantity is enough to show how much I liked it. It's not easy to distill these into a few bullet points, and I will be trying over the next couple months to come up with some concrete suggestions and techniques to put the book's ideas into practice in my own life. Here are just a handful of lessons and broad concepts that come immediately to mind:

• There are important nonlinearities in life that many professionals and advice-givers totally ignore but which make a much bigger difference over time than the first-order obvious effects.
• Many human interventions in health and government come with really bad iatrogenic effects.
• Things that are in nature are right until proven wrong; things that are human-made are wrong until proven right (which only time can show).
• Don't be a turkey, and avoid sucker problems. That's 95% of being successful.
• Via negativa: Focus on what to avoid and remove instead of what to do and add.
• Find ways to make your life antifragile in the sense of having limited, small downside and high potential upside.
• Be an adventurous flaneur. Live life to take advantage of new, unforeseen opportunities and volatility.
• Entrepreneurs are the unsung heroes of antifragility and deserve way more respect than politicians and other non-practitioners and non-risk takers.
• Innovation is antifragile.
• Use barbell methods to manage investments and black swan risks. Focus on your exposure (f(x)) instead of trying to predict some variable (x). Predicting or following averages is for suckers.
• Study the classics, eat and drink the classics, and avoid the media hype or technology for its own sake.

Below are the rest of my notes. I really want to discuss some of this stuff with other readers, so let me know what you think.

I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing Bruce Feiler speak at Google about his book The Secrets of Happy Families. I expected to hear some of the traditional/cliché advice and have it be very prescriptive, but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't. Bruce dug up some interesting research and spent his time visiting with families all over the world to find out some commonalities of things that should be done and also avoided.

Below are some of my notes on the talk. I look forward to reading his book sometime soon.

• Biggest learning from positive psychology is that biggest source of happiness is relationships
  


• High functioning families adapt all the time
  
• Constantly forced to change and react
  
• Rarely able to be proactive
  
• Kid number one wish is for parents to be less stressed
  
• Weekly family agile meetings
  
• Public accountability
  
• Morning checklist with list of everyone's obligations
  
• Weekly Sunday meeting
  
• 3 questions
  
• What worked well
  
• What didn't work well
  
• What will we agree to work on in week ahead
  
• All give ideas
  
• Vote on 2 to work on
  
• Gives access to innermost child thoughts
  
• Let kids with adult supervision pick their own rewards and punishments
  
• Don't have to discuss all battles in the moment but can resolve on Sunday
  
• Be mindful of how function as a family
  


• Have to empower your kids
  
• Have kids set own work plans, evaluate selves
  
• Builds up their brains from fmri research
  


• Parents don't have all the answers
  
• Allow kids to criticize their parents and let off steam


• Second big idea: talk a lot
  
• High functioning teams have a lot of communication
  
• Talk about what it means to be part of your family
  
• Talked to Jim Collins
  
• Preserve the core and stimulate progress
  
• Define core identity
  
• Creating family mission statement
  
• Talk to kids about what they think our family values are
  


• Family dinner
  
• It is nice if can do it but the core part of the convo can be moved to family breakfast or meal out on weekend or whenever
  
• What matters is the family part
  


• Things to do in family convo
  
• 1. Word a day
  
• Teach one new word a day
  
• Bring newspapers and mags and catalogs with color names
  
• It's ok to google at dinner for new knowledge
  
• Have kids teach new words and slang to parents
  


• 2. Autobiography night
  
• Kids narrating story about self
  
• Parents who ask more elaborating questions like who/what/where/when/why have kids develop narration skills better
  


• 3. Talk about your family history
  
• Where grandparents were born
  
• Where parents went to high school
  
• Stories of overcoming disease or obstacle
  
• Kids who understand more of this are more confident and feel more control over lives
  
• Ascending family narrative: gain
  
• Descending family narrative: loss
  
• Oscillating family narrative: cycles
  
• Children who understand their oscillating family narrative have better ability to overcome obstacles


• Third big point: go out and play
  
• Spend less time worrying about what do wrong and focus on what enjoy
  
• Limit amount of conflict
  


• "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina by Leo Tolsoy)
  


• Happiness is not something you find but something you make
  


• Secret to happy family: try
  



• Game at dinner
  
• Bad/good
  
• What they did bad today, what they did good
  
• Or highs/lows
  


• Family meetings should be about how family doing not about individual highs and lows
  


• Play improv game at beginning and end of family meeting as marker
  
• Put allowance at end of family meeting
  


• Don't talk about difficult stuff midstream of week or late at night but at specified time


• Groups make better decisions
  
• Vote before discussion so loudest person doesn't overwhelm
  
• If have more than 1 woman in a group it will make a better decision
  
• Get ppl into family difficult convo even if don't know much
  


• Give warring siblings a task to do together
  
• Enlist kids into contact with grandparents
  
• Be open about difficulties with your kids
  
• Don't pretend to be supermom
  
• Game: pain points
  
• Everyone says what they are struggling with
  
• Have kids help you solve your dilemmas