At Tim Ferriss's (and others') recommendation, I read and greatly enjoyed Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. Like Tim (and Mason), I'm fascinated by how productive people organize their time, and what strategies they use to fight "resistance," the term Steven Pressfield uses for procrastination and creativity blocks. I loved how this book collected so many examples and just gave the straight facts, often quoting directly from the primary sources to list out the schedules and rituals used by the artists. I also liked how the artists came from a variety of fields, including literature, painting, illustration, dance, science, and music.

My biggest takeaways were the following:

• Each individual has their own preferred way of coping with resistance. Some don't want to force ideas to come out, while others believe that it's only by forcing yourself to work that the ideas will come out.
  
• Most of the artists do think that adding structure and discipline helps them get their work done, not just relying on inspiration and mood.
• Most of the artists actively add balance to their schedules and spend time doing a variety of things, such as seeing friends or going to the theater in the evening and enjoying tea with their families. I was shocked by how many enjoyed playing cards.
• I loved the little historic details about many of the older artists, such as how some of them were adamant about answering all handwritten letters the same day. It's interesting to see how similar personality traits translate into our modern methods of communication and working.

(I took these notes on my phone while listening to the audio version of the book, and I apologize for all the rampant misspellings of artist names.)

I just finished reading A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Peter Bevelin. It was a quick read with lots of quotes from various writings of Buffett categorized by topic. It was mainly around how they think about business and investments, and there were many great bits of wisdom. Below are my biggest takeaways and most memorable quotes.

I just finished reading my first book by Richard Branson: The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership. I've been impressed by how prolific Branson is and the breadth of successful businesses he has started; it's also great to see how supportive he is of the global entrepreneurship scene.

It was interesting to read about his upbringing and the founding stories of many of the Virgin companies. I thought the leadership lessons and takeaways were pretty conventional (I didn't find much new in this book), and I thought that too many sections of the book read like advertisements for Virgin companies. But the stories of the unconventional strategies used by Branson and his various executive leaders were fun to read. Branson is definitely a great role model for someone who can have a ton of fun while building an enormous empire according to his own rules.

I also collected a few pithy quotes that Branson included in his book like, "A good speech is like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject but short enough to create interest" (Winston Churchill), "Leadership is the ability to hide your panic in front of others" (Lao Tzu), and "Live as if you're going to die tomorrow. Learn as if you're going to live forever" (Gandhi).