notes.yml

# The asin is the ISBN for non-Kindle books.

-
  asin: 978-0-241-33912-1
  title: Create Dangerously
  author: Albert Camus
  highlights:
    -
      location: 3
      text: >
        To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that
        act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.
    -
      location: 6
      text: >
        In the face of so much suffering, if art insists on being a luxury, it will also
        be a lie.
    -
      location: 7
      text: >
        I have always thought there were two kinds of intelligence - intelligent intelligence
        and stupid intelligence.
    -
      location: 8
      text: >
        A fashionable society in which all troubles were money troubles and all worries
        were sentimental worries was satisfied for decades with its society novelists and
        with the most futile art in the world, the one about which Oscar Wilde, thinking
        of himself before he knew prison, said that the greatest of all vices was
        superficiality.
    -
      location: 13
      text: >
        Art canot be a monologue.
    -
      location: 13
      text: >
        The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death - there are the things
        that unit us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what
        we suffer together.
    -
      location: 15
      text: >
        There is but one possible realistic film: the one that is constantly shown us
        by an invisible camera on the world's screen. The only realistic artist, then,
        is God, if he exists. All other artists are ipso facto, unfaithful to reality.
    -
      location: 16
      text: >
        How, indeed, is a socialistic realism possible when reality is not altogether
        socialistic?
    -
      location: 19
      text: >
        Barbarism is never temporary.
    -
      location: 28
      text: >
        Art lives only on the constraints it imposes on itself; it dies of all others.
    -
      location: 38
      text: >
        The intellectual is a dangerous animal ever ready to betray.
    -
      location: 43
      text: >
        Freedom is the concern of the oppressed, and her natural protectors have always
        come from among the oppressed.
    -
      location: 52
      text: >
        Freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties.

-
  asin: 0-679-76288-4
  title: High Output Management
  author: Andy Grove
  highlights:
    -
      location: 17
      text: >
        A genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply
        the activity involved.
    -
      location: 30
      text: >
        In date-like inspection, all material is held at the "gate" until the inspection
        tests are completed. If the material passes, it is moved on to the next stage in
        production process.
    -
      location: 35
      text: >
        Automation is certainly one way to improve the leverage of all types of work.
        This is called work simplification. To get leverage this way you first need to create
        a flow chart of the production process as it exists.
        To implement the actual simplification, you must question why each step is performed.
    -
      location: 59
      text: >
        Delegation is an essential aspect of management. The "delegator" and "delegatee" must
        share a common information base and a a common set of operational ideas or notions
        on how to go about solving problems.
    -
      location: 60
      text: >
        Even after you delegate it, you are still responsible for its accomplishment, and
        monitoring the delegated task is the only practical way for you to ensure a result.
    -
      location: 63
      text: >
        What is the medium of a manager's forecast? It is something very simple: his calendar.
    -
      location: 66
      text: >
        As a rule of thumb, a manager whose work is largely supervisory should have six to
        eight subordinates; three or four are too few and ten are too many.
    -
      location: 69
      text: >
        About twenty middle managers at Intel were once asked to be part of an experiment.
        After pairing up, they tried some role-playing in which one manager was to define the
        problem most limiting his output and the other was to be a consultant who would
        analyze the problem and propose solutions.
    -
      location: 72
      text: >
        Process-Oriented Meetings
        The prople attending should know how the meeting is run, what kinds of substantive
        matters are discussed, and what is to be accomplished.
    -
      location: 75
      text: >
        A key point about a one-on-one: It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting,
        with its agenda and tone set by him. They should be asked to prepare an outline,
        which is very important becasue it forces them to think through in advance all
        of the issues and points they plan to raise.
    -
      location: 75
      text: >
        A supervisor should never use staff meetings to pontificate, which is the surest
        way to undermine free discussion and hence the meeting's basic purpose.
    -
      location: 83
      text: >
        I would recommend four minutes of presentation and discussion time per visual aid,
        which can include tables, numbers or graphics.
    -
      location: 84
      text: >
        Remember, you are being paid to attend the meeting.
    -
      location: 85
      text: >
        A meeting involving ten managers for two hours costs the company $2000.
        Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment
        worth $2000, you shouldn't let anyone walk away with the time of this fellow managers.
    -
      location: 87
      text: >
        Once the meeting is over, the chairman must nail down exactly what happened
        by sending out minutes that summarize the discussion that occurred, the decision made,
        and the actions to be taken. The minutes shoudl also be as clear and as specific
        as possible, telling the reader what is to be done, who is to do it, and when.
    -
      location: 87
      text: >
        Peter Drucker said that if people spend more thatn 25 percent of their time in
        meetings, it is a sing of malorganization.
    -
      location: 89
      text: >
        Put another way, even if today's veteran manager was once an outstanding engineer,
        he is not now the technical expert he was when he joined the company.
        At Intel, anyway, we managers get a little more obsolete every day.
    -
      location: 89
      text: >
        If your business depends on what it knows to survive and prosper, what decision-making
        mechanism should you use?
    -
      location: 92
      text: >
        It is very important that everybody voice opinions and beliefs as equals throughout
        the free discussion stage, forgetting or ignoring status differentials.
    -
      location: 95
      text: >
        In the end self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that
        nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate
        action, or being overruled. An everyone in your operation should be made to
        understand this.
    -
      location: 95
      text: >
        One thing that paralyzes both knowledge and position power processors is the
        fear of simply sounding dumb.
    -
      location: 97
      text: >
        We Americans tend to be reluctant to exercise position power deliberately and
        explicitly - it is just "not nice" to give orders.
    -
      location: 97
      text: >
        Decision-making has an ouput associated with it, which in this case is the decision
        itself.
    -
      location: 98
      text: >
        * What deicision needs to be made?
        * When does it have to be made?
        * Who will decide?
        * Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision?
        * Who will ratify or veto the decision?
        * Who will need to be informed of the decision?
    -
      location: 123
      text: >
        The functional groups can be viewed as if they were internal subcontractors.
    -
      location: 127
      text: >
        Grove's Law: All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a
          hybrid organizational form.
    -
      location: 148
      text: >
        For cultural values, management has to develop and nurture the common set of values,
        objectives and methods essential for the existence of trust. How do we do that?
        One was is by articulation, by spelling out these values, objectives and methods.
        The other, even more important, way is by example.
    -
      location: 161
      text: >
        Misery loves not just any company, but the company of other miserable people.
        Nobody who is miserable wants to be around someone happy.
    -
      location: 169
      text: >
        Our society respects someone's throwing himself into sports, but anybody who
        works very longs hours is regarded as sick, a workaholic.
    -
      location: 179
      text: >
        There is a huge distinction between a social relationship and a communicating
        management style, which is a caring involvement in the work of the subordinate.
        Close relationships off the job may help to create an equivalent relationship on
        the job, but they should not be confused.
    -
      location: 198
      text: >
        What about asking your subordinate to evaluate your performance as his supervisor?
        I this this might be a good idea.
    -
      location: 199
      text: >
        The best thing to do is to give your subordinate the written review sometime before
        the face-to-face discussion.
    -
      location: 202
      text: >
        The purspose of the interview is to:
        * Select a good performer
        * Educate him as to who you and the company are
        * Determine if a mutual match exists
        * Sell him on the job
    -
      location: 213
      text: >
        If the absolute amount of a raise in salary is important, that person is probably
        motivated by physiological or safety/security needs. If the relative amount of a raise -
        what he got compared to others - is the important issue, that person is likely to be
        motivated by self-actualization.
    -
      location: 217
      text: >
        If your subordinate does not like the raise he's been given, all you have to do
        is show him the book where is says that for X amount of time on the job he deserves
        and gets Y amount of pay.
    -
      location: 218
      text: >
        The Peter Principle says that when someone is good at his jobs, he is promoted; he
        keeps getting promoted until he reaches his level of incompetence and then stays there.
    -
      location: 223
      text: >
        Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can
        perform.
    -
      location: 224
      text: >
        Some 2 percent to 4 percent of our employees' time is spent in classroom learning,
        and much of the instruction is given by our own managerial staff.

-
  asin: 978-618-5076-12-2
  title: Je parle aux murs
  author: Jacques Lacan
  highlights:
    -
      location: 10
      text: >
        Does being without a compass mean being without purpose [discours]?
        Does that make you a chaotic schizophrenic like Deleuze and Guattari claimed?
    -
      location: 39
      text: >
        Take homosexuality for example. It's considered a disorder within the physical order.
        When we label a disorder as of being within the physical order, then there is only
        one thing that we can do: We must form a lobby. If you form a lobby, you establish
        no longer being a disorder of the physical order. As you know, homosexuality is
        no longer classified as a disorder due to the pressure of an
        aggregation of political forces.
    -
      location: 39
      text: >
        Take homosexuality for example. It's considered a disorder within the physical order.
        When we label a disorder as of being within the physical order, then there is only
        one thing that we can do: We must form a lobby. If you form a lobby, you establish
        no longer being a disorder of the physical order. As you know, homosexuality is
        no longer classified as a disorder due to the pressure of an
        aggregation of political forces.
    -
      location: 42
      text: >
        The subconscious does not exist. The primal subconscious does not exist as knowledge.
        To become knowledge, to convert it into knowledge, it needs love. Lacan said that
        psychoanalysis demands loving your subconscious.
    -
      location: 53
      text: >
        The matter of psychically ill, or better put, of psychoses has not been addressed
        by antipsychiatry regardless of any delusions cultivated by some local groups.
        Antipsychiatry is a movement striving to free the psychiatrist.
    -
      location: 67
      text: >
        Where can pleasure nest? What's needed for pleasure? A body. To find pleasure we
        need a body. Even those who promise eternal bliss have to imply that the body will
        move towards it. Glorious or not, it has to be there. There needs to be a body.
        Why? Because the dimension of pleasure for a body is the dimension of descending
        to the underworld.
    -
      location: 72
      text: >
        Psychoanalysis tells us its impossible to define what defines a man and a woman.
    -
      location: 105
      text: >
        Hegel always said, if there was someone who understands nothing of the lord's word,
        is the lord himself.
    -
      location: 114
      text: >
        I wonder, does God believe in himself?
    -
      location: 124
      text: >
        Emitting meaning with more momentum and you'll find that life becomes more comfortable.
    -
      location: 129
      text: >
        Between man and women,
        There's love.
        Between man and love,
        There's a world.
        Between man and the world,
        There's a wall.
    -
      location: 135
      text: >
        In order to form a healthy idea on love, one would have to start to see
        there's always castration that's at stake.
    -
      location: 138
      text: >
        The law of the 30th of June 1838 rules that a mentally ill person can be dangerous
        for themselves and others. It's is really odd this introduction of danger where
        social class is based. What is this danger? God knows how free one can be
        in this direction.