This week I finished:

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It, by podcast guest Chris Voss: I read this book before recording the podcast with Chris and liked it, but not enough. This time I loved it.

I think last time I compared it with Getting to Yes and thought it didn’t add much knowledge. It mostly promoted the value of practice and tactics beyond the more theoretical Harvard book.

This time it hit me how much more Chris presents besides the value of rehearsal and practice. Though it teaches specific tactics, they aren’t just tips he found that work. They’re embedded in strategy, mission, and vision based in more than just one guy trying things out. He developed them with communities including law enforcement, military, academia, criminals, and victims.

He also takes care to clarify as much as he can that influencing others is not manipulation, coercion, or imposition, at least not with the negative connotations many people have of them. It’s a part of life and every relationship. If you’re scared of it, cringe and improving your skills, etc, you’re hurting yourself and your relationships with the people you care about most. Beyond missing out on the best parts of life, relationships, and self-awareness, if you don’t learn these things, you’re actively holding yourself back from them.

I consider it sad and unfortunate that people teaching social and emotional skills of leadership, influence, and related applications have to clarify so much. It partly led to my recent post Can you help me understand how liberals and progressives view leadership?.

I think our culture’s rigidity—that is, the increase in dominance hierarchy resulting from necessary resources becoming more under control—leads to our not learning social and emotional skills. If you don’t have hope or expectation of changing your rank and the more people have to follow the expectations set by your place in hierarchy, the less such skills matter. That’s increasingly our world, so people don’t see the need or value in developing social and emotional skills. Our schools don’t teach them. They teach the opposite by telling students what their values should be instead of helping them learn their values for themselves, why they value what they do, and how to act on them.

I recommend this book.

The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine: I finished her book The Male Brain earlier this year so was looking forward to her first book. I found it interesting. She confirms biological differences between men and women. Critics say she doesn’t back up everything she says, and it does seem like she extrapolates beyond the data. That is, she writes things about how men and women think and feel that seem consistent with traditional roles and she writes about how hormones and parts of the brain work differently in men and women, but it’s not clear that those biological differences explain all those differences. She doesn’t allow for as much difference coming from culture and environment.

Still, plenty of differences between men and women do seem to result from biological difference. The book also treats differences over one’s lifetime due to age, pregnancy, and child-rearing and by time of the month.

Watching a video of a public talk Brizendine gave, a woman was concerned men reading this book would think women were a constant ball of emotions changing daily from hormones. I forget exactly what she said, but reading The Male Mind, I thought how I wish women in my life read it, I’m glad to have gotten similar insight into women.

Wise Guys, directed by Brian de Palma: I put “selected” in the title of my Sunday posts since I finish a lot of movies, books, podcasts, talks, etc that I don’t consider worth your time. I didn’t like this movie, but watched it because one of the other auxiliary police officers I patrol with in the precinct a lot recommended it. He likes comedies and he has a Cadillac convertible so liked this movie. He talked about it more than once. The most recent time was because a Cindi Lauper song came on the squad car radio and he mentioned that Captain Lou Albano played a role in Wise Guys.

I don’t know if I’d call the movies that have affected me lately, like Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day, and Tokyo Story are art house movies. Either way, Wise Guys isn’t. It’s lowbrow. I think it might be trying to convey a message beyond a funny buddy movie. In any case, a lot of why I’m serving as an auxiliary is to connect with different neighbors and culture than those on the path laid out for those striving for elite university education, advanced degrees, flying around the world, etc. Besides all the Ivy degrees, I spent years in a once-redlined ghetto slum growing up and went to public schools as a minority.

Patrols involve a lot of waiting around, which leads to conversations and conversations with cops and auxiliaries are different than conversations with academics and professionals. So why not extend the exploration to their recommendations?

I’ve watched and loved several de Palma movies. I even saw some of the filming of Blow Out that was filmed in a park near my home, coincidentally near where I was mugged and a bike stolen from me.

Back to Wise Guys, it has big names involved: Danny De Vito and Joe Piscapo star and several other big stars have big roles. I watched Saturday Night Live when this movie came out and liked Piscapo and Eddie Murphy playing off each other. Sadly, I don’t think I laughed at any of its jokes. It didn’t make me reflect on life.

Common Sense (the first draft), by Joshua Spodek: Copying from my post yesterday:

Several sections remain unfinished, but I finished the very hard parts. The remaining parts need writing, but not figuring out composition and how they work.

I finished enough to send what I finished to an editor at a publisher.

I don’t remember when I started writing it, rather I didn’t start on a particular day, but I think I started getting more serious about a year ago. It started because I kept sharing a similar thought in conversation with several people and they responded positively. Since I said something similar so many times, I thought writing would be simple compared to past books. Instead, it became an intense journey.

I’m pleasantly surprised at how much it prompted me to learn about myself and the world.

More updates soon. I can’t wait to share more about it. I believe it will become important.

• ← Finished the first draft of my next book
• 844: Maya Lilly, part 1: Effective Storytelling and Producing The Years Project →