What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches:Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better.Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first.Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice.Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve.Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

    Committed to sharing what the scientific community already knew about self-control, McGonigal created a course called "The Science of Willpower" for Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. The course was an instant hit and spawned the hugely successful Psychology Today blog with the same name.Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, McGonigal's book explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. Readers will learn:Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are healthier, happier, have more satisfying relationships, and make more money. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Temptation and stress hijack the brain's systems of self-control, and that the brain can be trained for greater willpower.In the groundbreaking tradition of Getting Things Done, The Willpower Instinct combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from a healthier life to more patient parenting, from greater productivity at work to finally finishing the basement.

    "If we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes? Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake."This book gives detailed instructions for dream yoga, including foundational practices done during the day. In the Tibetan tradition, the ability to dream lucidly is not an end in itself, rather it provides and additional context in which one can engage in advanced and effective practices to achieve liberation.Dream yoga is followed by sleep yoga, also known as the yoga of clear light. It is a more advanced practice, similar to the most secret Tibetan practices. The goal is to remain aware during deep sleep when the gross conceptual mind and the operation of the senses cease. Most Westerners do not even consider this depth of awareness a possibility, yet it is well known in Tibetan Buddhist and Bon spiritual traditions.The result of these practices is greater happiness and freedom in both our waking and dreaming states. The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep imparts powerful methods for progressing along the path to liberation.

    As newly appointed captain of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, he was responsible for more than a hundred sailors, deep in the sea. In this high-stress environment, where there is no margin for error, it was crucial his men did their job and did it well.But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention in the fleet. Marquet acted like any other captain until, one day, he unknowingly gave an impossible order, and his crew tried to follow it anyway. When he asked why the order wasn't challenged, the answer was "Because you told me to." Marquet realized he was leading in a culture of followers, and they were all in danger unless they fundamentally changed the way they did things. That's when Marquet took matters into his own hands and pushed for leadership at every level. Turn the Ship Around! is the true story of how the Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet by challenging the U.S. Navy's traditional leader-follower approach. Struggling against his own instincts to take control, he instead achieved the vastly more powerful model of giving control. Before long, each member of Marquet's crew became a leader and assumed responsibility for everything he did, from clerical tasks to crucial combat decisions. The crew became fully engaged, contributing their full intellectual capacity every day, and the Santa Fe started winning awards and promoting a highly disproportionate number of officers to submarine command.No matter your business or position, you can apply Marquet's radical guidelines to turn your own ship around. The payoff: a workplace where everyone around you is taking responsibility for their actions, where people are healthier and happier, where everyone is a leader.

     In The Love Between Us, Yung Pueblo describes how intense emotions accumulate in our subconscious and condition us to act and react in certain ways. In his characteristically spare, poetic style, he guides readers through the excavation and release of the past that’s required for growth.

      Bruce Feiler has long been writing about the stories that give our lives meaning. Recently he began to notice a new pattern: our old stories, with their predictable plot points along linear paths, no longer hold true. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. Yet many people feel overwhelmed by this change. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected; that we’re living life out of order.   Galvanized by a personal crisis and family emergency, Feiler set out on what became an epic journey to harvest American stories and see what he could learn from them. He crisscrossed the country, collecting hundreds of life stories from a breathtaking range of Americans in all 50 states. He then sifted through and coded these stories, building a massive database of patterns and takeaways that can help all of us live better.   LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS introduces the fresh, pressing vision of the nonlinear life, in which personal disruptions and lifequakes are becoming more plentiful, nontraditional life shapes are becoming the norm, and each of us has the opportunity to write our own story. Drawing on an extraordinary trove of insights, Feiler offers a powerful, new transition toolkit with original strategies for coping with the difficult, painful, or unsettling times of life.   From a master storyteller with a timely message, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change in their lives and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.

    Despite the timeless wisdom of his teachings, many consider the book difficult to understand and daunting to read. In Don’t Be a Jerk, Zen priest and bestselling author Brad Warner, through accessible paraphrasing and incisive commentary, applies Dogen’s teachings to modern times. While entertaining and sometimes irreverent, Warner is also an astute scholar who sees in Dogen very modern psychological concepts, as well as insights on such topics as feminism and reincarnation. Warner even shows that Dogen offered a “Middle Way” in the currently raging debate between science and religion. For curious readers worried that Dogen’s teachings are too philosophically opaque, Don’t Be a Jerk is hilarious, understandable, and wise.

    The concepts and practices of Buddhism, says Batchelor, are not something to believe in but something to do—and as he explains clearly and compellingly, it is a practice that we can engage in, regardless of our background or beliefs, as we live every day on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

    Our ancestors crossed the Alps in animal skins and colonized the New World in loin cloths. They evaded predators and built civilizations with just their raw brainpower and inner grit. But things have changed and now comfort is king. Today we live in the thrall of constant climate control and exercise only when our office schedules permit. The technologies that we use to make us comfortable are so all-encompassing that they sever the biological link to a changing environment. Now we hate the cold and the heat. We suffer from autoimmune diseases. And many of us are chronically overweight. Most of us don't even realize that natural variation—sweating and shivering—is actually good for us. What Doesn't Kill Us uncovers how just about anyone can reclaim a measure of our species' evolutionary strength by tapping into the things that feel uncomfortable. When we slightly reimagine how our body fits into the world, we can condition ourselves to find resilience in unfamiliar environments. The feeling that something is missing from our daily routines is growing and has spawned a movement. Every year, millions of people forgo traditional gyms and push the limits of human endurance by doing boot camp style workouts in raw conditions. These extreme athletes train in CrossFit boxes, compete in Tough Mudders and challenge themselves in Spartan races. They are connecting with their environment and, whether they realize it or not, are changing their bodies. No one exemplifies this better than Dutch fitness guru Wim Hof, whose remarkable ability to control his body temperature in extreme cold has sparked a whirlwind of scientific study. Because of him, scientists in the United States and Europe are just beginning to understand how cold adaptation might help combat autoimmune diseases and chronic pains and, in some cases, even reverse diabetes. Award winning investigative journalist, Scott Carney dives into the fundamental philosophy at the root of this movement in three interlocking narratives. His own journey culminates in a record bending 28-hour climb up to the snowy peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro wearing nothing but a pair of running shorts and sneakers.

    Every aircraft is equipped with an almost indestructible black box. When there is an accident, the box is opened, the data is analyzed, and the reason for the accident excavated. This ensures that procedures are adapted so that the same mistake doesn’t happen again. With this method, the industry has created an astonishing safety record.For pilots working in a safety-critical industry, getting it wrong can have deadly consequences. But most of us have a relationship with failure that impedes progress, halts innovation, and damages our lives. We don’t acknowledge it or learn from it —though we often think we do.Moving from anthropology to psychology and from history to complexity theory, Matthew Syed explains why even when we think we have 20/20 hindsight, our vision’s still fuzzy. He offers a radical new idea: that the most important determinant of success in any field, whether sports, business, or life, is an acknowledgment of failure and a willingness to engage with it. This is how we learn, progress and excel. This approach explains everything from biological evolution and the efficiency of markets to the success of the Mercedes F1 team and the mindset of David Beckham.Using a cornucopia of interviews, gripping stories, and sharp-edged science, Syed explores the intimate relationship between failure and success, and shows why we need to transport black box thinking into our own lives. If we wish to unleash our potential, we must diagnose and break free of our failures. Part manifesto for change, part intellectual adventure, this groundbreaking book reveals how to do both.