Book notes #9 — How to Win Friends and Influence People
A continuation of concise book reviews, with original context here.
Edit: Nov 29, 2020 — after a few years of doing this, I’ve updated my formatting to this Google Spreadsheet where I’ll log new books plus short reviews and the occasional highlights.
Stream of consciousness review:
I had always assumed that this book was going to be cliche, but after a friend who I trust deeply recommended I pick it up, I decided to finally give it a read.
I was immediately struck by the colloquial nature of the prose. I expected it to read like a stuffy, salesy book but was pleasantly surprised to find it to be very matter-of-fact and actionable. It felt more psychology than sales.
Broken down into a few sets of principles across topics such as “win people to your way of thinking” and “how to change people without giving offense”, I found the advice here to be broad enough in scope that it could apply to any situation but narrow enough to be actionable. I found that many of the concepts laid out in the book were things that I already practice, but had never thought about in a frameworked way. The book taught me to be more aware and intentional about some of the social mannerisms I use to my advantage.
Usually, I find books like this to be a bit drawn out and longer than necessary, but in this case I actually was hoping for a bit more depth. The concepts were easy to understand, but a few more explicit examples of each principle would go a long way in helping solidifying them, though would likely pigeonhole their applications a bit.
Overall, this is a classic read that shouldn’t take more than 1–2 days to get through. You’ll walk away with a new set of principles in your war chest, but it will remain up to you to be thoughtful about how and when you apply them.
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No raw highlights this time (thanks, Audible) but this article breaks down the main points succinctly and this one goes a bit more in depth and includes nice infographics like this one:
