April 23 is a symbolic date for world literature. On this day in 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega died. In addition, it is also the date of birth and death of other famous writers, such as Maurice Druon, Haldor K. Laksness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pula and Manuel Mejia Vallejo.
In 1995, the UNESCO General Conference in Paris decided that 23 April should be a day to pay tribute to the world’s books and authors and encourage everyone to discover the joy of reading. Therefore, it established World Book and Copyright Day, also known as World Book Day.
In 2020, with the sudden arrival of COVID-19, countries, companies and individuals are facing new challenges from both internal and external sources. At this time, we need more through reading to ensure rational, calm, objective, I hope every student can learn from reading nutrition, will read, read good books.
On this special day of world Book Day, we have selected 23 books from the internal reading list of Meituan Technology team. We have previously published a list of must-read books for technical people, but today’s list covers non-technical areas such as general ability (6 books), economic management (6 books), philosophy and history (8 books), and biographies (3 books), which are also valuable. I hope every student can stick to reading and put what he has learned into practice.
General ability category: 6 books
Recommended reasons:
Dalio is the founder of the famous hedge fund Bridgewater. His book “Principles” tells a lot about the principles of life and work. I don’t know how many I really understand, but just one of them is enough to give a lot of thought.
For example, in the management of the company, there is such a passage: “It is not an autocratic organization, which is led by me and followed by others; It’s not a democratic institution where everyone has an equal vote; It is a creative meritocracy that encourages deliberate disagreement, analysing and weighing different people’s views against their relative merits.” This is good for team management. Our goal is to bring out everyone’s strengths and achieve the ultimate creative excellence. We need to learn from the achievements and methods of others to actively think about how we do and should think in order to continue to succeed.
Recommended reasons:
This is a great book for professional reading. For two years it had been squatting in a corner, huddled in a pile of dusty books. Due to circumstances, I saw it when I was cleaning my room during the epidemic. I patted the title page and started my systematic thinking journey.
The world is messy and systematic, depending on how we read it and understand it. Things are related to each other in space and change in time, and there is a complex mapping relationship between the law of appearance and the internal logic. “Seeing leopard through a tube” and “departmentalism” often influence our thinking, which are the “constraints” that affect the correct cognition and decision-making of things. How to break the spell? The book begins with a series of easy to understand and vivid cases, which provide a set of tools for systematic thinking. How to establish a holistic, dynamic and continuous thinking mode, and how to control complexity in complex systems. I hope I can bring some thinking and harvest to more students.
Recommended reasons:
This book introduces the meaning and responsibilities of the role of “coach”, and the one that struck me the most cognitively was “Performance = Ability-interference”. Distractions affect knowledge, belief, enthusiasm, focus, and thus suppress performance. Most of the time we do not do too little, but do too much, too much of a good thing. After learning about this new performance formula, I realized that my own and my team’s performance should be improved by focusing on eliminating distractions. There are many sources of disruption that affect individuals and the “top, bottom, left and right” of the team. As a leader, be able to help the team eliminate distractions as much as possible.
And to the individual, also need to improve anti-interference ability. Such as book golf example, player at the time of practice and competition, with the same ball handling performance is different, can take part in the game show contestant background there is no problem, just was played by excessive care about action standard, instead of too much care about gain and loss influence the final performance. The key to eliminating distractions is focus. Focus comes from an inside-out GROW (goal, status, plan, action) conversation, which is an effective way for leaders to take on the role of coach.
Recommended reasons:
It has always been a big challenge for technologists to hone their presentation skills and make technology sharing more lively and interesting. It was generally considered that Jobs’ speech was very charming and that Jobs would be a good speaker and communicator. But when you read the book, you’ll find a very different Steve Jobs. It turned out that Jobs was actually “terrible at presentations,” or that Jobs was only good at well-prepared presentations. This book will teach you how to design your presentation as you would a play, how to craft a story, create an experience, know what your audience wants to hear, dress up numbers and, most importantly, “how to rehearse.”
If you can grasp the essence of this book, even a person who is not good at public speaking may be able to deliver a well-prepared speech. Of course, improvisation is a different story. In addition, if you read it together with “Talk Like TED” written by the same author, you will get a bigger harvest.
Recommended reasons:
We must not only find work we love, but build a life we love. A career is a marathon that lasts at least 45 years. This book introduces visionary thinking, three career stages, and how to navigate the conflict between work and life. We should take more action, worry less, and make mid – and long-term career thinking and career planning in advance. If we take a “farsighted” view of the immediate impact and difficulties, it is not worth mentioning at all. With “foresight” thinking, long-term patience, 30 kilometers a day.
This book is about seeking truth from facts and avoiding black and white, emotional and extreme views of the world.
What impressed me most in the book:
- Be especially wary of the media and activists, whose professional nature means they rely on extreme and negative cases to attract more attention.
- Don’t put too much faith in out-of-bounds experts, they have no greater credibility outside of their field, and they often talk nonsense because of their confidence. According to the book: “Having a high IQ, being good at math, being highly educated or even winning a Nobel Prize does not guarantee a better view of the world.”
Economic management: 6 books
Recommended reasons:
Sun Tzu’s art of War was first introduced to me when I read a comic book in primary school. After graduating from college and working in classical Chinese, I recently bought a new generation of comic books for my children.
Meituan is a company that attaches great importance to industry insight and strategic approach. For every Leader, once you understand the strategy, when you go out, you may find that compared with many peers in the industry, you can see a bigger sky. Therefore, every student working in Meituan should be calm and learn the advantages of the company by heart.
Recommended reasons:
This management book is perfect for mid-level technical managers and is worth rereading. Not only because the author has strong professional background, but because he has an engineer background and thinking logic, and plain language in particular, its 20 years of management experience are summarized “the law of the production, management, leverage and motivate employees” methods, such as the technology Leader “practice management basics” has a strong guiding significance.
Recommended reasons:
When I first graduated, I wondered how successful people managed their time. In this book, you may find the answer. When I started a family and had kids of my own, I wanted to know how to balance work and family. In this book, Satya Nadella, the third CEO of Microsoft, shares a lot about his relationships with his family and how he makes good decisions at work.
In the book, Nadella provides examples of key points at Microsoft to help you understand the decision-making process. How to empower people at work, how to inspire enthusiasm, how to inspire 120% of their potential. In the book, Nadella offers his own thoughts on how to meet the challenges of an era of artificial intelligence when the future is uncertain. Nadella works and lives with a deep empathy for others, which makes him passionate, mission-driven and infectious. In fact, this book is more like the author’s autobiography, often read often new.
Recommended reasons:
The book is written by Jan Carlson, the former CEO of SAS, and reveals the essence of customer-oriented management based on his experience in aviation. Customer is the most fundamental, the most active, the most active factor in the market, customer-oriented, in fact, is market-oriented. Seize the customer, occupy the market; Adapt to the customer, to adapt to the market; Develop customers, expand the market. Customer is not only the basis of enterprise survival, but also the source of enterprise growth. Any time a customer makes a connection, no matter how small, with any aspect of a business, it is an opportunity to make an impression. Word of mouth takes a long time to build, but it can be destroyed by a small oversight.
In this book, Jen Carlson lays out the ten principles of critical moments, revealing the essentials of business. As an enterprise leader, to create an environment and platform for employees to give full play to their talents is the fundamental connotation of the healthy development of enterprises. A person is appointed to lead not because he has all the answers or the ability to make all the decisions, but because he knows how to pool the wisdom of others and create the conditions to get the job done. A leader is one who creates the conditions for work to proceed. In addition, leaders must act as “mentors” in many ways, voluntarily spreading the vision and goals of the company to every corner. It is suggested that this book can be combined with “Echelon leadership”.
Recommended reasons:
Many technical managers, including themselves, have more management skills from personal practice, which lack systematic and normative. This book systematically provides guidance for the development of students at all levels from the aspects of work philosophy, time management and work skills. I believe it will be of great help to personal growth and development.
Recommended reasons:
This book makes me understand what economics is about, and also makes me look at what the 7 billion people in the world are doing every day from another Angle, and makes me understand what I should pursue.
This is not a tool book, reading this book will not immediately change our productivity, reading this book may help shape or upgrade our thinking paradigm, as the Structure of Scientific Revolutions says, “when paradigms change, the world changes.” The book has a subtle influence on us. It affects the way we look at the world and the way we understand it. It really affects every decision we make in the future, and the decision affects the final result.
Philosophy and History: 8 books
Recommended reasons:
“Glory and Dream” is a social documentary work in the United States. The author sketched a panoramic picture of American politics, economy, culture and social life in the 40 years from around the inauguration of President Roosevelt in 1932 to watergate incident in 1972 during president Nixon’s term. In the current situation where people are pessimistic about the epidemic, you can refer to the detailed description of the Great Depression in the book, and I believe you will have a profound understanding of the “economic crisis”.
Recommended reasons:
This book is recommended for students who like history. History is composed of characters, and characters are connected by stories. By telling stories one by one, history is more three-dimensional and interesting.
This book tells the history of the Republic of China for 38 years with 300 characters. Neither the three sovereigns and five emperors is sacred, nor zhu li Shi Liu Guo Liang Tang Jin Han Zhou. When it comes to the “Republic of China”, what comes to mind first? Warlord infighting and foreign invasion, resulting in the country broken; Or a large number of masters, in their respective fields are powerful; Or those world of mortals, staged love and hate long. Every civilization’s replacement period, on the one hand, a lot of heroes, on the other hand, a lot of sorrow. Compared with the violent turbulence of the Spring and Autumn Period, the Republic of China is no different. Here is a very big president, Chiang Song kong Chen “four families”, there are C.C. party/constitutional party/juntong, as well as nanyuan, Iron Lion Hutong and other side names, plus the general manager of the joke about, very wonderful!
Recommended reasons:
From the perspective of ancient Greek and Roman culture, Christian doctrine and Germanic warrior culture, the article combs the European civilization vein formed by a variety of mixed origins. The Chinese translation of this book is very smooth and natural, connecting the scattered knowledge of history textbooks, legendary movies, religion and so on in my mind. I also have a clearer understanding of the accident and inevitability of history. History is a mirror. After reading this book, I have some independent judgments about the history of the EU, the UK and the West as a whole. I suggest you use fragmented time such as commuting to read, I believe it will bring you a great harvest.
Recommended reasons:
Aristotle’s view of the world that the earth is at the center of the universe and is static maintained around 1900 until it was overturned and replaced by Newtonian view, which is now being challenged by the rapid development of modern relativity and quantum mechanics. No matter how much evidence there is to support a scientific theory, there is always the possibility that the theory is wrong. Only by constantly exploring and verifying, step by step and challenging the unknown field again and again, can we uncover the black veil that is blindfolded and constantly upgrade and iterate the human civilization.
Recommended reasons:
In the past year, many times because of work, want to pursue the perfect results, want to reach the technical level of that point as soon as possible, but feel very anxious, very agitated, very nervous, as if he tried his whole body strength, but not get, exhausted, nervous.
I came across the book The Power of Now by chance, from which I learned a lot and opened another window of my life. Buddhism pursues Zen, Taoism pursues Tao. Each of us lives in this world, what do we really pursue? This is a question that many people think about for a long time, or many people never think about in their lives.
The author of “The Power of Now” went through many painful periods in her life and finally became enlightened, so she wrote this book in the hope that it could help more people to become enlightened from the negative emotions such as fear and anxiety. When we look at our brains as a bystander, we can see fragments of work, fragments of family, plans for tomorrow, stories of yesterday, and more thoughts. When we focus our attention on the present moment, we can achieve inner peace and joy by turning the thoughts in our mind into thoughts that focus on the present moment.
If you don’t believe me, close your eyes, clear your mind, and listen, smell, and feel. What do you get? I hear the exciting music, smell the spring, feel the warm sunshine. At this moment, I feel I already have a lot, I am happy, happy. Our emotions are often based on past events and desires for the future. But the past is gone and cannot be changed. Learn to let go. Every moment of the present is becoming every moment of the past. To live each moment in the present is to give good memories. The future has not yet arrived. Every moment of the future has arrived in the present. All of the future is the accumulation of every moment of the present. Perhaps, this is another interpretation of Meituan’s value of “long-term patience”.
Recommended reasons:
Master the law, the use of law is the magic weapon to overcome all kinds of problems, taking history as a mirror can let us more calmly face the challenge, into the crisis. The outbreak of pneumonia is a great shock and reconstruction to the global society. Under several crises in human history, countries in different continents and regions also have different changes. In this book, we can see some laws of historical development, not only can we understand more about the logic of the past world, but also can foresee and understand more about the uncertainty of the future.
Recommended reasons:
To put it simply, this book is the collection of wang Yangming’s speeches and treatise in the Ming Dynasty. Judging from the comprehensive contribution of thought and achievements, in the 5,000-year history of China, only Zeng Guofan in the late Qing Dynasty could compete with him, besides Confucius.
Of course, for most of us, we can’t hope for such a high achievement. In fact, it is impossible for anyone to achieve much by copying other people’s theories. The meaning of this book for us is more that as long as we reasonably believe and act earnestly, with a pure heart to face everything, then no matter what waves we encounter, the end of life will not be too bad. To sum up, Chuanxilu cannot be a “magic tool” for most people to ride the wind and waves, but it can certainly serve as a “stabilizer” for the ups and downs of life, adding a precious bit of certainty to the heart in the current fast-changing world.
Recommended reasons:
I’m from last year to begin to contact and learning psychology knowledge, started to read is the attitude change and the social impact, but because there is no learning psychology on the basis of discipline, is difficult to read, especially when the book quoted in different periods of psychologists, some professional term is difficult to understand.
In order to better understand the development of the whole discipline of psychology and the origin of some technical terms, I found a History of Western Psychology. This book systematically describes the origin and development process of various theoretical branches of psychology. After reading it, you can select the theoretical branches you are interested in to read, so that you can not only better understand the theories in the book, but more importantly, you can view the viewpoints in the book more objectively.
In fact, any subject can not leave its history knowledge. “Learners and researchers of any subject should face up to, respect and think deeply about the history of their subject, but should not despise, castrate or misinterpret the history of their subject.” With this basic understanding, no matter what kind of books we read in the future, we should first understand the historical background of the subject, so that we can understand and absorb the essence of each subject more objectively.
Biography: 3 books
Recommended reasons:
Looking for opportunities in adversity and difficulties, gray decision making. In dealing with various contradictions at home and abroad, highlight wisdom. Grandpa Deng’s way of life, as well as his grasp of the historical trend of the old people, is worth learning from our generation.
Recommended reasons:
This book, written by the great scientist Albert Einstein, whom he had the honor to meet during the pandemic, is more of an echo than an influence: “The pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful has always lighted my path and given me the courage to face life cheerfully. Life is meaningless to me without the companionship of like-minded people, without a dedicated exploration of the objective world, a world that is beyond the reach of artistic and scientific research.” The meaning of life is a question worth thinking about, and on this basis, it would be a great pleasure to have like-minded friends.
Recommended reasons:
Zeng Guofan spent his whole life to defend and protect his cherished culture and beliefs. He died on the way of “filling the sky and filling the sea”. Zeng Guofan proved with his life the height that human willpower can reach. It also demonstrates the limits of one’s willpower. In his hopeless effort he had erected a monument in the march of the human spirit that could not but be admired.
“Mr. Zeng Guofan” to our generation of life has a great reference significance, from a little-known, no family background to become the Qing Dynasty Ming Cheng, he has too much wisdom worth learning. From mediocre to transcendent, Mr. Wang can be said to have truly achieved the “first self-discipline” throughout the ages. Do self-reflection and have a clear self-awareness at all times. Merit, virtue, word, Sir He did it all.
If you want to read more books, join the technical team of Meituan, which has a “P2P” library with over 10,000 books!
Mei Tuan Library
Meituan Library has more than 13,000 physical books, 306 ebooks, and O’Reilly Safari English ebooks (more than 40,000 computer technology and management books!). , ACM Library, CNKI, Geek Time and other electronic resources, in order to build a mobile P2P Library around you, in addition to 37 branch libraries distributed in various office areas across the country, there are also popular books contributed by individuals at the workstation for borrowing at any time. I look forward to joining you and learning and growing together.
But reading a book doesn’t mean our “mission” is over. Next, we need to apply the knowledge in the book. Wang Huiwen, co-founder and CTO of Meituan, said in an internal sharing: “Reading is about knowing and doing. It’s one thing to believe in reading books, it’s another thing to believe in what they tell you to do.”
Finally, I hope every student can stick to reading and put what he has learned into practice, so as to become a better self.
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