If I was asked to boil the book down to two messages, it would be this:

• Choose and live your personal objectives based on principles (Independence, habits 1-3)
• Serve others to create higher value for everyone (Interdependence, habits 4-6)

Here are the habits:

1. Be proactive ― Discover that you are free to choose and how to react. Focus on what is inside your circle of influence. You'll expand it later. Begin to understand that you should build production capacity (PC), not only production (P).
2. Begin with the end in mind ― What do you want to be remembered for? Write a personal mission statement, including all/most of the roles you perform. Recognize where your center is now, looking into security, guidance, power and wisdom. Visualise and affirm your mission.
3. Put first things first ― Don't forget doing what matters most (the quadrant of important, but non-urgent tasks). In fact, plan your week and prioritise these tasks. Say no to others, so you make room. Delegate, but to stewards, not gofers.
4. Think win-win ― It sounds logical, but most of us are actually stuck in (I)win-(you)lose or (I)lose-(you)win thinking. Win-win takes empathy, an abundance mindset and courage. Go for win-win or for No Deal. Specify results (not methods).
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood ― Practice empathic listening with a sincere desire to understand (mirroring without the desire is manipulation), setting autobiographic interpretations aside. Your negotiations will have the right order: ethos (-> credibility), pathos (-> empathy), then logos (-> your reasoning).
6. Synergize ― Win-win (habit 4) can lead to high-value solutions, but you need to find them in a creative process. Value the differences (for which you need habit 5).
7. Sharpen the saw ― Working on yourself matters (give this attention in habit 3). Four dimensions: Physical, mental, social and spiritual. As we practice all habits, we continuously cycle through learning, comitting and doing (this really sounds like the Lean Startup approach).

What I did / want to do:

• I wrote a first draft for a personal mission statement.
• Since two months, I'm practicing weekly planning.
• I want to practice thoroughly understanding somebody's position first before mine comes in.
• In my relationships, I want to develop a practice of servitude, from a strong & grounded center.

It is a long road, as it begins with & is based on principles.

Habits take time to learn. My week planning needed two months of practice to even begin to see how I can make it more useful (limit goals, check back mid-week, evaluate & reflect). My personal mission statement is not convincing me yet.

But somehow I'm still on it and I believe in the approach.

Now Mr. Fitzpatrick is telling me that large parts of these conversations were in vein and even misleading. He is talking about the parts of conversations where we make each other feel good ― you know, those friendly chit-chat moments. Instead of validating my ideas and services, my conversation partners were giving me meaningless "fluffy" compliments ― just like my mom would when I tell her about an idea of mine (hence the "Mom Test"):

You're great, tell me more later!

Well, he has a point. What's important is to learn from potential customers. Be casual, but inquire past the fluffy compliments and the meaningless complaints about problems they would never actually pay for to get resolved. A meeting is a success if and only if you either learned something valuable from them, or if you got a clear commitment or advancement. These conversations are also not random, they are a tool for keeping all eyes on what matters most: In a startup, all founders need to be involved in this learning. The three big questions need to be constantly addressed.

Learning from customers is the pure focus of this little book. I like that Fitzpatrick stresses how one should not put off building and measuring (the other two steps in the lean cycle), either. Get to it, come ever closer.

The book has really good examples of conversations, most of them sounding nice at first, but being mostly a waste of time. I can see why everyone in the entrpreneurial scene recommends it. I do, too.

How I'm using it

Here are some points to make on what the /e/+LineageOS approach is and how I'm using it:

• You don't need an /e/ account. It's only a service they offer, should some peple like to backup mails and contacts between phones or computers. I have Nextcloud for that.
• The /e/ foundation added the MagicEarth app, so there is some decent Navigation based on OpenStreetMaps data. I have to say it works quite well!
• /e/ comes with their own app store, which I like. It has apks from popular non-free apps, should you want/need them, like Whatsapp or Netflix. The source for these apk files is cleanapks.org. That is still a hot topic in the free software world. You can install other stores of course, like FDroid (completely free) or Aurora (niche apps from Play Store). Updating apps works well in all of those.
• They don't give you too much control over what's on your home screen (app launchers, widgets). You can't delete the standard ones, so you have less space for the ones you care about. The solution is pretty cool, once you know it: You can install a different Launcher. I used Launcher<3. Now I have space for the two widgets I love: AgendaWidget (installable from the app store) and TaskWidget (comes with openTasks).
• The old gang for supporting my Nextcloud integration on Android is working better each time I set up a phone: Nextcloud app + DAVx5 + ICSx5 + OpenTasks
• Other notable base necesseties, while we're at it: AnySoftKey, KeepassXC, WebTube

What is the future for /e/? Apparently, they're working on creating a more aligned Look&Feel, so that standard apps they offer look more alike. I'd like that. For example, the Mail app is a fork of K-9, but got a clean modern look. However, the version of the fork is rather outdated, I hope they catch up.
 

Drawbacks

I don't want to leave the impression that not going with the mainstream is all roses. It is actually a small sacrifice - next to doing your own OS installation (which is actually not really hard but it will take you at least an hour, and then you start with installing and configuring apps).

Here is a list of annoyances I have so far:

• Typing with auto- correction is okay but I know it's a bit worse than cutting edge. More mistakes slip in.

• Webtube's full-screen mode is not full screen.

• MicroG keeps crashing and I don't know what that means for my OS functionality

• My phone would like to connect to my ChromeCast but it can't.

• Text-to-speech is a while away but somebody's working on it.

Actually, all or most of these issues are being worked on. It's a matter of time.

Living somewhat free of giant corporations means you'll be living in the slight past. Maybe two or three years beind. It's really not that bad, but I can see that not everyone feels like they can do it.

Trust

A big issue in this whole story, and also a complex one, is trust ? we are here because we don't trust Google or Apple to be good stewards of all our data for all time. But we can't do it alone. We have to trust the makers of our alternative tooling to some degree, as well. In this situation, I am putting various levels of trust in the makers of LineageOS, the /e/ foundation and (by extension) cleanapk.org. But I'm also trusting app makers like the guys at KeepassXC. Some of the trust here is easier to maintain with the monopolists ? we're trusting Google and Apple (at the moment) to have a good eye on the security aspect of their app store.

It's complicated.

[1]  /e/ uses MicroG as a free and open-source replacement for Google Play Services, and Mozilla Location Service for geolocation. One of their goals is to support beign Google-free for non-technical users. They even offer smartphones (like the FP3) pre-installed for sale.

1. Philosophy of Mind:
   • What is conscious subjective thought?
   • What is intelligence?
   • What is the role of our inner monologue in both subjective experience and intelligence?
2. Marine Biology:
   • How does Octopus intelligence work, when they have half their neurons in their arms?
   • How do they create movie-like coloured displays on their skin, and why, if they don't seem to be able to see in colour?
   • Why do Octopus only live between two and four years, given their high complexity?
3. Theory of Evolution:
   • How did inner nervous activity in organisms evolve in the oceans, hundreds of millions of years ago?
   • Did language evolve from an inner feedback loop for control signals?
   • How often has higher intelligence been created during evolution independently?
   • How crucial is social life for intelligence, seeing the octopus don't seem to have too much of it?

There are stories from diving expeditions to a magical Octopus place off the coast of Australia mixed in between all of these deep pondering, making the book quite captivating.

What is also captivating is that during the research for this book, Godfrey-Smith could follow the latest advancements in Octopus research. For instance, the Octopus genome was sequenced in 2015, which back-dated the evolution of intelligence in Octopus and Cuttlefish (it happened independently even within their evolutionary branch!). Also, theories about the ability of the Octopus skin to produce colours were advanced just a few years ago.

This is science journalism at its finest.

• Die Wettervorhersage deuten können (Was heisst X% Regenwahrscheinlichkeit eigentlich?)
• Defensives Entscheiden erkennen und meiden.
• Heuristiken (Faustregeln) für die Entscheidungsfindung schätzen lernen.
• Verstehen, was Testresultate (z.B. ein positiver HIV-Befund oder Down-Syndrom Früherkennung) wirklich bedeuten.
• Wahrscheinlicheiten (z.B. für den Sinn von Krebsvoruntersuchungen) in natürliche Häufigkeiten (x von 100) umwandeln, und auch visuelle Darstellungen benutzen ― probate Mittel, um sie zu durchdringen.
• Wissen, dass auch Experten mit Doktortiteln Wahrscheinlichkeiten nicht verstehen.

Das ist sehr nützliches Wissen!

Ich denke, das Buch hätte kürzer sein können, aber Gigerenzer hat auch noch andere, weniger nützliche (aber dennoch unterhaltsame) Dinge über Banker, Ärzte und Liebende zu sagen. Und er hat noch ein Kapitel für seinen Wunsch, Riskiokompetenz als Schulfach einzuführen.

Why are you here?

Do you fear death?

Are you fulfilled?

Then the waitress and the chef basically chat with you about these questions. Well, mostly the first one. It can be quite thought-provoking at some points, if you are ready to search for some more focus in what you do during each day. It mostly cricles around the question if you should start asking yourself what you purpose for existing (PFE) is (because once you do, it's hard to go back!).

While you'll find that many people report this book helped them instigate a major change in their lives, I believe this book can also be dangerous. Strelecky has some underlying hypotheses here:

• Everybody can find their PFE.
• As a consequence, if they can't, it's their own fault for not searching well.
• Advertising makes us sick and unhappy, but if your PFE is doing advertising, you should go for it.
• Saving money for your future from work you don't particularly enjoy is a sucker's path.

These hypotheses are ridiculous. Next to books like Herbstmilch, but also given just any general insight into how different live stories come to be (think of sicknesses, family support, poverty and so on), it does seem to be a good idea to treat this book with caution when reading. It could make you feel worse and send you down a path that actually leads away from the happiness which is possible for you.

Other people are more harsh in their opinion :)

Selbst bei so interessanten Bräuchen wie dem gemeinschaftlichen Dreschen der örtlichen Felder gibt Wimschneider den entscheidenden extra Hinweis: Nur wer komplett im Dorf integriert ist, ist dabei im Dreschprogramm. Und das kann schon mal drei Generationen dauern.

Das Leben war vor allem Arbeit. Für persönliche Lebenswegentscheidungen kkein Platz. Auch nicht für liebevolle Zeit mit Kleinkindern.

Wimschneider ist sehr stolz, dass sie auch immer ihr Los akzeptiert hat, ohne zu murren. Die Liebe ihres Mannes und ihrer Kinder, der wirtschafliche Erfolg und der Neid der anderen geben ihr Recht. Das klingt mir etwas einfach aber so sind halt die Autobiographien ...

Eine Hauptfigur ist der berühmte chilenische Dichter Pablo Neruda, der in einem Fischerdorf voller Analphabeten seiner Arbeit nachgeht, bevor er von Allende als Diplomat nach Paris gesandt wird. Es geht viel um Liebe, aber auch viel um Politik. Interessanter Mix.

Interessant ist die Lektüre vielleicht auch in einem moderneren Kontext, wo Nerudas skrupelloses Verhältnis zu Frauen neu diskutiert wird.