Boundless Reads #64 — Five #goodreads to Start Your Week

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#1 Solitude: I love the quote from this article on solitude that loneliness is a “failed solitude”. The tone of this article overall is quite sad but worth reading. A quote that made me think:

“It may be that affluence is making things worse. We prize space, privacy and independence, and the richer we get the more of these we can afford, yet their corollary is being alone. Our economy works better if people move around to find work, yet mobility stretches and breaks the bonds of family and community”

I’ve thought a lot about this as I get older and see my friends get rid of roommates and move into more lavish apartments or houses further away from close friends and family. Do I know what an alternative is? No, but I’d be curious if people have seen better models that the $3,000 a month WeLive bunks.

#2 Free Speech: Vox posted an analysis showing that people are becoming more permissive of ideas and free speech, however, heterodox academy argues that the picture if more complicated. Like many things – it's not black or white. If you want clean cut answers, head to cable news.

#3 Hoops: This profile of Geno Auriemma, head coach of the greatest basketball team of all time (okay, I’m biased), is driven by deep insecurity towards perfection. Judging by the transformations many of his former players experienced in playing for him and how he combines perfectionism with compassion, I wonder if this is the type of leader may want to “play” for. It seems this type of personality may work well in sports, where many players seek transcendence but may be completely destructive in the business world...

#4 Ichiro: While Geno’s calm and loving family life seems to balance out his neuroticism, this article on Ichiro offers no glimmer of happiness. Ichiro comes off as a robot engineered by his father to do only one thing: play baseball. Approaching the end of his career (or is he?), one gets a glimpse of the loss of meaning someone like him will have to deal with as he manages that transition.

#5 Meaningful Work: Fascinating research on what drives meaning at work. Perhaps the most profound thing was what they did not find – that managers have nothing to do with it: “our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness.”

Also not surprising was the fact that people “found their work creative, absorbing, and interesting, tended to perceive their work as more meaningful than others.”

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