![[Pasted image 20231209083959.png]] I recently finished [Resilience By Design](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Resilience+By+Design:+How+to+Survive+and+Thrive+in+a+Complex+and+Turbulent+World-p-9781119794981?ref=garrensmith.com) by Ian Snape and Mike Weeks. It is an intense book and requires a large amount of resilience to get through... Maybe that is the first lesson young padawan. The book is all about developing a high level of resilience and performance in an uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment. Which pretty much sums up modern life. I can't say I enjoyed this book, it had interesting sections, but the writing style and layout of the book made this a hard book to enjoy. The book has a lot of graphics and visuals to help explain the topics. A lot of the graphics didn't feel needed or particularly relevant. I think the idea is that you can pick up the book and start reading from anywhere and you will immediately learn something. It has 13 chapters on different aspects of building resilience covering topics like thinking, sensemaking, perspective, creating flow and getting enough rest. The chapter on Thinking was very insightful, it covered the different areas in our body - head, heart and gut - where we get our thoughts and decision-making from. The chapter on Intention takes the idea of [SMART goals](https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-write-smart-goals?ref=garrensmith.com) and extends it further and makes it SMARTER. E is for ecology which analyses if the outcome is worth all the effort. And R is for risk. As a rock climber, there is always talk about getting into [FLOW](https://www.climbing.com/skills/climbing-flow-state/?ref=garrensmith.com) to climb better and to be at your best. It is a hard topic to fully understand. The chapter on flow helped me get a better handle on this topic, it looked at the power of flow, the risks, what is happening in your brain and games to help get into the flow. Overall, it was a slog to get through. But I have a lot of notes in my [second brain](https://www.garrensmith.com/i-have-a-second-brain/) that I refer back to and it sits on my bookshelf where every once in awhile when I walk past it I'm still encouraged to pick it up and page through it. So I'm keeping it. happy reading.... 📚