Insider Fix emails have been providing thousands of my readers with three problem-solving fixes for a couple of months now and allowing them to harvest the benefits of my 1 + 1 + 1 = 10x formula. I hope by sending you this newsletter I can help shift your focus from reactive to proactive and ultimately help you grow both personally and professionally. Enjoy.
So many books, so little time.
I have a confession. I’m an addict.
I’m addicted to book-reading, but I can’t squeeze enough of it into my day.
It’s a problem.
I have a running list of books that I need to get to, and all are in the “as soon as possible” category. They’re all non-fiction – mostly business books, productivity books, personal development books, with a healthy smattering of biographies and history. They are books from Bill Gates’ list and Inc. and Amazon and NYT bestseller lists. They are recommendations from my favorite podcasts and from people I admire.
It’s not a horrible addiction, I suppose, but I barely make a dent, and I keep hearing about them, so I have book-FOMO all the time.
Here’s the solution that’s helped me tremendously these last few years: book summaries.
I swear there is a book summary for every book on my list and probably yours, too. Try it. Google “summary of [title] by [author]” and see what comes up.
For book-reading-purists, this will be controversial. It’s not the same as reading the book on your own terms, and you’re relying on other people’s interpretations, which may be incorrect or sloppy. Here is my response to the purists:
- Whatever.
- You can always read the whole book later.
- What are you trying to accomplish? If your goal is to get the main ideas, motivations, supporting arguments and basic logic, summaries will provide you these insights, especially if you read more than one summary from multiple sources. (For more on this, check out How to read a book).
I recently read summaries of Deep Work by Cal Newport and Atomic Habits by James Clear. I then took my own notes from those summaries. These book summaries have been extremely helpful, actionable and practical to me already, all at a fraction of the time it would take me to read the books.
Where do I find great summaries? First, just Google a title. You’ll find a ton of free summary sources. The best ones come from other authors I really admire, like Derek Sivers and James Clear. Second, consider paid subscriptions like Scribd, Blinkist, FourMinuteBooks.
How to be happy . . .
Who wants to calibrate their happiness? (Who doesn’t!) Here are two interesting things I read this week on the topic:
- 100+ Hacks for Boosting Your Happiness Chemicals
- Or, for a shorter version, check out this Infographic called “Getting your daily D.O.S.E. of Happiness”
- Speaking of being ok, do you know why we say “Ok”? You say it a hundred times a day; you should know where it came from. (Thanks Ann Handley!).
Hey folks:
I really hope you enjoy these newsletters. I do enjoy writing them.
There are a couple of other things we’ve been working on that we’re really excited about:
- This week we started rolling out a limited series of our Best.Podcast.Ever called “My Colossal Failure”. These are short episodes with my favorite entrepreneurs, telling the stories of their biggest failures and challenges and how they bounced. Here’s the first one with Aaron Grossman from Talent Launch and Alliance Solutions Group. He’s got a few doozies.
- Stay tuned this week for a big announcement about a new company we have created to help middle-market companies grow. Make sure you’re following our firm on social media to be the first to hear about it.
- A giant congratulations to Gene Friedman and Max Julian, who became partners at the firm this week, and to Cassie Pinkerton, our first full-time Director of Marketing.
- We are growing and hiring, so if you know great people who want to work in a great environment, send them our way. Here’s our hiring page.
And please, if you have feedback about The Fix or anything else you want to share with us, please send an e-mail to [email protected].
Thanks!
– Alex Gertsburg, Esq.
Like school on a Sunday . . .
Many of our clients are scared to death of class action lawsuits. I get it. They’re pretty scary. They purport to have the biggest exposure risks in terms of attorney’s fees (yours and the plaintiff’s) and damages. They are expensive and distracting and stressful, even more so than ordinary litigation.
As a general matter, class action waivers are often enforceable in commercials contracts. Courts may generally ask whether the state or federal legislature sought to protect a party’s right to proceed as a class (very rare) and will then ask whether the particular waiver provision in the contract, along with the conduct of the parties, was procedurally or substantively unconscionable and/or oppressive to the party wishing to proceed as a class. Unconscionability is a fact-specific analysis, but will ask whether there were, for example, grossly unequal bargaining positions (generally two business parties are considered equal), whether there were high-pressure sales tactics, and whether the language is buried in boilerplate, among others.
Here’s language we typically use, if in conjunction with an arbitration agreement (shown here for illustrative purposes only):
- Intent of the Agreement. It is the intent of Parties to resolve all disputes, claims, and any other matters arising out of or relating to this agreement by binding private arbitration in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement. The Parties understand that by entering into this Agreement THEY ARE GIVING UP THE RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL OR TO FILE A LAWSUIT IN COURT AGAINST THE OTHER , AND THE RIGHT TO BRING A CLASS OR COLLECTIVE ACTION AGAINST THE OTHER IN COURT OR IN ARBITRATION, regarding any claims covered by this Agreement.
***
- Waiver of Class Action and Representative Action Claims. Except as otherwise required under applicable law, the parties expressly intend and agree that:
(a) class and collective action procedures shall not be asserted and will not apply in any arbitration pursuant to this Agreement;
(b) each party will not assert class or collective claims against the other in court, in arbitration, or otherwise;
(c) each party shall only submit their own individual claims in arbitration and will not seek to represent the interests of any other person;
(d) any claims by a party will not be joined, consolidated, or heard together with the claims of any other person or party and
(e) no decision or arbitral award determining an issue with a similarly situated person or party shall have any preclusive effect in any arbitration between the Parties, and the Arbitrator shall have no authority to give preclusive effect to the issues determined in any arbitration between a party and any other party; and
(f) notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the applicable arbitration rules, and the general grant of authority herein to the arbitrator to determine issues of arbitrability, the arbitrator shall have no jurisdiction or authority:
(i) to compel any class or collective claim, consolidate different arbitration proceedings, or join any other party to an arbitration between the Parties; or
(ii) to determine the enforceability or scope of the class and collective action waiver, which shall be determined by a court of competent jurisdiction; and notwithstanding the severability provision herein, if a court of competent jurisdiction/the arbitrator determines that the class and collective action waiver in this section is unenforceable, and either party has alleged any class or collective action claims, then this entire arbitration agreement shall be deemed null, void, and unenforceable.
It’s a lot of language, but you should definitely speak to your business lawyer about this is a topic. The cost of omission or mistake is significant.
