skills and books for action and perspective
See our Meetup pages for scheduled skill share and book club events.
The general purpose of these events is for personal development and empowerment — to share skills, books, and conversations that help us live better lives and reach our goals.
A specific purpose of these events is to help us build our community and make progress on our big community projects. Currently, our focus is on our youth project.
highly recommended books
Here are two books that are highly recommended and critical for a deeper understanding of both the nature of our community and our youth project. (By the way, we are not dogmatic about these books and are always open to finding new information that could add to or overturn the information and conclusions in these books.)
- Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg
- Full title (3rd edition, 2015) — Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, 3rd Edition
- This book explains a powerful set of concepts and strategies for communicating more effectively, in a way that allows people to truly hear each other, build mutual empathy, and problem-solve to find solutions that get everyone’s needs met. In the context of our youth project, these strategies empower adults to drastically reduce or eliminate the amount of coercion they use when problem-solving with young people while at the same time get better at meeting the adults’ needs as well as the needs of younger people.
- Free to Learn, by Peter Gray
- Full title (1st edition, 2013) — Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
- This book explains why freedom and responsibility are critical parts of education and successful, satisfying living for young people. It explains some of the principles for self-directed education that have been discovered by investigating instances of education that go against the mainstream approaches and “common sense” but that yield equivalent or much better long-term and short-term results.
additional recommended books
Other books that our members have found to be influential include the following:
- Getting Things Done, by David Allen
- Full title (2nd edition, 2015) — Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (an all-new updated edition), by David Allen and James Fallows
- Full title (1st edition, 2002) — Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- This book explains how applying common sense organizational techniques in a radically comprehensive way can help to decrease stress and increase productivity and the ability to get to more ambitious or fun activities and projects. (We recommend the first edition; we are not certain about the second edition.)
more books
After reading the highly recommended books, let’s share ideas for more books to read and discuss. There is a wealth of incredible wisdom out there, but we have to put some effort into accessing it and elevating it to greater awareness in our lives and society.
