Quick Book Review: Anti-Fragile: Things that gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written an excellent, insightful and interesting book that could have easily been a quarter of the length.
The central premise of the book is that there are things that are fragile, robust and antifragile. Our society is increasingly built on fragility and complexity. This complexity is going to bite us in the ass, though Black Swans or as we called it recently Covid 19)
There is a huge amount of well-reasoned debate in this book. Excellent thinking, in fact.
This is a good book. Interesting, full of wisdom. It's just too long.
Of course, I am doing the book down here a little. I think I just was not in the mood for a book of this length and depth, so it felt like a struggle to finish. However, finishing was rewarding and I did learn a few things along the way.
Key Learning Points
- Some things thrive in chaos and disorder: think Russia's foreign policy or instability becomes training, e.g. firefighters are better firefighters when there are fires to fight. Yes, I just wrote that.
- Efficiency is fragile: Aiming for perfect efficiency removes capacity for adaptation. e.g. Just In Time manufacturing was hit hard by Covid.
- Skin in the game matters: People who avoid the downsides of their decisions make systems fragile
- Position over prediction: Be ready for changes and events, do not waste time predicting them.
- Life gets better by removing the bad than improving the good. For example, removing toxic drinking habits helps more than finding the perfect hangover cure.
Overall
That said, the core message resonates. Focus and build your life, business and career around antifragile principles. Build simplicity, diversity and adaptability into capacity into ones life.
You can read Anti-Fragile here.