In Open, Agassi presents his life from when he was a little boy playing tennis in his backyard with his dad, to his very last match @ the US Open. If you’ve read the reviews or heard the man himself talk promote his book, then you’ll know that Open reveals the dirty little secret that Agassi has held secret for his entire career: Agassi hates tennis. You’ll also learn that his dad is a complete wacko, how he was destined to be with Stefi Graf, and how he  likes to “bump” Barbara Streisand in his car.

The book is one of the best autobiographies I’ve read in a long time. It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s touching. Most of all, I think it’s very human. Agassi talks about how his loss to Sampras at the US Open in 95 (?) really gutted him. In fact, every loss, up until the point he met Stefi Graf, was followed by a period of gloom and doom. It reminded me of the times when I came home after losing to one of my friends in tennis or basketball and my mom would say that my face was as dark as rain clouds. Hair loss and aftermath of losing is something Agassi and I share in common, although Agassi does it on a grander scale.

Open is a fun read. With all the rain and the Australian Open on, it’s a perfect time to pick it up.

Surfing has many themes; memoir, business, philosophy, and environmentalism, but it boils down to how Chouinard took his passion and turned it into a $250 million a year company that is one of the most socially/environmentally responsible company ever known to man. If you don’t plan on reading this book, below is a speech by Chouinard that distills Surfing down to an hour.

I’m about 70% through the book and it has resonated quite loudly with me. What I enjoy most about the book is the story of how Patagonia came into existence. It gave me some ideas to mull over, mostly about what direction (industry, role, etc) I really want to head in in the future and the hope that I can create a career path that will allow me to wear sandals to work. The book has also made the issue of corporate responsibility more concrete for me. Before it was just some fluffy idea that I thought companies used as a gimmick to make themselves seem responsible and therefore good in the eyes of the consumer. Now I’m inspired to add  socially/environmentally conscious activities/classes to my bschool experience. The last 30% of the book is about Chouinard’s business philosophies which is interesting, but since I don’t run my own company yet, I’ll probably be skimming through most of it.

There a lot of good nuggets in the book. One nugget that I came across helped me realize something about myself.

I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product line…“

Replace the italicized line with “that probably explains the diversity of my interests” and that would accurately describe me.

Needless to say, I’m giving this book two thumbs up.

For those that check-in via an RSS reader, I added a new widget on the right side of my blog for books that I have read and recommend (and in some cases, don’t recommend). Don’t mind the company that is generating the content (although I do like the company). I’m not looking to monetize my site, I just wanted a spiffy recommendation widget.

At bat right now is Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing, the story of YC and his outdoor clothing company, Patagonia. On deck is Raising the Bar, the story of Clif Bar. In the hole is Open by Andre Agassi. I’m kind of reading Let My People Go Surfing in parallel with Raising the Bar. The two books have a very similar theme: unconventional entrepreneurs that made it big on their own terms. I’m really enjoying the books thus far. Hopefully I won’t get lazy this time around about posting a report for these books; they’ve put some good ideas into my head and I want to capture them before I forget again.

Wednesday felt short, probably because I called it in after I finished my design review. That night, I woke up from a knarley stomachache and stumbled my way to the restroom. Nothing was evacuated, but I noticed that I was sweating as if I had just worked out. I went back to bed and woke up the next morning with my stomach feeling like it was tied up in knots again. To sum up what happened next, I ended up hollering @ TL to get me some water as I laid on my bathroom floor writhing around like a fish out of water. KA POW!

Needless to say, I stayed in on Thursday and vowed never to eat Ka-Poop rice ever again.

On the bright side, I got to watch a lot of tv on Thursday and I finished up Outliers. The last third of the book is somewhat disappointing because Gladwell goes on for a couple of chapters repeating the same thing but using different examples. An “Oh yea” moment that I identified with in the book was when Gladwell talked about meaningful work.

… autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us.

Work right now is certainly complex, and the rewards aren’t too bad either. The one thing that is lacking, and part of the reason I’m pursing an MBA, is autonomy. To be my own boss, to own my own work, that is the ultimate goal.

Now, time to finish out this week strong. Off to News Cafe to test if the old gut is still in working order. I’m nothing if I can’t pile gobs of food into the ol’ belly!

Gladwell notes early on in the book that one reason that some people are super successful is the extrodinary amount of time an individual puts into his/her craft. For example, Bill Gates started programming very early on in high school. He had unprecedented access to super computers that only a few hundred people had back in those days. By the time he got to Harvard and dropped out, he had amassed over 10,000 hours of programming computer software. 10,000 hours! I started college in 99 and I’ve probably put in a ballparked 5000 since.

Gladwell argues that 10,000 hours seems to be the magic number that someone has to put in before he becomes a master of the skill. Hardwork, coupled with luck, helps to explain how someone like Gates could have built his mansion with stacks of Benjamins if he wanted to.

Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because while I was @ the doctor’s today, I picked up a copy of SI and on the cover was a picture of a baseball catcher who looked like he was 25-ish. The a headline read, “The Chosen One”. No, the article wasn’t about Lebron James and how he could dominate baseball if he played. Instead, the artcile was about a 16 year old kid from Las Vegas and how he is the next A-Rod + Pujols + Griffey.

While reading the article, I thought back to Outliers. I later found an interview ESPN did with  Bryce where he talked about how he would play roughly 130 games a year and how at 3 years old, his dad put him on his  6 year old brother’s little league baseball team. So lets just say that Bryce plays baseball for about 2/3 of a year and that each game or practice lasts about 3 hours. That’s roughly 9000 something hours, just 1000 shy of the 10,000 hours he needs of being great! And he’s only 16.

Of course, there are still several things that need to happen before the guy even steps into the bigs and becomes the greatest baseball player ever.  But if there’s an example of an outlier or phenom in the making, Bryce Harper would be it.

At the very least, we should have read Naked Economics or a book that is similiarly entertaining (although the book wasn’t published till just a few years ago) in HS. I’ve always experienced econ with some kind of S&D chart, but Naked has no charts, not even a single picture other than the naked chalk outline on the front and back cover. Charles Wheelan does a great job in explaining all the things that I should have learned ten years ago by telling real world stories that illustrate basic economic principles (utility, incentives, government & econ, etc). His writing makes the topic interesting by trying to incorporate some humor, but mostly by appealing to common sense. I highly recommend this book if you need a brush up in econ, or like me, need to take HS econ all over again.