Ben Casnocha and Josh Kaufman (PersonalMBA.com) in conversation for 40 minutes about books, self-education, the process of reading, ambition, and other topics.

1:13 Josh says he's reading personal development books since it's the beginning of the year and you want to start the year off right

2:14 Steve Pavlina? He promotes 30 day experiments - just test something and see how you like it

4:30 Reducing goals into manageable, bite size pieces helps you start achieving them.

6:20 It's important to have at least one experimental side project going at all times

6:49 Ambition - what is it, how has the word evolved

8:48 When ambition is nakedly about power and money, it can be unattractive

10:40 There are people who are trying to do big things where the motivation is wanting to make the world better or just craftsmanship -- wanting to do something for the joy of doing it, have the ability to exercise skill.

12:40 How we choose what books to read

16:28 The role of books in the self-education process

18:00 Searching Amazon and Google for the best books

18:34 Are customer reviews on Amazon reliable?

20:54 The process of reading a book - start to finish or cherry pick sections?

22:18 Take a few minutes before reading a book to think about what you want to get out of it. Selective attention.

26:50 Read until you've gotten the key points and could re-hash them to others

28:00 Recording / summarizing important nuggets from a book

30:00 Looking for mental models: concepts that have broad explanatory power

31:08 The value of book summaries / outlines that are sold?

33:00 If you're a business person, what % of books you read should be in the business book genre?

35:55 Study how people work (psychology, communication, history) and systems / processes.

37:00 Reading about science can help you understand systems / processes (ie, friction)