“Technology is a great servant but a terrible master. This is the most important book ever written about one of the most significant aspects of our lives—the consequences of our addiction to online technology and how we can liberate ourselves and our children from it.” —Dean Ornish, M.D. Founder & President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF, Author, The Spectrum Technology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your e-mail or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We've become a tribe of tech addicts—and it's not entirely our fault. Taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human brain function, tech companies entice us to overdose on technology interaction. This damages our lives, work, families, and friendships. Swipe-driven dating apps train us to evaluate people like products, diminishing our relationships. At work, we e-mail on average 77 times a day, ruining our concentration. At home, light from our screens is contributing to epidemic sleep deprivation. But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that tech is playing and could play in our lives. And they provide a guide to technological and personal tools for regaining control. This readable book turns personal observation into a handy action guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.

"Explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts."—David Perlmutter, MD, Author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain and Brain Maker The New York Times–bestselling author of Fat Chance reveals the corporate scheme to sell pleasure, driving the international epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic disease. While researching the toxic and addictive properties of sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Robert Lustig made an alarming discovery—our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover. Dopamine is the “reward” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more; yet every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction. Serotonin is the “contentment” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don’t need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin—because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated—with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape. With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture.

“This timely book reminds us that innovation is agnostic about where it's created.” —Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Over and over, we see big legacy businesses getting beaten to the punch by energetic little start-ups. It seems like innovation can come from only the bottom up or from the outside in. But tech experts Vivek Wadwha and Ismail Amla are here to tell you that “big equals slow and stodgy” is a myth. Based on decades of experience working with both the world's leading brands and disruptive start-ups, this book explores the opportunity legacy companies have to create new markets, supercharge growth, and remake their businesses by combining the mindset and tool belt of start-ups with the benefits of incumbency: boatloads of customer data, decades of brand equity, robust distribution channels, enormous financial assets, and more. Wadhwa and Amla go deeply into why the pace and dynamics of innovation have changed so dramatically in recent years and show how companies can overcome obstacles like the Eight Deadly Sins of Stasis. Equally important, they provide a playbook on how to use their insights in your own company, team, or career. This fast-paced, anecdote-rich story rethinks modern innovation—a book every manager, executive, and ambitious employee will want to read.

A young entrepreneur and sociologist shows readers how to reach personal fulfillment using the same strategies that power Silicon Valley's greatest startups. As an entrepreneur, Anna Akbari learned that one of the best things about startups is their ability to “pivot” quickly—basically a euphemism for failing and starting over. And she quickly found that personal success is no different. It’s not just about developing and following the right process but also having a good idea. And that demands rigor and daily maintenance—far beyond a few positive affirmations. Like any Silicon Valley startup, the business of life is not as glamorous as its Instagram account would make it seem. What do you do when planning is not an option? When control is out of your reach? You isolate the small stuff, experiment constantly, and use the results to lay a more sustainable foundation for the future. You validate your idealized vision by testing it out in bite-sized increments. You see what sticks, integrate, and move forward. And inevitably, you experience a series of failures along the way, but those failures are key to your next success. Living a start up life is about maximizing flexibility and measuring on-going results, not avoiding failure or reaching one particular end goal. It's about embracing defeat, analyzing it, and failing up. In Startup Your Life, Akbari shows that after all, it's often the stumbles that pave the way for real happiness.

Presents a twenty-one-day, three-step training program to achieve healthier thought patterns for a better quality of life by using the repetitive steps of analyzing, imagining, and reprogramming to help break down the barriers, including negative thought loops and mental roadblocks.

Tech experts Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever describe dozens of astonishing technological advances in this fascinating and thought-provoking book, which asks what kind of future lies ahead—Star Trek or Mad Max? Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, drones, self-driving vehicles, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening future—eugenics, a jobless economy, a complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. Wadhwa says that we need to ask three questions about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? This edition is updated throughout and includes a new chapter on quantum computing, which promises vastly increased processing times—and vastly increased security risks. In the end, our future is up to us; our hands may not be on the wheel, but we will decide the driverless car's destination.

"For years, Ellen Leanse worked with titans like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. As she watched innovations create new habits in tech, she also noticed a dramatic rise in stress. But what if our habits can instead be hacked for happiness? In this refreshing, practical book, you'll learn proven methods to hack your mind so you can: Have more time to do things you love ; Create real connections with the world around you ; Stop living your life on autopilot ; Reclaim focus for the things that matter ; and most importantly, REDUCE STRESS. With the hands-on tips and tricks from the HAPPINESS HACK, you'll be back in control of your mind and living the life you deserve to live."--Page 4 of cover

Learn to love uncertainty—and shape the future you want You have a successful life; a professional career, nice home, maybe kids or even a dog, so why are you so damn unhappy? Spread so thin at work, nothing gets the attention it needs; tasked with leading others through rapid change, you’re not sure where you’re heading yourself. Disruptive technology, catastrophic global events and increasing mental health problems means your secure and linear pathway to happiness no longer exists. Success today is not about the perfect plan to achieve more, manage change and mitigate risk. Our brave new world is calling us to throw out any rulebook and leap into what we fear most—the unknown. That’s exactly what Penny Locaso did when she turned her life upside-down to tackle our happiness-deficit problem. She emerged as the world’s first Happiness Hacker and the inventor of the Intentional Adaptability Quotient®: a quantifiable method for individuals and organisations to become more skillful at, and even relish, adapting to rapid change. Welcomed by business leaders worldwide, IAQ® catapulted Penny to prominence as a TedX Talk star and faculty member at the acclaimed Singularity University by showing that in our highly disruptive present we must embrace instability and complexity to achieve clarity, purpose, and the sense of meaning that brings real joy. Learn how experimentation, danger, and even failure are crucial to happiness and success Take courage and focus on what you’re avoiding, not what you’re missing Reskill yourself and others to accept—and even enjoy–uncertainty Explore your IAQ®: focus, courage, curiosity, accountability, connection, experimentation and reflection This book is an opportunity to look at work and the world through a new lens and see that by surfing on the edges of our comfort zone we—professionals, leaders, everyone—can intentionally adapt to create a successful and fulfilling future.

A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go, a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea, uses a 3D printer to produce it, and implants it and saves a child's life. Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us. Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, self-driving vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening, alienating future: eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it, our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light, he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create—that even if our hands are not on the wheel, we will decide the driverless car's destination.

The #1 international bestseller from the author of The Book of Awesome that “reveals how all of us can live happier lives” (Gretchen Rubin). What is the formula for a happy life? Neil Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, a New York Times–bestselling author, a Walmart executive, a father, a husband. After selling more than a million copies of the Book of Awesome series, wherein he observed the everyday things he thought were awesome, he now shifts his focus to the practicalities of living an awesome life. In his new book The Happiness Equation, Pasricha illustrates how to want nothing and do anything in order to have everything. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, you simply have yet to unlock the 9 Secrets to Happiness. Each secret takes a piece out of the core of common sense, turns it on its head to present it in a completely new light, and then provides practical and specific guidelines for how to apply this new outlook to lead a fulfilling life. Once you've unlocked Pasricha’s 9 Secrets, you will understand counter intuitive concepts such as: Success Does Not Lead to Happiness, Never Take Advice, and Retirement Is a Broken Theory. You will learn and then master three brand-new fundamental life tests: the Saturday Morning Test, The Bench Test, and the Five People Test. You will know the difference between external goals and internal goals and how to make more money than a Harvard MBA (hint: it has nothing to do with your annual salary). You will discover that true wealth has nothing to do with money, multitasking is a myth, and the elimination of options leads to more choice. The Happiness Equation is a book that will change how you think about pretty much everything—your time, your career, your relationships, your family, and, ultimately, of course, your happiness.