How to Win Friends & Influence People

The book is a treasure trove of timeless practical psychology. At times, I found it overly pandering and the book itself may suffer from confirmation bias in only citing examples that support the claim, but the psychology behind the core principles is golden. Many of the principles repeat themselves, which looks like bad writing but it’s good, probably intended psychology to reinforce ideas in multiple contexts to help readers. I found that I got the most useful ideas out of the book reading just the first quarter of it. As with other advice books, I’ve found it helps to take notes on the most important ideas to remember to practice them and not succumb to fleeting motivation.

The point that struck me was the overwhelmingly positive mindset that the book preaches, and it’s something very new to me. I read Machiavelli’s The Prince at 16 and it has been a tremendous force of pragmatism and discipline in my personal life for the better (even as I tried not to push those disciplinarian standards on others, I inevitably did somewhat), yet I had not the wit to recognize that what works within oneself may be different from what works on other people. Carnegie presented me my wake-up call to change my behavior and mindset toward others to be focused on praise and encouragement rather than strictness and responsibility. If your personality is like mine then this book will do wonders in giving you a good dose of the alternative.