Which would you subscribe: HBR / The Economist / Farnam Street?
3 points
1 day ago
| 7 comments
| HN
I’m a manufacturer business owner and I’m looking for tools to improve my decision making skills and leadership. Which subscription would you think I can get the most value considering my position? (I’m not in the tech or digital businesses)
rubenvanwyk
58 minutes ago
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Farnam Street for sure.
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treetalker
18 hours ago
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Before spending money on a subscription, buy an inexpensive notebook at the grocery store and use it to do pre-mortems, post-mortems, and to track your reasoning contemporaneously with your decision making. That will have a much bigger positive effect than simply receiving or even dutifully reading information from any of those sources.

And for one, Farnam Street essentially suggests doing the same thing.

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sometimes_all
5 hours ago
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I agree with this suggestion. Neither of the three listed will improve leadership or decision making skills; at best they'll inform you of what is currently going on, or might suggest some good books by referencing them.

A very similar approach to what parent suggests is in the book "How to Read a Book". It starts with explaining regular kinds of reading, and ends with synoptical reading - where you have to actually go and make a lot of effort to analyze, compare and contrast the current book with other stuff you have read.

Anyway, nothing grows soft and hard skills more than actually doing the legwork - just passivereading will not do much; active reading might help, but mixing reading with going out and actually doing stuff will help the most.

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shoo
13 hours ago
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i subscribe to economist podcasts and occasionally read the print magazine. it doesn't improve my decision making skills or leadership, it is sometimes informative but mostly a form of entertainment.
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yeyeyeyeyeyeyee
8 hours ago
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The Financial Times
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constantinum
6 hours ago
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Financial Times and NewYorker
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thiago_fm
14 hours ago
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Just read business books if you want to improve your decision making skills and leadership books, of course, network etc.

Those publications' content are ephemeral and age quite fast, you don't learn much that can help you develop over time.

Those subscriptions aren't very helpful on what you want to improve, they are good for you to understand the current economic scenario and new hypes and booms, and each have their own biases. I'd prefer HBR over the others.

They are also good for you to keep up on subjects so you can talk with other people that are business types.

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BOOSTERHIDROGEN
19 hours ago
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HBR
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