RS
Ricardo Semler

Chief executive and later chairman of Semco Partners, Brazil

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
You know, the one that you mentioned, the Seven-Day Weekend , as with many other books, is a good place to poke around also inside your own head and to look for some insights. When I wrote the book originally, Brazil was still a relatively closed, elite environment for businesspeople, etc. Obviously because the book has sold a good quantity, most people had read it and I kept giving autographs to taxi drivers and so on so it was a very small microcosm I was living in. I remember the second occasion this happened to me, which was being stopped on the street and somebody saying, “You know, I read your book and it changed my life.” And they would go off and quote somebody else’s book entirely. When this happened the second time, I said shit, this is not about me at all. So, let me stop right here. And of course at that point there were all kinds of campaigns for me to run for mayor, and for president, and become Brazil’s Trump. Because people get lost along the way and they start believing in their own bullshit. The interesting thing here, going back to the issue of the book, was it’s when you come across an insight which was already yours and you see it in writing, that’s when you say this book changed my life. But real insight is where you go there and you say geez, I never thought of that, and there is some of that; it has to add to something that you believe in or that jives with your moment. So, I think putting too much weight and too much importance on something that you got out of someone doesn’t remind us that this intuition and this insight was growing inside you already; you were just waiting for some clarification of it. But that kind of answers the second bit. I had talked for several years at the Sloane School at MIT and I had a group of MBAs. This was always a very fun group and I used to go there in the fall quarter. I’d tell them: look, this is what you have to read to understand business and organizations. I was obliged to make this available on the MIT site and the books that were there were Marco Polo’s Travel, one book, a Kafka parable, a Jung book on synchronicity and so forth. These kinds of books – and Kafka I think is extraordinary – give you an enormous insight into the people who are doing things and why they’re doing things, rather than the whole set of how-tos. When you run away from the how-tos into the issue of how do you get to real wisdom, we’ve been at this for a long time. We’ve been in this agricultural era, then we were in the industrial era, then we were in the information age and we were in the knowledge age. But we don’t get any closer to the age of wisdom, and something is terribly wrong for a population and the humanity that has been around for so long and doesn’t get closer to wisdom. When you think about organizations and I ask you to show me one democratic organization or business environment in the world, or to find one wise company as a company, these are all almost impossible to find. So, to answer your question, I would say the books that stop to think about why the heck do we do the things that we do which are in Kafka and Freud or in Jung or in Thoreau; I think those will answer the business world much closer than people think. When they say oh, great, that’s all good and well but that’s all philosophy and all airy-fairy and touchy-feely but I need to get down to answer this: how come, which people, how, and so forth. But this process I think is much, much stronger from a philosophical point of what makes you want to get up in the morning and how you let the other people around you do what they want to do how they want to do it, and get out of their way. That is a philosophical issue that I think would solve a lot more issues if people went from that filter onwards, you know?

Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 5 June 2018 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 82 →
The people I most often give books to are children, and the book I love giving is Rivka Galchen’s Rat Rule 79. Technically a book written for children, but a book that will delight readers of all ages.
Recorded Lit Hub Questionnaire, Literary Hub, 27 March 2025 source ↗
Tony Fadell Engineer and designer; led the iPod and iPhone teams at Apple, founder of Nest Labs
I regularly gift the book called In Praise of Shadows .
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 27 January 2020 source ↗
Catherine Hoke Public figure
I regularly give books to other people, and up until recently, the book that I have most regularly gifted is Sheryl Sandberg’s book Option B because it’s closely related to the work that I do, and Sheryl is the most inspiring woman that I know. I really respect her. She’s on my executive council. I love her book Option B on healing and building a new future. I feel very spoiled that Sheryl wrote the forward to my own book, which is called A Second Chance . So, now, the book that I’m gifting even more than Option B is my own book, A Second Chance .
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 6 February 2018 source ↗
Diana Chapman Leadership coach; co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks is probably the book I've gifted the most, and the one I've recommended the most of any other book. And also, Conscious Loving for Couples, because you asked that question earlier. Conscious Loving, I think, is a fantastic book for couples who are wanting to get more connected, is another one I've gifted a lot. And those are the two that come top of mind.
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 6 October 2021 source ↗

More from Ricardo Semler

View profile →
Question Which documentary has stayed with you, and what did it change for you? Taste & recommendation
My favorite documentary is one called Up. ... For your listeners, it’s a guy, Michael Apted who in 1964 decided to follow about a dozen or actually more kids from very different backgrounds and from the UK and some in orphanages, and some very well off to try and establish how much people are stuck to their context, to their social context. ... It’s quite an extraordinary way to look at humanity and see can people really escape their social constraints and their initial lay of life?
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 5 June 2018 source ↗
Question What are you unwilling to optimise? Values & belief
So we'd say things like, let's agree that you're going to sell 57 widgets per week. If you sell them by Wednesday, please go to the beach. Don't create a problem for us, for manufacturing, for application, then we have to buy new companies, we have to buy our competitors, we have to do all kinds of things because you sold too many widgets. So go to the beach and start again on Monday.
Recorded TEDGlobal, 16 October 2014 source ↗

More on taste & recommendation

Also answered this

Satya Nadella, Jason Portnoy, Jacqueline Novogratz, Bill Gurley, Graham Duncan, Terry Real

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer