Category Archives: Book reports

The Best Books I Read In 2023

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Welcome to my annual book review. See prior versions here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2016, 2015, and all time. 

I recently listened to an interview with Kevin Kelly, who has published a half dozen books. He said he’s no longer writing new books, because he believes the center of our culture has shifted to YouTube. 

That thought struck a chord. From a young age, I have considered books sacred. I admire people who read a lot: Charlie Munger, Patrick Collison, Ryan Holiday.

For me, the purpose of reading books is to learn and to be exposed to new ideas. I find enjoyment in reading, yes, but that enjoyment stems from a belief that I am learning and growing, in line with one of my core values. For me, reading books is primarily a telic activity. 

This leads to two thoughts about reading books.

First, how you read books matters. If the purpose is learning, reading a book from start to finish is not terribly effective. You need to actively engage with the material to learn. That’s why I highlight while I’m reading, save highlights to Readwise, and use the Readwise app to present 10 daily highlights to me, selected from all the books I’ve read following the principle of spaced repitition. 

Second, books are not always the best medium for learning or exposure to new ideas. YouTube, Reddit, and ChatGPT may be better alternatives to solve a specific and immediate problem. Academic papers may be more suitable to learn about the leading edge of a field. Twitter, blogs, and newsletters have a higher “idea per word” ratio. 

This leads to a few experiments I want to run in 2024: 

  1. Read books more actively. Before starting a book, write down what I hope to learn and what I already know about the subject. Join a book club, and explore if group discussion leads to more insight and better retention. For each (good) book, digest all highlights a few weeks later. 
  2. Consider alternatives to books. Allocate more time to Reddit, ChatGPT, and YouTube. Read papers. Read Twitter. When engaging in alternatives to reading books, maximize learning, by taking notes and adding highlights to Readwise. 

I would be very curious to hear what you think of this. Please let me know!

On to my favorite books of the year. I read 25 books this year. See my top 6 below. For the full list, check out my Goodreads. 

Tuesdays with Morrie

This book is about a professor, Morrie, who is told he has only a few more months to live. One of Morrie’s former students, the book’s author, visits him weekly for several months to write down his life lessons. The book is on my list because it reminded me how to live well. On this topic, I would also highly recommend David Brooks’ recent essay in the New York Times, The Essential Skills for Being Human. Thank you to Nicolien and Robert-Jan for the suggestion. 

How to Live

Some of my friends love listening to audio books. I don’t—I prefer reading. This book by Derek Sivers is an exception. He recorded the audio version of this book himself and it’s a wonderful performance. Like “Tuesdays with Morrie”, this book is about what it means to live a good life. But it is more provocative. In each of the 30 chapters, Sivers evangelizes a certain life philosophy. I found myself agreeing with many different and conflicting ones—forcing me to reflect on priorities and accepting that different moments in life may ask for different philosophies. Hat tip to Han! 

Men and Rubber

This book is an autobiography by the founder of Firestone tires, Harvey Firestone. Despite being written in the early 1900s, it’s still very readable. More importantly, as an entrepreneur, I could relate to a lot of the challenges that Firestone faced. The book recounts some fascinating history about the early automobile and tire industry, such as the deal that Firestone struck with Henry Ford to be the preferred tire supplier for the Model T. Thanks Sam for suggesting this gem. 

Make Something Wonderful

I don’t consider myself a Steve Jobs fanboy. What I loved about this book, though, is its composition. Unlike other biographies, this book is made up of speeches, interviews, and email exchanges. I found the email exchanges to be especially revealing. One such exchange shows how Jobs made a 180-degree turn after his mentor Andy Grove asked him to speak to an employee. The vividness of the email exchanges reminded me of another business biography I really liked: “The Founders”, by Jimmy Soni, about the early days of Paypal (one of last year’s top reads). 

Material World

In 2023, I read a few books about our material world. This was the most vivid. In it, British journalist Ed Conway weaves a fascinating journey through the materials needed for the energy transition—sand, salt, iron, oil, copper, and lithium. The book is chock-full of interesting anecdotes. It also leaves you with a clearer sense of the materials needed to transition to a low-carbon economy. It was similar to Vaclav Smil’s “How the World Works”, although Smil’s book has a broader scope (not just materials) and was a drier read. 

The Player of Games

This is a book from the Culture sci-fi series. The story is set in a multi-planetary society (the Culture) in which material wealth is abundant and humans don’t need to work to satisfy material needs. It implicitly poses the question to the reader: what, then, should you do with your time? 

The protagonist of the book, Jernau Gurgeh, answers this question by learning and playing games. But just as he gets bored with all the games he has already mastered, he is invited for a grand, highly complex game that will take him years to learn and puts him in contact with another society, the Azad, that doesn’t adhere to the principles of the culture. In doing so, he needs to fully embrace principles that oppose those of his own culture.

The Best Books I Read In 2022

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This is my annual book review. See prior versions here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2016, 2015, and all time. For the full list of books I read this year, visit my Goodreads account.

I read 22 books in 2022, nearly all non-fiction. My reading process is still akin to the process I described in the 2020 review. I read primarily on Kindle, so I can export highlights to Readwise, an app that sends me a daily summary of Kindle highlights, serving me insights from books I’ve previously read. After I finish a book, I write a summary and post it to Goodreads. If a book is particularly insightful, I’ll write down some facts that I add to Anki, an app for spaced repetition, to increase knowledge retention.

Here are my six favorite books of 2022:

The Wizard and the Prophet

This book was recommended to me by Seth Godin. It highlights two archetypal approaches to sustainability. The wizard believes technology and innovation will save humanity—think solar panels, battery-powered flight, and genetically-engineered crops. The prophet, in contrast, believes that the only way to stay within planetary boundaries is to consume less. The author, Charles C. Mann, sketches out these archetypes by telling the history of agriculture, energy, water, and materials in the 20th century.

While I’ve been thinking about sustainability for the last 15 years, this book provided a new lens to look at the issues I work on. I especially enjoyed learning more about sustainability in agriculture, including the history of the Green Revolution, which dramatically increased the production of food and is seen by some as humanity’s greatest innovation.

To me, a hallmark of a good book is that I think and talk about it often after finishing it. That was certainly the case for The Wizard and The Prophet. I used the framework of wizard versus prophet in many conversations this year. While in my daily work I am primarily a wizard, in truth, both sides of the spectrum have merit. (Take, for example, hydroelectric dams: on the one hand, they produce zero-carbon power, a necessity to mitigate climate change; on the other, they block salmon and steelhead from swimming upstream to their mating grounds.)  

I read two books on related topics. Vaclav Smil’s How We Got Here covers similar ground but from a more factual perspective. I haven’t finished it but may include it in next year’s list. Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky is a fantasy fiction book that uses a similar polarity between a wizard and a prophet (which she calls witch). I’d highly recommend all three books.  

From Silk to Silicon

I enjoy books that include multiple biographies. They offer a lower time investment than reading a full book on a single individual and lead me to learn about people I wouldn’t have otherwise read a book about, thereby expanding my “known unknowns”. As examples, Doris Kearns Goodwin Leadership tells the story of four U.S. Presidents and James Martin’s My Life with the Saints gives a brief introduction to more than a dozen Christian saints.

In From Silk to Silicon, Jeffrey Garten tells the story of globalization through the lives of ten individuals, from Genghis Khan to Andy Grove. I enjoyed most chapters of this book, but I especially enjoyed the chapter on Jean Monnet and the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC), a precursor to the European Union, and the chapter on Cyrus Field, the entrepreneur who first connected Europe and the U.S. by telegraph by laying an oceanic telegraph cable.

The Founders

In what appears to be a great basis for a Netflix series (akin to Succession or WeCrashed), the Founders covers the founding story of Paypal. As an entrepreneur, reading about the pace set by the Paypal founders was exhilarating. For example, I loved reading a passage in which Mike Moritz, a legendary investor at Sequoia, sends a candidate to Elon Musk. Musk conducts a phone screen. The candidate closes by saying, “I’d love to visit you next time I’m in the Bay”, to which Musk responds, “No. You need to fly here tomorrow.” He speaks with Musk for a few hours late that night and signs his offer the next morning at 8am. Incredible. There are many such stories in the book, and I’d recommend it to any tech entrepreneur.

The Choice

In this gripping book, Dr. Edith Eger tells the story of how she survived the Holocaust (including Auschwitz), the imprint this experience left on her, and how she healed herself over the course of her life. The book’s main purpose is to help readers “escape the prisons of our own minds”.

As Philip Zimbardo puts it in the foreword: “Whether imprisoned by bad marriages, destructive families, or jobs they hate, or imprisoned within the barbed wire of self-limiting beliefs that trap them in their own minds, readers will learn from this book that they can choose to embrace joy and freedom regardless of their circumstances.”

The author’s story and the book’s main message (don’t ask “why me?” but “what now?”) resemble that of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a lifelong mentor to and friend of Eger.

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a teaching professor of biology at SUNY and a member of an indigenous American tribe—the Potawatomi Nation. Her writing flows from the pages like water. It’s some of the most beautiful I’ve read. Each chapter of this book tells a short story about Kimmerer’s relationship to nature. I especially loved the chapter Three Sisters, in which she describes the symbiosis between corn, squash, and beans. The corn provides a stalk for the beans to climb up to the sun. The squash covers the ground, reducing the evaporation of water from the soil. The beans fix nitrogen, providing critical nutrients to the other two crops. Planting these three crops together forms a truly regenerative process. I read this before going to bed, planning to read a few pages, and inadvertently reading a chapter (or two) because the writing is so soothing.

The Beginning of Infinity

This book isn’t an easy read, but it’s very rewarding. David Deutsch is an Oxford physics professor. At its core, the book makes an argument for unbounded human progress, so long as we rely on the philosophy of fallibility: the belief that problems will arise, but that they are soluble, and that we ought to always look for errors in our thinking and then correct them. Deutsch covers much ground, explaining for example why the Roman numerals were a bounded system but the decimal system is not, and why the Athenians were better positioned than the Spartans when it relates to learning and improving.

The Best Books I Read In 2020

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I read 25 books in 2020. I made a few changes to my reading process, meant to increase retention and stimulate new ideas.

First, I have started to use Readwise. Once you give it access to your Kindle, Readwise will send you a daily selection of your personal Kindle highlights. It’s a joy to revise quotes from books read years ago. Often, I read an interesting highlight and open up the book in the Kindle app to read a few pages or a chapter. I also love the Readwise app—it allows you to add highlights from print books using your camera. You can also sync Readwise with Instapaper or Feedly, if you use those for reading and highlighting articles.

Second, I have started to synthesize key points I’d like to remember by writing down questions. I then add these questions and answers to Anki, a flashcard application that “makes remembering things easy”. Anki uses spaced repetition, a technique to determine when a certain flashcard should be resurfaced to maximize recall. This setup was inspired by Michael Nielsen’s article Augmenting Long-Term Memory.

Third, I have started to post short reviews of books to Goodreads. This was prompted by a conversation with a close friend, who simply sent me a link to his Goodreads account when I asked him about his favorite books. This allowed me to see all books he’d read, including his ratings. Check out my Goodreads to see what I’ve been reading.

On to my top reads of the year.

Leadership in Turbulent Times

This was one of my favorite books of the year. Doris Kearns Goodwin chronicles the ascent to power of four US Presidents—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Francis Delano Roosevelt (FDR), and Lyndon Johnson. It was fascinating to learn about the types of leadership these men displayed and to reflect which resonated. I liked Lincoln’s use of stories and parables. FDR’s aspirational leadership also resonated—setting forth a big, bold idea and then letting others solve it. For those interested in US history not ready to read four separate biographies, I highly recommend this book.

The Secret of Our Success

Recommended in Matt Clifford’s splendid newsletter, this is a far-reaching book about humans. In it, Joseph Henrich, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, makes the case that what sets humans apart is our propensity for cultural learning. In contrast to other species, most of what we learn to survive is not encoded in our genes—it is learnt by studying other individuals once we’re born. Stitching together decades of field research, this book is full of fascinating facts, such as why orcas have menopause; how blue and green eyes developed as the result of an agriculture revolution; and how a tribe of aboriginals was able to find a watering hole hundreds of miles away by singing an ancient song. If you loved Harari’s Sapiens, this is a must read.

7 Powers

After reading Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, I was hungry for more. Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO, writes in the foreword that this is the only strategy book he takes seriously. In the book, Helmer identifies seven forces that can provide a company with a strategic position. These range from well-known forces—such as economies of scale—to lesser-known forces—such as counter-positioning. Helmer illustrates each power through examples from his career as an investor, using anecdotes about companies like Intel, Kodak, Vanguard, Tiffany’s, and Toyota. I often try to apply Helmer’s 7 forces framework.

Scary Close

Recommended by an old friend, this book by Don Miller is about intimacy and vulnerability. Miller tells the story of how he learned to build true relationships. It’s a deeply resonating personal tale about what it takes to be vulnerable. In one especially powerful chapter, Miller explains that often our professional identity is shaped by early childhood experiences. One person notices something that we are good at and expresses their appreciation. Since we desperately want to feel seen, that early appreciation leads us to excel in the activity, turning it into part of our identity.

Overstory

A Pullitzer Prize winner, The Overstory is all about trees. The book starts with seven separate stories that are woven together over the course of the book into a single quest about halting deforestation and logging. The book is beautifully written. I especially loved the lessons about trees and plants. Reactions to this book by my friends are mixed—some think it’s boring and too slow, others love it. If you’re curious to learn more about trees and enjoy a well-written and long novel, I’d give it a go.

Exhalation

A collection of short science fiction stories written by Chinese-American author Ted Chiang, the stories in this book will certainly blow your mind. If you read and enjoyed Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (which I also read this year), I’d highly recommend this book. For a more detailed review, see this New Yorker article.

What books have you most enjoyed this year? I’d love to hear from you.

The Best Books I read in 2019

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I actively made time to read this year, which allowed me to finish about a book a week. Here is my top 5 of the year.

If you are looking for more recommendations, I would highly recommend perusing Steward Brand’s list and Brian Eno’s list of books most essential for sustaining humanity; Patrick Collison’s bookshelf; and some of the books recommended by Charlie Munger.

The Weather Machine, by Andrew Blum

In this short, riveting book, Blum sheds light on the history of weather forecasting. He opens the book with an anecdote on how the first leaps in weather forecasting were made with the advent of steam-powered trains and later the telegraph, enabling information about the weather to travel faster than the weather itself. In the book, Blum details the history of weather satellites; the weather models run on supercomputers; and the strategic alliances between most global nations to freely exchange data from weather satellites—a practice now coming under pressure. This New Yorker article provides a helpful review.

The Power Brokers, by Jeremiah Lambert

Similar to The Weather Machine, I picked up The Power Brokers because it is connected to our business. The Power Brokers tells the roughly 150-year long history of the U.S. electricity system through the lens of seven historic characters—Sam Insull, David Lilienthal, Don Hodel, Paul Joskow, Ken Lay, Amory Lovins, Jim Rogers. Although I was familiar with most of this history before reading the book, the author did a stellar job at providing an engrossing, fact-packed narrative. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Paul Joskow, which details the shift from vertically integrated utilities to wholesale power markets with competitive generation and retail and the corresponding rise of ISOs and RTOs. Another great book on energy I read this year was Russell Gold’s “Superpower”, a biography of Michael Skelly, the co-founder of Clean Line Energy Partners. I found Skelly’s story inspiring yet disturbing, illuminating the challenges of building high-voltage power transmission across state borders.

The Secret Network of Nature, by Peter Wohlleben

This book is part of a trilogy that was made famous by the New York Times. In it, the German forester Wohlleben describes in vivid detail the astonishing connections that are bountiful in nature. Drawing his examples primarily from German forests, an ecosystem I am familiar with, Wohlleben fills page after page with jaw-dropping anecdotes about the complex relationships in forests. For example, did you know that some types of ants derive the majority of their nutrition from aphids, small sap-sucking insects that produce honeydew from deciduous trees? This is a wonderful book to bring along for a weekend in nature and can easily be read one chapter at a time. In the same spirit of this book, I would recommend Patagonia’s documentary Treeline, which tells the story of trees on our planet.

The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Related to Peter Wohlleben’s book, this is the only fiction entry on this list. The story is set on the planet of New Tahiti, many centuries into the future. The story centers around a human race with interstellar presence using other planets to harvest resources, since Earth itself has been plundered. On New Tahiti, a planet covered entirely by forest, humans encounter a seemingly weak race of animals roughly half the size of humans, so-called Athseans. Humans force the Athseans into indentured servitude to help log the forests. Events take a turn after humans destroy most of the forest on this planet and the Athseans start a violent resistance. This story is a cautionary tale for how things can go awfully wrong when a species operates from a destructive, self-centered, disconnected perspective.

The New Paradigm Handbook, by Dani Katz

This short book—you can read the entire thing in two hours—was one of the books with the most immediate impact on me this year. Gifted to me by a dear friend, this book makes the case for the use of very direct language. Katz convincingly demonstrates how simple changes in how we speak, write, and think can drastically influence what we manifest.

 

 

The Best Books I read in 2016

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Good books are a joy to read; great books make you a better person. Of the books I read in 2016, I would nominate the six below as good or even great.

Per book, I explain how it influenced my life, so that you can decide which are worth your time. If you’re interested in more book recommendations, have a look at “Books that Influenced my Life” and “The Best Books I read in 2015”.

What’s the best book you read this year? What’s the best book you ever read? Please share a book recommendation in the comments below.

2016-books-001

1. Dune, by Frank Herbert

Frequently ranked as “best science fiction book of all times”, this story about a battle between extra-planetary noble houses trying to take control of a desert planet Arrakis is a page-turner. I finished this book in a week, spending many nights reading till deep in the night. The book is well-written and rich in narrative, touching on topics diverse as how to start new religions; how to manage international (or interstellar) relations; and how to preserve water in deserts. It’s a tale as rich as Star Wars, so good that I’d be happy to re-read it soon.

2. Road to Character, by David Brooks

People who have cultivated a deep and applied compassion inspire me. One of the best books I read in 2015 was My Life with the Saints, by Fr. James Martin, which profiles a dozen or so saints in a chapter each. NYT-columnist David Brook’s Road to Character is similar in structure.

David Brooks observes that in today’s Western societies, our media admire people who show grit, persistence, boldness, and courage. Think of famous entrepreneurs, professional athletes, and pop stars. However, when we look at the people who are most admired upon their deathbed, these are people who show a different set of virtues. Brooks contrasts today’s résumé virtues against eternal eulogy virtues, dedicating the book to profiling eight people who lived in the last two millennia—from St. Augustine to President Eisenhower—in the hope that it may inspire us all to be better. As Brooks writes in his introduction:

“Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner coherence. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They are calm, settled, and rooted. They are not blown off course by storms. They don’t crumble in adversity. Their minds are consistent and their hearts are dependable. Their virtues are not the blooming virtues you see in smart college students; they are the ripening virtues you see in people who have lived a little and have learned from joy and pain. They possess the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline.”

Reading through the book, I found myself underlining constantly, making notes in the margins on almost every page. Re-reading my notes made it clear how much space we have to grow. This is a book I want to continue to return to, to remind myself how much work it takes to be a good person.

3. The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander

This book will make you shine like a lightbulb! In The Art of Possibility, Rosamund and Benjamin Zander, a social worker and the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, share their philosophy of a life full of possibility. In each chapter, they illustrate a helpful maxim with lively stories. One example stands out: Ben Zander explains how he publicly announces at the start of a new class that each student will get an A, under one condition: they must write a letter to themselves, imagining they have finished the class, explaining what it is that made them deserve an A. By doing so, you can unleash the power of possibility and responsibility.

I first read this book in print, and later downloaded it as an audiobook. I’d listen to (part of) a chapter each morning on my way to work, which would often have a profound impact on how I’d go through my day. Highly recommended!

4. Acts of Faith, by Eboo Patel

Eboo Patel is the founder of Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that brings young people of different religions for cooperative service and dialogue around shared values. I picked up his autobiography in Chicago this fall, after noticing the title years ago on my friend Ted Gonder’s booklist.

Patel’s short, highly readable biography filled me with inspiration about starting organizations that matter. Patel opened my mind to the reasons why youth are easily attracted to religious extremism, because it offers a clear path to a life mission and social status, things that every teenager craves for. He then suggests that the way to address religious extremism at its root is to offer young people alternative paths to meaning and social status, which he tries to do with his organization.

5. Structures (or Why Things Don’t Fall Down), by J.E. Gordon

Giles Holt recommended this lovely book. Reading Structures was a déjà vu back to my undergraduate civil engineering classes. Gordon, a very witty British professor, will make you learn something new on each page, such as how our quads compare to car springs, why birds have feathers on their wings, or why a piece of paper rips apart more easily once it has an initial cut. He strips structural engineering of its confusing terms, communicating it in vivid and witty prose through clear examples.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is curious to learn more about their physical environment (if you like this book, also consider Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces on physics or Goodsell’s The Machinery of Life on cell biology). Although neither Structures nor Dune directly led to a lot of changes in my everyday life, they both brought many new perspectives and were absolutely a joy to read.

6. Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight

I picked up Phil Knight’s autobiography three days ago and finished it this morning. This story, about the origins of Nike, reads like a high-speed train. Phil Knight, Nike’s cofounder, explains in detail and without much ego how he started to import Onitsuka Tigers from Japan, building a scrappy business from scratch in a time when venture capital, minimum viable product, and A/B testing did not exist. Knight’s story left me with a sense of the importance of having courage in your endeavors, and pursuing your crazy idea.

I already have a few must-read books on my list for next year: Value Investing by Guy Pierce, Gene by Siddharth Mukerjee, and Tolstoy by Henri Troyat. I will remind myself to read the classics. Which books should I add?

The Best Books I read in 2015

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Below are some of the best books I read in 2015, each with a short paragraph explaining how reading the book influenced my thinking.

If you’re looking for great books to read, also look at my July 2014 blog on “Books that Influenced my Life”, Ted Gonder’s “Books that Have Changed My Life“, Edge.org’s list of 2015 Summer Reading, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list of 8 books that every intelligent person should read, and Mark Bao’s “Great Books I read in 2015“.

I keep a visual overview of all the books I read in 2015 at http://books.titiaanpalazzi.com (a great, easy-to-use Tumblr template).

Best books I read in 2015:

My Life with the Saints, by James Martin

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor of America magazine, shares a brief synopsis of the lives of about fifteen Christian saints, detailing how each saint inspires him in everyday life. Reading this book kindled my desire to become a better person through service, and led me to explore more deeply the lives of St. Francis and Dorothy Day. If this paragraph tickles your curiosity, listen to Krista Tippett’s interview with James Martin on On Being.

The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff

Benjamin Hoff explains the essence of Taoism through stories from Winnie the Pooh. This is a hilarious read that will inspire you to be kinder and funnier under the hardships that life will throw at you. Reading a chapter of The Tao of Pooh every morning is one of the surest ways to be a happier person (I can attest!)

Writings on an Ethical Life, by Peter Singer

I first read Peter Singer’s writing many years ago about eating meat, when he influenced my thinking that it’s OK to eat oysters and mussels as part of a vegetarian or vegan diet. In this book, a collection of essays and excerpts from different books, Singer will challenge many of your beliefs on how to live well.

Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton

De Botton’s mission is beautiful: to make the wisdom of philosophy accessible to a wide audience. In this book, he looks at six great philosophers, and frames the message of each in a way that can help you in every day life. I was particularly intrigued by Socrates’ method to get to truth, and Nietzsche’s belief that pain and distress are good, because they spur us to work harder to realize our dreams.

Snowcrash, by Neal Stephenson

In this crazy science-fiction story, Neal Stephenson sketches a world where people choose to live more in virtual reality than in physical reality.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

Heinlein describes a beautiful symbiosis between men and machine who collectively try to overthrow an upsetting political regime.

The Glass Bead Game, by Herman Hesse

Hesse is possibly my favorite novelist, and I had put this book (a Nobel Prize winner) off for too long. The book made me think about the contemplative life versus the life of action, a theme that replays itself in many of Hesse’s books.

Books I want to read in 2016:

  • The Utopia Experiment, by Dylan Evans—to understand the challenges of communal livings.
  • On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin—to understand the foundation behind how Darwin came to his conclusion on natural selection.
  • Mastery, by Robert Greene—to understand the path of the artist, so compellingly portrayed by Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
  • The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine—to understand his critiques on The Bible and religion.

Books I want to re-read in 2016:

  • Bhagavadgita, in translation by Eknath Eswaran—to be inspired to be a better person. (Gandhi read the Bhagavadgita every day.)
  • Six Thinking Hats, by Edward de Bono—to be more aware of the different modes of think I do, and can, use.
  • From Darwin to Munger, by Peter Bevelin—to remind myself of the flaws in my thinking.
  • The Little Prince, by Saint Exupéry—because the wonder expressed by our small friend from another planet is something I always want to keep in mind.

One of my intentions for the new year is to keep a digital summary of the best books I read in 2016, with the intention to re-read the summaries frequently, to truly internalize some of the lessons.

Book Review: Waking Up by Sam Harris

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This is a summary of Sam Harris’ very insightful book Waking Up. I am editing this post as I’m reading the book. 

Chapter 1: Spirituality

“How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages—but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out.”

“The experience [of using MDMA] was not of love growing, but of its being no longer obscured.”

“There is no other term [than spirituality] to discuss the efforts people make to fully bring their minds into the present or to induce nonordinary states of consciousness.”

“Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.”

“Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences.”

“There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is—the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eye, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished.”

“Most cultures have produced men and women who have found that certain deliberate uses of attention—meditation, yoga, prayer—can transform their perception of the world. Their efforts generally begin with the realization that even in the best of circumstances, happiness is elusive.”

“There is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self.”

“[A] true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease with the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self.”

“[T]he teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y.”

“The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in the world.”

“The Buddha described four foundations of mindfulness: the body (breathing, changes in posture, activities), feelings (the senses of pleasantness, unpleasantness, and neutrality), the mind (in particular, its moods and attitudes), and the objects of mind (which include the five sense but also other mental states, such as volition, tranquility, rapture, equanimity, and even mindfulness itself.)”

“Eventually, [mindfulness] begins to seem as if you are repeatedly awakening from a dream to find yourself safely in bed. No matter how terrible the dream, the relief is instantaneous. And yet it is difficult to say awake for more than a few seconds at a time.”

“Mindfulness is a technique for achieving equanimity amid the flux, allowing us to simply be aware of the quality of experience in each moment, whether pleasant or unpleasant. This may seem like a recipe for apathy, but it needn’t be. It is actually possible to be mindful—and, therefore, to be at peace with the present moment—even while working to change the world for the better.”

“The traditional goal of meditation is to arrive at a state of wellbeing that is imperturbable—or if perturbed, easily regained. The French monk Matthieu Ricard describes such happiness as “a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind.” (And a healthy body, I would add.)

“Just recognizing the impermanence of your mental states—deeply, not merely as an idea—can transform your life.”

“It is your mind, rather than the circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.”

“In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.”

Mastery: the path to success, one skill at a time?

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It’s common wisdom that being good at something is valuable. Is it wise, then, to optimize for learning one skill compared to building some proficiency in multiple skills?

I am naturally interested in many things. During a typical week at work, I write and review articles, structure arguments, do analyses in excel, create graphs, code, and more. Add to that the reading, sports, music, and drawing I pursue in my free time, and you start to see the wide variety of my activity. I sometimes wonder: is it smarter to focus on becoming very good at a single skill, rather than doing a little bit of many things?

In So Good They Can’t Ignore You Cal Newport suggests that focusing on a single skillset is more valuable than pursuing multiple interests.  Cal argues that, “follow your passion” is poor advice. He suggests you increase your chances of success by building rare and valuable skills. Cal calls this the ‘craftsman mindset’, a relentless focus relentlessly on what value you’re offering, using deliberate practice to grow. He recommends that you stop asking yourself “am I doing what I love?” and start asking yourself “am I building a valuable skillset?”

After reading Cal’s book, I noticed myself thinking “Should I focus all my effort at mastering a single skill?” I hesitated to answer this question with “yes”. I can’t remember a time where I focused on mastering a single activity and I do not aspire to be a deep domain expert, spending decades working in one discipline.

Shortly after finishing the book, I listened to a podcast by Tim Ferriss, The Top 5 Reasons to be a Jack of All Trades. (Blog version here.) Tim Ferriss acknowledges that being very good at something is valuable, but he says it’s a false, commonly held assumption that you can only be very good at one thing. Tim suggests instead that you can become very good at anything after a few months of focused and smart learning, and because of that you can be very good at many things.

That idea—that mastery is valuable, but does not need to be limited to a single skill—was music to my ears. Upon reflection, I found this is only possible under two conditions: take one skill at a time, and use deliberate practice to improve.

Learn one skill at a time

Learn different skills in series, not in parallel. In a good week, I may create a drawing, play a bit of piano, and code for an hour or two. I focus on learning many things at the same time. As a result, I do not experience the intensity to get really good at any of them. The solution, I am finding, is to adopt one or two skills you want to learn this year, and commit to learning only those. Although this focus is difficult for me (I have not built the habit of doing so), I commit to spending two hours every day on one skill for the next three months, building websites, because I notice it’s a combination of design and engineering that I enjoy.

Practice deliberately

Learning skills in series is insufficient—you need to learn skills effectively too. Taking drawing as an example, I experience no peer pressure to produce a drawing every day, and there is no teacher who evaluates my sketches. Even when you focus on one or two skills at a time, you need deliberate practice (another concept from Cal Newport’s book) to grow. This stretching yourself to perform uncomfortable exercises. This means stretching yourself to uncomfortable exercise (for instance, drawing a portrait if you’ve never done so), and asking for direct feedback on your work.

The question is: can I stick to this framework to learn one to two skills each year. Do you agree? Was there a time where you learned to master many skills at the same time? What is the path you follow?

And, considering our changing world: how valuable is specialization in a world where more work is automated?

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Thanks to Franziska Becker, Ted Gonder, Giles Holt, Philo van Kemenade, Marin Licina, Tobias Rijken, and Max Song for reviewing this blog.

Books that Influenced my Life

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A dear friend of mine keeps a list (two, actually) of the books that shaped him. I liked that idea, so I made my own list below.

Books, of course, are not the only influence on us—I am influenced too, probably to a greater extent, by experiences, conversations with people, documentaries, and so on (those influences may be a topic for another blog post). The beautiful thing about books is, however, that for the cost of a meal and a few hours of dedication, you can gain a new perspective on the world.

The books below come to mind when I ask myself “Which books have changed the way I see the world and act?”

I’ve read (or re-read) all of these in the last 5 or so years, so I hope that the list will be much longer by the time I turn thirty.

(PS I would love to hear your recommendations for further reading. If there’s a book that has shaped your life that’s not on the list below, please share it with me.)

 

Life Philosophy:
Viktor Frankl – Man’s search for meaning
How a deep sense of purpose can keep you alive even in the toughest of circumstances.

Erich Fromm – The art of loving
A primary driver for human action is our desire to overcome separateness. Love is an activity, not a noun, that we need to keep practicing. “Work on yourself more than on the other person.”

Seneca – Letters from a Stoic (also Cicero – On the Good Life)
Practical recommendations for how to be happy and less perturbed by what happens to you.

Bhagavad Gita and Dhammapada (both in the translation by Eknath Easwaran)
Powerful words to motivate you to try every day to be a better version of yourself, I read two pages each morning last summer before jumping on my bike. 

Lao Tze – Tao Te Ching (also the lighter, but as impactful, Benjamin Hoff – The Tao of Pooh)
Wonderful short verses that inspire you to smile and take a zoomed-out view at life’s busy-ness. 

 

Life stories that inspired me:
Buckminster Fuller – Critical Path
Revealing how you can live your life as an experiment; how much freedom you have to shape your days; and how powerful it is to work only and always for the benefit of all humanity. 

Benjamin Franklin – Autobiography (and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Franklin)
Combining the roles of writer, printer, entrepreneur, public citizen, politician, diplomat, and many more in one lifetime, with incredible zest and infinite curiosity.

Tracy Kidder – Mountains beyond Mountains
A page turner—one of the most inspiring, best written biographies I’ve read; and very relatable since Paul Farmer is still very active today. Paul Farmer’s story also deeply reminded me of Albert Schweitzer’s life (below).

Albert Schweitzer – Essential Writings
Like Paul Farmer, Albert Schweitzer expressed through his actions a deep commitment to serving others. His Essential Writings are written from a very human perspective—explaining how he loves to dance, play the organ, and put his feet in an ice-bath to stay awake at night while writing. 

Joseph Jaworski – Synchronicity
Every one of us has a cubic centimeter of chance pop up in our view occasionally. It is the warrior—the person who is always aware—who recognizes this and ceases the opportunity. A story that makes you excited about life. 

Wendy Kopp – One Day, All Children
A powerful example of how experience and age are not prerequisites for making big things happen. 

 

Personal Effectiveness:
Stephen Covey – 7 Habits of Successful people
I still use (slightly changed) versions of Covey’s weekly calendar exercise every week. 

Tim Ferriss – 4 hour workweek
You can disagree with some of the principles and core values underlying the book, but this book definitely makes you rethink what you’re pursuing and how to do so more effectively. 

Ray Dalio – Principles
Clearly-written, logical, practical manifesto on evaluating your mental models. 

Seth Godin – Linchpin
Emphasizing the mindset that you should always strive to be indispensable.

Reid Hoffmann and Ben Casnocha – The Start-up of You
From this book I took a number of practical exercises on how to tap into your network and look at your own future. 

Dale Carnegie – How to Win Friends and Influence People
Despite the “superficial” title, this book is surprisingly sincere; if you practice the lesson, you will be a kinder, happier person.

 

Books that helped me to improve my thinking:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Helped me realize how often I use the scientific method (and when I fail to), and the limitations of the method. 

Peter Bevelin – From Darwin to Munger
Introduce me to using the evolutionary perspective to explain why our mind works in the way it does. Also includes a stunning list of all the “biases” of the brain, and led me to read Charlie Munger’s great speech and Charles Darwin’s autobiography. 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Black Swan
This book was the first that made me aware how foolish it is to make predictions about phenomena that do not follow the laws of nature, such as the value of GE shares two years from now.

 

Books that changed the way I look at the world: 
Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins – Natural Capitalism
This book convinced me that resource-efficiency and profitability can go hand in hand. A good, more recent, book on this topic is “Resource Revolution” by Stefan Heck and Matt Rogers. 

Janine Benyus – Biomimicry
We can take so much (scientific) inspiration in design and technology if only we look at the rest of Life on Earth. 

Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel
Describing the “advance” of man from Africa through today in a very exciting way, explaining what phenomena caused the differences in wealth we see in the world today.

James Goodsell – Machinery of Life
Beautiful illustrated book about the biology of the human body. 

 

 

Novels that touched me:
Herman Hesse – Siddharta
A personal journey that many of us can (or want to) identify with—going into the “real world”, tempted to follow our senses, only to realize that wisdom is found in simple things. 

Antoine de St. Exupéry – the Little Prince
Always stay a child at heart. 

Tintin
Choose for adventure! 

 

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I would love to hear your recommendations for further reading. If there’s a book that has shaped your life that’s not on the list below, please share it with me.

6 lessons from Churchill’s biography

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Churchill

Churchill is widely admired for his courage and leadership. Would you not want to read about a man who is described by a biographer (Paul Johnson) as follows: 

Of all the towering figures of the twentieth century, both good and evil, Winston Churchill was the most valuable to humanity, and also the most likable. […] None hold more lessons, […] How to seize eagerly on all opportunities, physical, moral and intellectual. How to dare greatly, to reinforce success, and to put the inevitable failures behind you. And how, while pursuing vaulting ambition with energy and relish, to cultivate also friendship, generosity, compassion and decency.

Here are 6 lessons on life from Churchill’s biography:

Dedicate yourself fully to an activity. As a teenager Churchill discovered that he had a love for words. Attracted by the adventure of joining battles, Churchill decided to try to report on a war in India. Spending most of his twenties traveling all around the world reporting from the front lines, war-reporting became Churchill’s obsession (paraphrasing Drew Houston, Churchill found his tennis ball). Later Churchill would throw himself with comparable vigour into other activities.

Build different ways to express yourself. “Politics never occupied his whole attention and energies. He had an astonishing range of activities to provide him with relief, exercise, thrills, fun and money.”

Churchill was dismissed from his position as Admiral in the British navy by prime minister Asquith at the start of WW1. Churchill found himself suddenly with no daily responsibilities, which had a disastrous effect on his mental state (his wife thought “he would die of grief”). Inspired by a friend, Churchill picked up painting. Painting became a deep passion, since “while you are painting you can think of nothing else.” I think it is critical to develop activities that you enjoy outside your work – all the more so in a future where fewer people have jobs. In what ways do you express yourself? 

Go where the action is. “Churchill began his plan of campaign to make himself famous, or at least conspicuous. But if you sat still, expecting wars to come to you, you might be starved of action. You had to go to the wars. That became Churchill’s policy.”

Churchill built up a reputation by fighting in the front lines – he did not stay in the UK. After returning from his war journeys, he quickly built a network in London with people in the House of Commons, as his aspirations were to become a politician.  “All his life he refused to be bound to a desk. He insisted on seeing for himself.”

Rise after you fall. Churchill was fired from his official position more than three times and lost many personal battles (he lost all his money on multiple occasions). Yet he never let his head hang (for too long). After he was dismissed as Admiral of the Navy, he found a way to participate in a battle on land. He was humiliated badly in the House of Commons but fought his way back into politics.

Do not take yourself to seriously. “We are all worms. But I really think I am a glow worm.”

Share your work. “This was his first book, and he sent a copy to the Prince of Wales, who wrote him a delightful letter of thanks, praised it to the skies, and recommended it to all his friends.”