_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/Note: This is a work in progress and this is not an exhaustive list.
Leadership
First, Break All the Rules |
Who |
One Minute Manager |
If you only read one book on leadership that I've recommended, make it First, Break All the Rules. Gallup did an amazing job with the research that went into this book, my copy has over 75 pages devoted to apendices. This book is about spending the majority of your effort improving strengths rather than weaknesses, both on an organizational and individual level. It's about talents, enabling others to succeed, and so much more. |
Who is all about answering your most important question, "Who?". Who do you hire? Who do you keep on your team? The interview styles and processes in this book are a large part of what allowed me to build an amazing team of A Players, and shoudl be mandatory reading for anyone that will sit in on an interview. |
Okay, so this book is about four times longer than it needs to be, at least. But it's still a quick read, and the mostly entertaining story delivers some exceptional principals. If you can't remember the last time you "caught someone doing something right", put this on your to read list. |
Personal Growth and Development
Mastery |
Atomic Habits |
Why We Sleep |
To get the most out of any other growth or self-improvement oriented book, read this first. Before taking a class to start learning a new skill, read this first. Mastery is a book about how to learn. Or to put it more titularly, how to achieve Mastery. In this short read, you'll learn to enjoy your practice for practice's sake. You'll see yourself and your old abandoned hobbies with a new perspective, and get to know the plateau like a well-loved old friend. While While We Sleep may have made the greatest difference in my raw available energy, this book was essential to learning how to best direct it. The flight I read this book on changed my life immeasurably for the better. |
Atomic Habits provides an interesting and useful look into how we form and maintain habits. The single most useful thing I got out of the book was the idea of habit chaining. Basically, if you want to do something every day you can "chain" it onto a habit you're already doing. So if I wanted to, say, stretch 15 minutes every morning, and I'm already making my bed every morning, I can tell myself that as soon as I finish making my bed, I'm going to stretch for 15 minutes. For reasons better described by the author, I'll be much more likely to form my desired habit than if I just tried to stretch for 15 minutes at 8:30am, or at no particular time at all. That's just one of the really cool ways to make a habit stick that are outlined in the book, and if you're looking to get better at doing something regulary, it's worth it to you to check out. |
This may not surprise anyone that has known me a long time, but I'm not sure sleep and I ever got along particularly well for the first 30 years or so of my life. At the end of my 20's, I could have counted the number of times I fell asleep on the same calendar day that I woke up on one hand. As a result, it wouldn't take me too many more fingers to count the number of times I got 8+ hours of sleep per night. Then, I read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD. When Walker(him, not me) was working on a theory about dementia for his Neurophysiology PhD, he learned that there was not a good understanding of sleep or why we do it. He took a position at Harvard and ultimately made it his life's focus.
If I were to give anyone advice on what they could do to take it to the next level personally or professionally, it would be this: Learn what enough sleep is and obtain it consistently. With the distilled information from 20 years of studies in the book providing both reasons and methods to sleep longer and more consistently, I've been able to make a huge difference in both my quality of sleep and quality of life. I highly recommend it to everyone, even those of you that may think you're already sleeping well enough. |
Finance and Investing
A Random Walk Down Wall Street |
The Richest Man in Babylon | |
A very punny title for the mathematically inclined, and great data-driven investment advice. If you know you need to invest but don't know what to invest in, or unhappy with your portfolio performance, this is the book for you! It goes over some complex investing ideas but presents them in a way that is digestible, and provides great advice for wherever you are in your own personal investing journey. |
This is another instance of "This book could be a pamphelet buy I'll forgive it because it's entertaining." A very short summary might be "Save 10% of your money and make it work for you." It's a great resource for very basic financial literacy and I highlighted on it in my 2020 Themes post. |
Computer Science
The Alignment Problem |
The Cuckoo's Egg | |
This was a really interesting read about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. It was fascinating to see how training an AI on a dataset could expose our own societal biases and produce undesirable yet representative results. I also really enjoyed learning about different reinforcement methods, and once again the pitfalls that occur due to computers doing exactly what you tell them to do rather than what you want them to do. Whether or not you enjoy AI or Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence is going to be a part of your future. This book provides a well presented behind the scenes view of how those systems are being built, and the immense amount of work required to keep them "fair" and ethical, as well as the why that is an important effor. |
If you're not familiar with Cliff Stoll's story that begins with trying to find the source of an accounting error and ends in the cybersecurity adventure of a lifetime, you're doing yourself a disservice. If you're into information security at all, no matter which team you're on, you'll find the story particularly enjoyable. It's hilarious, and perhaps a little frustrating seeing how many security issues that existed at the dawn of interconnecting networks persist through to this day. I won't say any more about the plot, as I'd hate to spoil it for someone that hasn't read it. This book was the catalyst for my career change and helped me re-realize my younger self's dream of being a hacker. |
Fiction
Cryptonomicon | ||
A fantastic, mostly technologically realistic story about cryptography that takes place over two different time periods from the perspective of many different characters. Due to the sheer number of perspectives and moving pieces, the exposition can take a long time and be somewhat confusing, but the payoff is well worth it in my opinion. Be warned that it's also a very long read, my copy is nearly 1200 pages. But if a long, well crafted narrative with tons of moving pieces sounds like something you'd enjoy, don't pass this one up! |
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