What I Read in 2022
2022 was the ninth(!) year that I’ve kept track of my book consumption. I’m still trying to get better at capturing even just some brief thoughts/impressions about what I read (especially the fiction,...
View ArticleRules to Live By
Summarized from the epilogue of Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman, itself a pretty compelling read that summarizes the real world flaws and scholarship foibles of most negative...
View ArticleOn Building
Highlights from Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell (who led the teams for the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Learning Thermostat): On the need to divide decisions into two...
View ArticleThe Negativity Tendency
Hans Rosling gave an amazingly popular TED talk back in 2006 (and many other popular talks since). You may have seen it. It’s the one showing recent human progress by following counties over time as a...
View ArticleExcellent Advice for Living
2. Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points. 12. Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes. These gems from the original 68 bits of unsolicited advice have joined...
View ArticleWhere Have All the Great Works Gone?
From Tanner Greer’s The Scholar’s Stage: The professionalization of intellectual pursuit is another problem. Melville would never have written Moby Dick if he had spent years enrolled in an MFA program...
View ArticleThe Nudge Manifesto
From the free ebook A Manifesto for Applying Behavioral Science from the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team: The other concern is that [behavorial science] theories can make specific predictions, but they...
View ArticlePoor Charlie’s Almanack
In honor of the late great Charlie Munger, Stripe Press has his popular book (mental models, decision-making, stuff like this) available for free online in both a well-formatted browser-based ebook and...
View ArticleWhat I Read in 2023
2023 is the tenth year of sharing my reading list. (The blog is also turning 15(!). I am…aging. Here are the prior years: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. The Subtle Art of Not...
View ArticleProductivity is a Trap
A little over a year ago, I found Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals to be one of the most excerpt-able books I’d read in a while. In it, Burkeman describes cosmic...
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