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There are too many books to read, and not enough time to even make a dent in all the good ones.

At my current run rate of a book every two weeks, and assuming I live an average lifespan, I’ve got about 1,000 books left.

So it’s important to make good decisions on which books make the cut.

This means being ruthless. If a book doesn’t resonate, the rational thing is to stop reading it.

But I, along with many others, suffer from sunk cost bias. We feel committed to finishing a book, regardless of how bad it is, because we’ve either paid for it, or simply because we started reading it.

If you read on Kindle, however, there is a simple way to overcome this problem, and it’s a method I’ll be using in 2020 to make better reading decisions.

If there is a book that catches your attention, download the free Kindle Sample. After reading the first few chapters, and if its message still resonates strongly, buy the book.

It may also be helpful to catalogue which books you decide not to read, and why you chose not to read it. A book that isn’t right for you today, may be just what you need in the future.

H/T Russell for this idea

As 2019 is coming to a close, I wanted to share my reading list for the year.

The list is sorted by how likely I recommend each book, and is accompanied by my short thoughts on each.

Enjoy!

All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I don’t go there – Peter Bevelin: 9/10

Bevelin artfully weaves 40+ years of transcripts and interviews from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger into a treatise on uncommon common sense. He delivers the wisdom as a conversation between the fictional ‘Seeker’, Buffett, Munger, and a Librarian. I’ve already re-read it.

Sapiens – Noah Yuval Harari: 9/10

An extraordinary summary of human history from the cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago, to the scientific revolution 500 years ago. It puts human progress into stunning perspective, and it reads like fiction.

Longitude – Dava Sobel: 9/10

This book was such a delight to read. Sobel deftly unfolds the story of John Harrison; the unlikeliest of scientific heroes. For hundreds of years, no one could establish how to measure longitude. Thousands died at sea due to poor navigation. The brightest minds, including Isaac Newton, thought the solution lay in the stars. However, John Harrison, a humble carpenter from rural England stunned the world by solving the problem with his watches that never lost the time.

Improv Wisdom – Patricia Ryan Madson: 8/10

Lessons for a happier and more fulfilled life from the world of improv theatre; there is much we can learn from this vulnerable theatre sport. I recommend the audiobook version so you can benefit from Madson’s delivery.

Pebbles of Perception – Lawrence Endersen: 8/10

An inspiring collection of ideas on making good life decisions. Endersen writes from a calm and centred perspective, and I lapped up the wisdom shared in this book. It also inspired this post.

Do the Work – Steven Pressfield: 8/10

Pressfield is a magician. Central to all his work is the idea of Resistance, and how we must overcome it in order to do our best work. If you’re new to Pressfield, you should start with The War of Art before turning to Do the Work.

The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holiday: 8/10

Stoic philosophy has resonated with me since reading Seneca’s ‘On the Shortness of Life‘ in 2014. However, Holiday has introduced Stoicism to a mainstream audience, and has done a great job at pioneering the pop-stoic culture. The central idea of the book is we may not control what happens to us, but we do have the ability to control our perception of those events, how we respond to them, and how we accept what we cannot change.

Bad Blood – John Carreyrou: 7/10

A cutting depiction of the dramatic downfall of Theranos, and the Silicon Valley darling, Elizabeth Holmes. Stunningly researched. Artfully told. As you read it, it feels like you’re watching Holmes deceive investors and put thousands of lives at risk with her lies about medical technology that never existed.

How to Stay Motivated – Zig Ziglar: 7/10

Ziglar is the grandfather of motivational speaking and self-improvement; he paved the way for the Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, and Seth Godins of our time. Ziglar’s ideas extend beyond motivation and cover identity, self-worth, daily affirmations, and inspiring anecdotes. Best consumed via the audiobook. Zig is inimitable.

The Elements of Style – William Strunk Jr: 6/10

A classic, short text on writing well. I revisit it regularly in an attempt to help rid myself of bad habits. Axioms like, “Omit needless words,” help me daily.

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline: 6/10

A fast-paced sci-fi gem. Never a dull moment, with likeable characters and classic 80s references carrying the story.

Legacy – James Kerr: 6/10

Widely regarded at the best insight into the psychology and practices of the world’s most successful sports team, the All Blacks. The behind the scenes access is unparalleled, especially the insight into practices off the training field that contribute to on-field performances.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work – David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried: 6/10

I needed this book this year. It’s a collection of ideas around what work should be, from the remarkable founders of software firm, Basecamp. It reminded me of the importance of a healthy mind, body, and home in enabling me to be my best self at work.

Superthinking – Gabriel Weinberg: 6/10

If you’re searching for a primer on mental models, this is your book. It weaves the explanation of hundreds of mental models into a narrative like structure. Better as an introduction rather than a study resource.

The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu: 5/10

This was my first experience of Chinese science fiction, and it didn’t disappoint. Set against the backdrop of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it’s a tale of an academic’s journey to unearth the story behind an imminent alien invasion.

The Algebra of Happiness – Scott Galloway: 5/10

This is Galloway’s manifesto for a good life, taken from his annual 3 hour lecture to students in their final year at NYU. Galloway has become a respected critic of technology companies due to his distinct style, and he brings the same unapologetic, witty, and brash attitude to this book. You’re certain to disagree with some of his ideas, but you have to respect his boldness.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos – Jordan Peterson: 5/10

I like the simplicity and clarity of Peterson’s 12 rules, along with his strong convictions. However, he takes the long way round to get to the point, whereas I gravitate towards direct and plainly written texts. Still ranked at 5/10 due to the underlying ideas.

The Four-hour Body – Tim Ferriss: 5/10

I used Tim Ferriss’ Slo-Carb diet, outlined in this book, to lose 8 kilograms and reduce my body fat by 5% pts. In particular, I found the concept of having one “cheat day” per week, where I can eat all my favourite foods, to be a psychological superpower in helping me achieve my health goals. However, I recommend it as 5/10 because this book won’t be helpful to the majority of people, unless you’re deliberately seeking to make drastic changes to your diet to achieve body recomposition objectives.

How to Fight a Hydra – Joshua Kaufman: 5/10

This was a fun book. A fable that serves as a great metaphor for taking on any ambitious task or project.

The Great Mental Models – Shane Parrish: 5/10

This is the antithesis to Weinberg’s Superthinking. Parrish covers 9 ‘general thinking’ mental models in great detail, but I prefer the vast collection of articles on his website Farnam Street. This is the first volume in a five part series.

The Decision Book – Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler: 5/10

A collection of 50 decision making principles and concepts to improve and better understand yourself and others. A number of concepts felt immediately applicable to my life, and I’m sure each reader will feel certain principles jump out at them in the same way.

The One Thing – Gary Keller: 4/10

There is only ever One Thing that’s important at any given moment. Our workflow should be designed around creating time to focus on that One Thing. Everything else is irrelevant and can be done later.

The Four – Scott Galloway: 3/10

A clear summary of the impact Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have had on our economies, job prospects, attention, purchasing habits, and culture. The most enjoyable part are the charts and anecdotes illustrating the unbelievable scale of these companies.

Traction – Gabriel Weinberg: 3/10

A good primer on the 19 channels you can use to rapidly scale your business. However, it missed the obvious: you can focus on growth channels all you want, but you can’t grow a business that doesn’t yet have Product/Market Fit, which is when a product resonates with a widespread set of customers and solves a real need.

Blitzscaling – Reid Hoffman: 2/10

The IPO class of 2019 proves that the traditional Venture Capital strategy (piling huge amounts of money into companies with unsustainable business models in the hope they become a monopoly) has been proven wrong. Yet, this is the entire premise of Blitzscaling. The book came out in late 2018, and just like James Cameron’s Avatar, I don’t think it’ll age well. The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing.

CDs haven’t aged well. I personally haven’t used one in 3 years, nor have I seen one in an office since 2014.

Which is why I was surprised to find the paper shredder at work, which is less than 2 years old, with a built in CD shredder.

This odd feature, in a relatively new appliance, got me thinking about product design and the risks we take when we ship to market.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes the thing we make will become obsolete earlier than we expected.

We may have a theory about which technologies will persist, and which will fade, but we’ll never get it right all the time.

Regardless, the important thing is to keep creating.

Our only obligation should be to produce the best that we can, with the information we have, put it out into the world, and react graciously when the world changes and proves us right or wrong.

Interested in knowing your carbon footprint?

I’m proud of one our teams at Bulb that recently launched a beta carbon calculator. Through this tool consumers can 1) better understand their emissions, and 2) offset them.

The biggest element of my carbon footprint is annual travel to see family in New Zealand. It’s more than my food, daily transport, and clothing emissions combined.

I’m not willing to give up seeing family, but it does help me think about my annual carbon footprint in a different light. It makes me question if there are other things I can do to lower my emissions.

Note: Bulb’s carbon calculator is currently optimised for a UK home, but it still works pretty well if you live elsewhere.

When Bishop James Jones gave the farewell address to a Liverpool school’s graduating class, he bucked the trend.

He didn’t ask them to follow their dreams.

He didn’t recommend they try to be the best they could be.

He simply asked them to be fair, and in doing so, help make the world a fairer place.

He acknowledged this wouldn’t make them rich or famous, but their instant applause told him he’d struck a chord. A chord resonating with duty, respect, and integrity.

His departing words were, “Be fair, and all else will fall into place.”

That’s a nice one to ponder upon.

An old colleague of mine spent his 5 year PhD programme researching the economics of happiness.

Over lunch one day, I asked him what he’d learnt. Without hesitation, he replied, “There was only one thing that was proven time and again as the biggest controllable factor in our happiness: our commute.”

And sure enough, for as long as I’ve known him, he’s lived a short 10 minute stroll from his office.

This could be a post about commuting, or it could be one about practising what you preach.

I’ll let you decide.

One of my favourite books this year was ‘Improv Wisdom’ by Patricia Ryan Madson, a professor of drama and improvisation at Stanford for 28 years.

As it turns out, we can learn a lot about how to live a happy and fulfilled life from improvised theatre.

One particular phrase stood out to me. Patricia encouraged all her students to “make at least one ego-crushing mistake per class.”

Improv theatre is about saying “yes” to the suggestions of those sharing the stage with us. It’s a willingness to try something new. It’s the self-awareness to know that some ideas will fail miserably, and that’s okay.

If we’re not trying anything new, if we don’t risk making an ego-crushing mistake, we’ll never break new ground. This is true in theatre, in work, and in life.

In our team room, I put up this poster that details 24 cognitive biases that can stuff up your thinking. It’s a fun resource that has sparked laughter and interesting conversations among our team.

It also serves as a helpful safety check for decision making.

Although we try to be objective, us humans naturally take shortcuts.

For day-to-day decisions, shortcuts are helpful. For example, it’d be crazy to perform a cost-benefit analysis on which type of milk to buy each time we find ourselves at the supermarket.

However, for complex decisions, shortcuts in the form of cognitive biases can lead us dangerously astray.

One example is Confirmation Bias, which is when we seek out data that proves our existing beliefs, and ignore information that disproves our world view.

By creating a playful atmosphere to learn about cognitive biases, we give ourselves and our teams a licence to call out when they crop up in our daily work.

Jeff Bezos learnt a profound lesson about kindness when he was 10 years old.

Jeff’s grandmother was a smoker, and having recently heard how many minutes a single cigarette shaved off one’s life, he calculated she’d lost 9 years due to smoking.

Proud of his quick mental maths, he told her, but was surprised when she burst into tears.

His grandfather pulled him aside and said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

This story helps me reflect on the teachers, friends, family, and managers who’ve been gracious when I missed the point or made a mistake. They opted for kindness when lauding their cleverness over me was the easy option. I’m a better person due to their patience and coaching.

Of course logic, facts, and figures will always be welcome, but it’s helpful to remember we’re all just humans seeking the same kindness, respect, and support from each other.

Every time author, Bob Goff, catches a flight, he buys a big bag of M&Ms and gives them to the flight staff.

He’s not expecting anything in return, or special treatment of any kind, but he swears the mood on each flight is measurably lighter than without the M&Ms.

Of course, M&Ms don’t have superpowers. But thoughtful and unexpected gestures of gratitude do have the power to change the mood of a flight, home, team, or workplace.

My part-time jobs were immensely valuable.

I never earned much, but they taught me about what kind of work I wanted to do, and what kind to stay away from.

One of the weirder jobs I had in my first year of University was being a Singing Telegram.

Here’s how it worked.

I’d get an email from my boss with the following things:

1. A location and time,
2. A short description of my costume (to be picked up from a hire store), and
3. Some personal and funny details (including favourite songs) about the recipient of the Singing Telegram

After receiving this email, I’d have 2-3 days to pick one of their favourite songs, re-write it to include funny details about them, turn up at a party in costume, and surprise serenade them.

Those who bought Singing Telegrams were almost always co-workers farewelling a colleague, or a maid-of-honour organising a bridal shower.

I still remember turning up to bridesmaids’ dinner at an Auckland restaurant dressed in a chicken costume and singing a horrid remake of ‘Hey Jude’.

But the magic it didn’t last long.

I was paid by the job, so some napkin maths quickly revealed I was only making $6 an hour for a service comprised of personalised song writing, extensive travel, and sonic delivery. For reference, this was $3 below minimum wage.

Regardless, I’m so grateful I had this experience. I got to be creative each week, I got comfortable with regularly facing fear and stage fright, and I found my resolve to pursue a career of high leverage; which is doing work with the aim of impacting a large number of people.

I’ve got a bank of other weird part-time job stories, like being a perfume salesman for Chanel, but that’s for another time.

I hope this post helps you reflect on, and perhaps laugh about, the weird part-time jobs you had before you levelled up to “real life”.

Back in October, I posted about how we’re growing an oak tree in our home.

At the time, Carlos (that’s his name) was an acorn with a tiny sprouting taproot.

Two months later, and he’s made insane progress.

In fact, his growth has been so rapid there have been days where we’ve measurably seen his roots extending and leaves budding.

Despite this progress, if he were to be planted outside in his current state, he’d be eaten in a hot second by a squirrel or mouse.

He is immensely vulnerable, but has all the potential to be something enduring and strong one day.

Perhaps the reason why I like Carlos so much is the metaphor the acorn and the oaktree represent for our own lives, learning, and growth.

Finally, here’s a small collage of the journey he’s been on over the past 2 months.

If a car in dense traffic slows down, it causes the car behind it to slow down even more. This leads to a ripple effect that spreads backward through a lane of traffic.

This is called a phantom jam. No accident or roadworks caused it, but its impact can be felt for up to an hour.

The physics of a traffic jam are easy to understand. We’ve all likely been in one, and can imagine how one car can impact others down the line.

However, the phantom jams in our places of work are harder to see; but they do exist.

Sales may overpromise. Technology may fail. Operations may miss a key process.

An imperceptible delay or mistake by one team can prevent another from playing their part.

Although we can’t prevent jams from happening, we can leave home a little earlier, or start that project a little sooner, in an attempt to avoid the jam altogether.

My favourite way to commute around London is at the top of a red double decker bus.

I still get excited to sit at the front and admire London’s heritage buildings and tree-lined streets from the wide windscreen.

Whichever city you’re waking up in today, there is something about your commute to be grateful for.

That short walk to the bus stop, the carpool lane to skip the jam, the mini heaters placed on train station ceilings, or maybe that podcast that has you laughing the whole way to work.

There’s always something.

We spend a lot of time commuting, so it’s mostly put into the ‘dull’ and ‘uneventful’ category. However, it’s a good habit to think kindly of it every now and then. After all, our commutes allow us to earn, live, and contribute.

There is a crossfade feature in music players like Spotify and Apple Music. This is where the final seconds of the finishing song are blended with the first seconds of the queued one; supposedly creating a smooth transition.

I was excited to try this feature when it first came out, but it quickly frustrated me. And it took me about a week to figure out why.

When I was young, a piano teacher helped me understand that music is largely the creation and resolution of tension. For example, a minor chord can feel uncomfortable to the listener, but all feels right again when the song returns home to the root major chord.

When the crossfade happens, we miss the resolution.

However, the song feels complete when we get to hear the ending the artist intended.

The same is also true for the art we make, the projects we lead, the stories we tell, and the music we play. They deserve resolutions, yet they’re so easily drowned out by the next idea off the rank; we barely finish one project before picking up the next.

We don’t need to hurry right away to the next thing. There is joy to be found in eliminating the crossfade.