As this year comes to a conclusion, it’s worth looking back on some of the highlights of the year! 2021 has arguably been more kind than 2020. Whereas 2020 shook many of us to our core, we knew not to set unrealistic expectations for 2021.
But if you look back on the last 12 months, I hope you can look back with a smile on how much you have grown. I certainly can. One way to judge how much you have grown is by how foolish you looked 1 year ago from today’s POV. Another concrete way is by the content you consumed: books you read.
In this post, the first of three, I will be sharing the first 10 books I read this year. Perhaps you may see 1 or 2 books already recommended to you by a friend before. This will be the divine sign to go read that book.
But what if you don’t read often? No worries. I will zero in on the 3 books I learned from the most!
The 10 books:
Essentialism - Greg Mckeown
Facebook: The Inside Story - Steven Levy
The Year in Tech 2021 - Harvard Business Review
Everything is F*cked - Mark Manson
The First 20 Hours - Josh Kaufman
Becoming - Michelle Obama
How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie
Linchpin- Seth Godin
Teaches Writing - Malcolm Gladwell (a Masterclass)
The Secrets of Sand Hill Road - Scott Kupor
Essentialism - Greg Mckeown
McKeown’s Essentialism has had a profound impact on my thinking this year. I really enjoyed it because everyone can relate to and come to similar conclusions about the necessity of essentialism. That word. Necessity.
We all know that we are now inundated with so much information, options, and decisions today compared to a few decades ago. This is good for many reasons. We now have more choice and agency — freedom. We also live objectively better lives than kings and queens from just a century ago.
However, the issue is that our waking time in a day and capacity for attention have not increased proportionally. So we now have even more candidates for our attention and time.
The nature of our environment is what therefore necessitates prioritization. We have to allocate time and attention: Say No more often.
It takes a while for this truth to settle. It’s easy to ignore this idea by thinking it’s only for productivity gurus who want to squeeze every second out of the day. But that’s not true. In fact, the whole point of saying No more often is to be able to say Yes to the things we really care about. Like Thinking and Play.
McKeown gives us two reasons to say no more often. He recommends creating time to think freely. This is rooted in productivity because the most important thing knowledge workers say they need to do is think, and it’s precisely what they’re hindered from doing by pointless meetings in many workplaces.
The second reason is to play. In a world where we’re so consistently overwhelmed, we need some respite. Some time to be able to trivialize things. McKeown explains how free-form play helps reduce stress and spur creativity in the book.
To appreciate the depth of his argument, and other important points in the book, you have to read it yourself. In fact, if I can only recommend one book on my list it would be this book. Anyone can relate to the following takeaways from the book and more:
Say No more often (and kindly) so you can say fewer but more meaningful YES’s
A nonessentialist asks “How can I do it all?“.
An essentialist asks “What one thing can I go big on?“
Make time for sleep
Get more done by doing less.
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How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie
This book is cheesy by convention, I have to admit. But I don’t like to follow convention blindly. What I like about “How to win friends and influence people“ is that it gives practical pointers on how to be a nice person. Being nice is not always obvious or easy. Try to honestly judge yourself on each of these takeaways to see what I mean.
Give honest and sincere appreciation
Become genuinely interested in other people
It’s commonly said that interesting people are interested people.
Smile
Remember names.
Refer to the bizarreness effect for help here.
Talk in terms of others interests
What’s most useful here is to spend time thinking about what the other person wants. We often, by default, think about “what can I get“ instead of “what can I contribute”
Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
Avoid arguments: can you guarantee to be right more than 75% of the time?
This one is a personal favorite, mostly because I’m argumentative by nature.
If you can’t remember a few arguments where you were wrong recently, it’s not because you’ve gotten smarter. Au contraire, it’s because you can’t see your own blind spots.
When wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
Rather than argue, admit you’re wrong frequently and ask them questions to better understand.
Explain that they are right in certain circumstances for sure but explore why this case might be different.
Both for yourself and others: if you want to see a virtue, assume you/they already have it and complement them as such.
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Linchpin- Seth Godin
I am still comprehending this book. Even the definition of a linchpin — someone who combines passion and art to create something of value — feels unclear. So to explain the lessons from this book, I will show you how I applied some of the lessons to Deep Dives.
The worth of your contribution lies not in your ability to create value but in actually creating the value
At the end of 2020, I was at home in Nigeria spending time with my family before returning to school. I felt great uneasiness because Impact is a personally important value to me, but on my average day/week at school, I wasn’t tangibly impacting my immediate community. There was a gap between who I thought I was and what I was actually doing.
Having good intentions is not enough, it must be followed with good actions. This newsletter is my way of breaching the gap. It’s my way of contributing.
Seek out achievements where there are no limits
In school, you get a 100% on a math test and that’s the apex. There’s no better than 100%. But in life, the most impactful jobs and tasks are not always so gradable. the quality of a Deep Dives post is not easily gradable.
This is because some art and creativity are involved. How do you grade a great CEO? By the company’s net income? stock price? employee satisfaction?
How about a great engineer? Do you grade by the number of lines of code? Space used by the program? Engineering hours saved? Character?
The only way to prove, as opposed to asserting, that you are an indispensable linchpin is to show not tell. Projects are the new resumes.
This goal of having something to show and not tell is only partly responsible for my motivation. The way I see it I need to prove to myself (and partly others) that I can think critically about technology and business topics.
Step 1 of that process is to admit I am not as good as I think. Then Step 2 is then to learn by writing posts like “Artificial Intelligence 101, but in 20 years“ and “Youtube vs Spotify: why markets matter“.
Shipping is the collision of your work and the outside world. You want to head in the direction of the resistance. It’s all about shipping: displaying your work publicly.
There’s something about being vulnerable and putting Deep Dives post out there that forces me to raise my performance and be consistent. After all, my name is on it.
From one of my favorite Paul Graham essays:
"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
Being a linchpin is about giving gifts not receiving
According to this book, a Linchpin cares about producing great work that is impactful to the recipient. So dear reader, you simply glossing over these words, experiencing this post, and hopefully learning a thing or two is all it takes to keep me going.
I hope you can look back on a lot of growth in your year too!
Thanks once again. Have been watching the Essentialism videos recently, was glad to see it as your top 10. Will definitely be reading it soon!