Reading list 2018

After a slow start in 2017, I got to a few more books in 2018. I’m highly satisfied with the outcome regarding my learning, my acquired inspiration, and generally the selection I made to invest my limited reading time.

I started with A Second Chance: For You, For Me, And For The Rest Of Us by Catherine Hoke. It’s a fascinating story of Catherine believing in people that are at the bottom of their life, often 20 years or more in a high security prison. She brings them back to society. Not only in a safe way, but also making them successful entrepreneurs of small businesses.

A Beautiful Constraint : How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s Everyone’s Business by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden was an inspiration read on how to frame challenges differently. It taught me to avoid seeing constraints as excuses to not pursue the next adventure, but instead see them from a different angle and leverage them to my advantage.

Start With Why by Simon Sinek is a classic based on his famous TED talk. As expected, the book isn’t revealing anything new. That said, I found it worthwhile time spent to inhale more of this simple, yet compelling idea by reading through a long list of good and bad examples.

Talking about “why” – I then moved on to understanding why the young generation needs to find purpose in everything they do. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink puts it in a usable framework. Valid for every generation. But especially good for dealing with the younger one.

The hardest read from a pure “understanding English” (which is my second language) was Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. It took me a while to digest his ideas. But ever since I’m defining my infinite games and actually started to pursue some of them.

Then, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown got recommended to me, and I’d say it was the most influential book in 2018 for me personally. It’s a lot about saying “no” to clutter and “full commitment” to what’s essential in your life.

Another big one was Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker. Bill Gates mentions it as his new favorite book of all time. It adjusted my world view towards being more optimistic about where the world is heading. It’s towards less children dying after birth, less illiteracy world wide, better medication for the poor or many more people getting out of poverty.

Back to reality, Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick by Ken Iverson is a convincing story why working smarter over the course of decades outperforms those who look at short-term profit and squeezing out every penny of their employees. It’s about the believe in people and leveraging their will and motivation.

I hesitated for a while, but then still jumped onto It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. I followed Jason Fried for a while already, and I’m working in an environment that isn’t crazy by many of those means. Still, it contained a lot of useful hints on how to do better, and again, believe in the individual.

Ok, too much philosophy, let’s do something for real. Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth by John Doerr presents a 25 year old concept that John Doerr brought to Google and many other companies. The forword by Larry Page, as well as a recommendation by Bill Gates, gives this concept and book additional weight. While the concept is an old hat, it’s revamping goal setting into an easy to understand and execute framework.

The year couldn’t have ended with more insight into the meaing of life than reading Man’s Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust by Viktor E Frankl. If you’re searching for purpose, or simply want to get reminded of the darker times almost a century ago, reading Frankl’s stories from his 5 years of imprisonment in concentration camps is putting everything you do into a different perspective.

Podcasts

During my commute, podcasts work better than reading. I started to listen to Akimbo by Seth Godin, which enhances Seth’s daily inspiration with a weekly 30min talk. Some of the talks from The Knowledge Project by Farnam Street are really twisting my perspective on our world. And Adam Grant interviewed a set of interesting people in WorkLife.

So what’s coming in 2019?

At the time of this writing, I already completed All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin (no, I’m not switching jobs). To move on, I’m thinking of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Yuval Noah Harari), Principles: Life and Work (Ray Dalio), Mandela’s Way: Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage (Richard Stengel), The Infinite Game (Simon Sinek) and many more. What are your recommendations for me? Contact me, or tweet a reply.