Recently Read Books
A collection of books I've read and my takeaways from them
Last Updated: May 2024
Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline
by Peter Hollins
Finish What You Start is a unique deep dive into the psychology and science of accomplishment, productivity, and getting things done. It takes a thorough look why we are sometimes stuck, and gives detailed, step by step solutions you can start using today. Every phase of finishing and following through is covered, and even productivity pros will be able to learn something new.
The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship Paperback
by David Whyte
[David Whyte] encourages readers to reimagine how they inhabit the worlds of love, work, and self-understanding. Whyte suggests that separating these 'marriages' in order to balance them is to destroy the fabric of happiness itself. Drawing from his own struggles and the lives of some of the world's great writers and artists-from Dante to Jane Austen to Robert Louis Stevenson-Whyte explores the ways these core commitments are connected.
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
by Siddharth Kara
Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves.
Do You Remember Being Born?: A Novel
by Sean Michaels
Do You Remember Being Born? is a novel about the nature of memory and the ways in which we define ourselves by our pasts. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell others, and the ways in which these stories can come to define us.
Time Off: A Practical Guide to Building Your Rest Ethic and Finding Success Without the Stress
by by John Fitch (Author), Max Frenzel (Author), Mariya Suzuki (Illustrator)
Time Off: A Practical Guide to Building Your Rest Ethic and Finding Success Without the Stress reveals how history’s greatest minds, as well as some of the most successful leaders, thinkers, and creatives of today, found success by practicing a more balanced approach to work and life.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
by Oliver Burkeman
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.
Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours
by Noah Kagan
Now is the best time in history for entrepreneurship. More than ever, the world needs new businesses and it’s cheaper than ever to create them. And, let’s be frank: most day jobs suck. People spend too much time doing too much work for too little money—and they know it. They want out.
It's Not About You
by Tom Rath
Life is not about you. It’s about what you do for others. That’s the realization that has driven Tom Rath—the mega-bestselling expert in self-development research—to evolve his focus from one’s inward search for strength to the larger outward search for purposeful contribution to others.
Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business
by Paul Jarvis
What if the real key to a more fulfilling career was not to scale up but to work for yourself and become a successful and sustainable company of one? This book offers a refreshingly original business strategy that’s focused on a commitment to being better instead of bigger.
Talk to Strangers: The Yes Theory Story
by Matt Dahia
In this memoir, Matt reveals the extreme highs and lows of Yes Theory, sharing his own along the way. It’s a reminder to ask yourself that most important question: what do you want out of life?
Thinking In Systems
by Donella H. Meadows
Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual
by Yvon Chouinard
Yvon Chouiniard shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.
Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire
by Dan Martell
How you use your free time will make or break your success. The secret? It’s not about working harder or finding more time to do work. It’s about designing the freedom to engage in the high-value work that brings you energy and fulfillment.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Memoir
by William Finnegan
Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character
by Richard P. Feynman
Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets―and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories
Burn the Boats: Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential
by Matt Higgins
Matt Higgins provides the blueprint he used to go from a desperate sixteen-year-old high school dropout caring for his sick mother in Queens, New York, to a shark on Shark Tank and the faculty of Harvard Business School.
The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Work and Life
by Paul Millerd
Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries and the goodwill of people from around the world, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to the good life and all of the existential crises in between.
The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World
by Stephen Mansfield
This book is an amazing, true story of how the Guinness family used its wealth and influence to touch millions during a dark age.