Books
Notes on what I've read and how these ideas have shaped my thinking.
A dialogue-driven book that uses Adlerian psychology to argue that happiness is a choice, trauma doesn't determine your future, and the freedom to live your own life requires the courage to be disliked.
Key Learning:
All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. Separation of tasks is the key to freedom — what others think of you is not your task.
Ben Horowitz's raw account of building and running startups through crisis, layoffs, and near-death moments. No inspirational platitudes — just war stories and hard-won judgment.
Key Learning:
There's no playbook for the hard moments in leadership. The only thing that prepares you is experience — and the willingness to face reality before it forces you to.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks. Cal Newport argues it's becoming rare and valuable at exactly the same time — which makes it the superpower of the knowledge economy.
Key Learning:
High Quality Work = Time Spent × Intensity of Focus. Don't take breaks from distraction — take breaks from focus. Your capacity for deep work is limited each day. Protect it. When you work, work hard. When you're done, be done.
Every life has stories worth telling. The best ones are personal, honest, and show change over time. Matthew Dicks makes the case that storytelling isn't performance — it's the most direct route to human connection.
Key Learning:
A story must reflect change. You start as one version of yourself and end as another. Tell it like you'd tell it at dinner — unprepared, unrehearsed. The audience doesn't want a performance. They want to feel like they're being told something real by someone being honest.