A thorough review of my top 13 reads
Last year I found more time to read than I had in the previous decade. A few contributing factors lead to this: I discovered audiobooks, I probably spent somewhere around a collective week on planes and in airports, I had a lot of alone time while travelling and I managed to finally lean into the life-changing magic of picking up a book instead of my iPhone when my thumb started to get bored! Most of all though, I started to genuinely enjoy reading and stopped viewing it as a chore. It’s amazing what good books can do to your appetite for reading.
A note added while editing: In writing this post, I realized how many of the books I read last year were all hovering around the same topic — to trust your intuition and lean into your gifts and talents.
I think one of the most impactful take aways I’ve gotten from all of the content I’ve read is just how short and fleeting life is. Even if you live a full, long life — it’s STILL SO SHORT! And we don’t even know if we will be that fortunate (cue: recent plane crash in Iran stealing so many wonderful, bright young minds from our world). All we can do is make the most true choices to ourselves in the present — not in a year from now, not in two years from now, and not when we’re “ready”.
These books reminded me of the Steve jobs quote about how he found the most powerful motivator to be facing his own mortality and asking, “If I died tomorrow, would I be happy doing what I’m doing today?”
I hope some of these reads can be a gentle reminder that our life is made up of the decisions we make, and the better we can get at making decisions which feel in alignment, the more meaningful our life will be.
A note on the layout of this article: Since this is a longer post, it might take a couple of sittings to get through, so I’ve included a Table of Contents to refer back to and use to navigate with. I listed my top 3 favourite books first, followed by my remaining top 10 reads, grouped based on topic. For each book, I included a few of my favourite quotes plus a summary of why I enjoyed the read. Feel free to read/skim/skip each one as you please, based on your own individuals areas of interest. Hopefully this list helps reset your literary hunger and inspires you to pick up a book you might not have otherwise! Enjoy!
Table of Contents:
My 3 favourite books
Man’s Search For Meaning The Four Hour Workweek 12 Rules for Life 10 more favourites (by topic):
Career/Life Advice:
Essentialism How Will You Measure Your Life The Happiness Equation The Third Door The Monk Who Sold Hid Ferrari Talking to Strangers
Autobiographies/Manifestos:
Principles When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead
Stories (fiction):
The Alchemist What Alice Forgot
My 3 favourite books:
Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl
Top highlights: “Pretend as though this is your second time living, and you lived the first time as wrong as you’re about to do so now.”
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you’re going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued, it must ensue. And it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater that oneself.”
“Happiness must happen. And the same goes for success. You have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience tells you to do, and I want you to carry that out to the best of your knowledge. And in the long run — in the long run — success will follow you.”
“The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, from hour to hour. Therefore, it’s not the specific meaning of life which matters but the specific meaning of life at a specific time for a specific person. It’s like asking a chess player what’s the best move in the world — there is no one answer.”
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfilment. Therein, he cannot be replaced nor can his life be repeated. Thus everyone’s task is as unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”
Why I loved it:
A short, but extremely powerful read — Man’s Search for Meaning should be a compulsory read for everyone, particularly those ages 18–25. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who spent the duration of WW2 in Auschwitz, the largest concentration and death camp during the war. He endured, and watched other prisoners endure, some of the most unimaginable suffering and pain in history, and throughout the process, he was tracking and observing the power of the human psyche to sustain suffering.
Frankl provokes introspection on what it means to live a life of meaning. He emphasizes that to obtain all of the things we aspire to — happiness, success, inner peace, etc. — we must do that which feels meaningful to us. We must look inward and answer the questions life is asking by taking responsibility for ourselves. That is the essence of logotherapy, one of the three core theories of psychology which are accepted today, and one that he discovered as a prisoner in Auschwitz. His insights are timeless and will undoubtedly aid generations to come in living more meaningful lives.
The Four Hour Workweek — Tim Ferriss
Top highlights
“People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”
“It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.”
“The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”. Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all”
“Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy consuming. It is easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s. If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.
Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve for yet another reason: Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal. Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.”
“Doubts invade the mind when nothing else fills it. Think of a time when you felt 100% alive and undistracted — in the zone. Chances are that it was when you were completely focused in the moment on something external: someone or something else. Sports and sex are two great examples. Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow, these doubts disappear.”
Why I loved it:
A little late to this party, I finally read the Four Hour Workweek this past summer after being a die-hard Tim Ferriss fan for about four years now. For some reason, I felt I was somewhat ‘above’ reading the book, since I had listened to many of his podcast episodes which touched on some of the main take-aways from the book. I was wrong. After reading it, I believe this is an essential read to this day (!!) for anyone who is feeling a bit daunted by the conventional career paths that seem to be looming in their future (think: the 9–5 lifestyle, or even higher demanding jobs like banking, consulting, articling, etc. which can often leave people unhappy and ‘burnt out’ after a few years).
The main narrative of this book follows Tim’s experience starting out as a Princeton undergraduate who had no interest in the jobs his friends were pursuing after graduation, leading him to work at start-ups for a few years before starting a successful business of his own. After pursuing entrepreneurship, he found himself burnt out within a few years, with no work-life balance and a tremendous amount of internal pressure to manage every aspect of his business. Through much creativity and discipline, he found a way to live cheaply abroad (as he says, you can live in Thailand for about 1/10th of the price of living in North America), automate as much of his business as possible and work from anywhere in the world with minimal hours of input each week.
He found that if you keep your burn rate low and ensure your income exceeds your expenses, you can live a retired-esque lifestyle in your prime years instead of working a job you hate for 40 years to spend your days lying on a beach at age 65+ when the most mobile, healthy and exciting years of your life have already passed. He calls those who live this lifestyle the “New Rich” and provides a multitude of actionable tactics on how to join the New Rich by moving towards a more productive, autonomous and remote lifestyle (even if you’re not self-employed).
This book does a really good job of shaking out our unconscious beliefs about what careers are ‘supposed to’ look like, and provides great advice on how to be more productive and gain more autonomy in whatever you do. Despite some of his technical business advice being slightly outdated (the book was written in 2006), the core principles of this book absolutely still apply today.
12 Rules for Life — Jordan B. Peterson
Top highlights:
“If we all live properly as individuals, together we will flourish.”
“What you aim at is what you see.”
“This is life. We build structures to live in. We build families and states and countries. We abstract the principles upon which those structures are founded to formulate systems of belief. At first, we inhabit those structures of belief like Adam and Eve in the garden of eden in paradise. But success makes us complacent. We forget to pay attention. We take what we have for granted. We turn a blind eye. We fail to notice that things are changing or that corruption is taking root. And everything begins to fall apart. Is that the fault of reality? Of god? Or do things fall apart because we have not paid sufficient attention.”
“Clean up your life. Start small. Have you taken full advantage of the opportunities offered to you? Do you have habits that are destroying your health and well being? Are you truly shouldering your responsibilities? Have you said what you need to say to your friends and family? Are there things that you could do that you know you could do that would make things around you better? … Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no here’s something to try: Start stopping what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is. Inopportune questioning can confuse without enlightening as well as deflecting you from action. You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why. Your entire being can tell you something that you can neither explain nor articulate. Every person is too complex to know themselves completely and we all contain wisdom that we cannot comprehend. So simply stop when you apprehend.”
“Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you can speak of with honour. You can use your own standards of judgement. You can rely on yourself for guidance.”
“Your head will start to clear up once you stop filling it with lies. Your experience will improve once you stop distorting it with inauthentic actions.”
“Rule 7: pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.”
“The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful: The successful sacrifice. The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.”
“The future can be made better if the proper sacrifices take place in the present. No other animal has figured this out. And it took us hundreds of thousands of years to do it. If you are disciplined, and privilege the future over the present, you can change the structure of reality in your favour.”
“There is no enlightened one. There is only the one who is seeking further enlightenment. Proper being is process not a state. A journey not a destination… That accounts for the importance of Rule Four: compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today. Always place your becoming above your current being. That means it is necessary to recognize and accept your insufficiency so it can continually be rectified.”
Why I loved it:
If you have had a conversation with me in the past 6 months that has lasted more than 30 minutes, odds are I‘ve brought up something I learned from Jordan Peterson.
This book was massively eye-opening for me. I’ve been pretty immersed in the self-development stream of content for a long time now, but never have I read a piece of literature which was so direct, so honest, so clear and so comprehensive. When you’re reading this, it feels like he is speaking to you. It feels like he understands you. And it feels like what he’s saying is coming at the right time in the right way you need to hear it. At least that’s how I felt, and I don’t always feel that way after reading a book like this.
In many ways, this book reminded me of how my coaches used to deliver feedback to me in gymnastics: honest, no fluff, clear, concise, and always for your benefit. Any time he sounds harsh or insensitive, he is only trying to illuminate the parts of yourself which you avoid facing head on.
His thoughts are incredibly well-developed and he has extensive knowledge in history, religion, symbolism and story-telling. He has a way of seeing things I’ve never seen from anyone else, and oftentimes, I find that what he says just makes sense. He forces you to look in the mirror, see yourself for all your strengths and your flaws, take responsibility for who you are and sort yourself out. 12 Rules for Life is powerful stuff from a powerful mind. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to “straighten themselves out”, as Dr. Peterson would say, and put their life in a slightly better direction. He tells it like it is, and he might be able to give you the advice or insight you’ve been searching for.
**Disclaimer: If you have a pre-conceived notion of who Jordan Peterson is due to how he is perceived in the media, please read:
A lot of the beliefs/opinions people say that Jordan Peterson has, he does not actually have. Jordan Peterson is very clear with what he believes and where he stands on many issues, but oftentimes his words and opinions get twisted by others, characterizing him as part of groups he does not align with, or as a believer in ideals which he does not agree with. Before placing judgement on him, beware that he is one of the most misunderstood individuals of our generation and is portrayed in the media in a disparaging and polarizing way due to certain political views he has, while his main focus is to share ideas and help people improve their lives.
If you disagree with his views on certain things, that’s totally fine (I certainly do!). However, I still believe that almost everyone could truly benefit from his content if we can open our minds without focusing on being on either the pro-Jordan Peterson or anti-Jordan Peterson side of an argument. He is an extremely knowledgeable, well-researched, articulate and brilliant Clinical Psychologist! If nothing else, he knows what he is talking about in his field, and many of us could learn immensely about ourselves and our psychology from him.
If you are even the slightest bit interested in what he has to say, try giving him a chance. Try watching a few of his YouTube videos, or reading some of this book or listening to a podcast (Joe Rogan has two great episodes with him) where the interviewer is asking him questions about his ideas, rather than just his political views. I think this is worth mentioning, because his content has probably had the most positive impact on my life of anything I have recently read/learned/listened to.
10 more favourites (by topic):
Career/Life Advice:
Essentialism — Greg Mckeown
Top 3 highlights:
“The life of an essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live. Will you choose to live a life of purpose and of meaning, or will you look back on your life with twinges of regret?”
“A non-essentialist thinks making something better is adding something. An essentialist thinks making something better is subtracting something. A non-essentialist sees setting limits as limiting. An essentialist knows setting limits makes them limitless.”
“If you take one thing away from this book let it be this: whatever decision or challenge or crossroads you face in your life, simply ask yourself: What is essential? Eliminate everything else.”
Why I loved it: This informative and actionable read gives insight into just how critical it is to do that which is essential to your mission/path and say no to virtually everything else. Mckeown claims that his mission is to “put people on their path of highest contribution”, and to do so, he wrote this book to help people learn how saying “yes” too often, actually means saying “no” to many other things — including personal goals, interests, passions and possibly our optimal life path. This book employs a number of wonderful examples and case studies illuminating how being an essentialist can lead to significant benefits for individuals, companies and organizations, while neglecting essentialism can have tremendous costs.
If you want to hear more about the book before you read it, I recommend this podcast episode where Tim Ferriss teases out the main thesis and ideas of the book in an interview with Mckeown (this is what pushed me to read the book).
How Will You Measure Your Life? — Clayton Christensen Top highlights: “How you allocate your own resources can make your life turn out to be exactly as you hope or very different from what you intend. Because If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.”
“Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.”
“In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed, and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder.”
“I used to think that if you cared for other people, you need to study sociology or something like it. But….I have concluded, if you want to help other people, be a manager. If done well, management is among the most noble of professions. You are in a position where you have eight or ten hours every day from every person who works for you. You have the opportunity to frame each person’s work so that, at the end of every day, your employees will go home feeling like Diana felt on her good day: living a life filled with motivators.”
“Indeed, while experiences and information can be good teachers, there are many times in life where we simply cannot afford to learn on the job. You don’t want to have to go through multiple marriages to learn how to be a good spouse. Or wait until your last child has grown to master parenthood. This is why theory can be so valuable: it can explain”
Why I Loved it:
This is an essential read for anyone trying to answer the question “what do I want to do with my life?”. Clayton Christensen is a Harvard Professor, and the author of the Innovator’s Dilemma, Steve Jobs’ favourite book. He was inspired to write this book after being diagnosed with the same cancer that ended up killing his father. He wanted to share his hard-earned wisdom with the next generation of high-achieving, ambitious young people so they don’t need to make the same mistakes him or his peers did.
He describes what came out of his Harvard MBA classmates’ pursuits in careers based purely around conventional measures of success — many of them went into private equity, investment banking, consulting, and other prestigious financially-focused fields. He says that while some of his classmates truly enjoyed those career paths and ended up doing well in them, the vast majority went into those roles because of the measures of success they had been trained to aspire to — including money, prestige, and status. These individuals burned out within a few years, yet refused to leave their jobs due to lifestyle creep and an inability to part with the image of the ‘successful’ life or career they had begun to build their identity around. Christensen describes how at his 25 year reunion for his Harvard MBA class, many of his formerly ambitious classmates who had been “on track” for success in these intense, competitive fields ended up unhappy, divorced, in prison for white collar crimes or with many personal troubles. He even included an entire chapter in the book called How to Stay Out of Jail because of the sheer volume of these formerly ambitious, highly impressionable individuals in prison as 40–50 year olds for embezzlement, tax evasion, insider trading or other related crimes.
This read highlighted something that I had thought before but could never quite put my finger on: ambitious people without internal direction end up getting swallowed whole by society. This is why it is important to not just be smart, efficient, diligent and ambitious — you also need to be self aware, self-motivated and pay attention to your own internal compass when the noise of society is pounding in your ears. A thought-provoking and highly relevant read for anyone moving into a next big chapter in their life wanting want a fresh perspective on what to do next.
The Happiness Equation — Neil Pasricha
Top highlight:
“There is nothing more satisfying than being loved for who you are and nothing more painful than being loved for who you’re not, but are pretending to be.”
Why I loved it:
If you’re going to read a book on happiness, let it be this one! Neil writes about “the 9 secrets to happiness” — he explains each one in detail with research, statistics and quotes to support his claims and solidify them in your mind. Each chapter is bursting with personality, character and richness, making it more fun to read this book each time I pick it up.
The book feels like it is written by a human who has faced the same struggles we all do when searching for how to be happy and live our best lives — plus he has a hell of a lot more experience to share with us. As a happiness expert, Pasricha has spoken at some of the biggest companies in the world, including Apple, Google, and many others, all with the goal of spreading happiness globally and preventing people from ending their lives with regret. The tactical, clear-cut approach he takes to self-improvement is a unique one which resonates and pops into my mind often, because of how memorable his imagery and writing is (there were too many great examples of this to pull out for the highlight section). I’ve read this book a few times now, and its wisdom is timeless. I always keep my copy close by if I need some inspiration.
The Third Door — Alex Banayan
Top highlights:
“You can give someone all the knowledge and tools in the world, but the way to really change their life is to change what they think is possible.”
“If you have a clear what and why you, you don’t need the how. It takes care of itself.”
“Steve Woznyack, co-founder of Apple: “I had two goals for my life growing up. The first was to create something with engineering which would change the world. The second was to live life on my own terms. Most people do things because that’s what society tells them they should do, but if you stop and do the math — if you actually think for yourself — you’ll realize there’s a better way to do things.
Is that why you’re so happy?
Bingo. I do what I want every day. Society tells you that success is getting the most power possible, but I asked myself: is that what will make me happy?”
“Pitbull: Be an intern in life. Always stay an intern. Humble yourself to learn from everyone you meet.”
“Maya Angelou: How do you deal with struggle of being good enough?
I have to remember that it’s hard what I’m doing. And I think that’s always the case when you’re doing what you want to do, what you feel called to do. Compliment yourself for trying. Read and see that the people before you were humans just like me.”
Why I loved it:
The Third Door details the story of a trail-blazing, creative, go-getter college student and his journey to interview some of the world’s most successful individuals. The story is told in first person by Alex Banayan, the man behind the “mission” as he calls it, to uncover the success secrets of the greats. With highlights from conversations with Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Larry King, Maya Angelou, Jessica Alba, Pitbull and more, Banayan teases out what makes these powerhouses so successful, and how we can apply these lessons to our daily lives.
Banayan also describes the obstacles he overcame through his repeated attempts to materialize these interviews from scratch in such a page-turning way that I finished the entire book in less than two days. It’s a story of persistence, going after what you want and remaining determined in the face of distraction and doubt, all for the sake of achieving a worthy goal. As one of the youngest New York Times Bestselling authors at age 26, Banayan is a role model for any motivated or entrepreneurial young person looking to ignite some of their inspiration, and take a leap of faith on their own “mission.”
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari — Robin Sharma
Top highlights:
“Alright, the secret of happiness is simple: find out what you truly love to do and then direct all of your energy towards doing it. If you study the happiest, healthiest, most satisfied people of our world, you will see that each and every one of them has found their passion in life, and then spent their days pursuing it.”
“Once you find out what your life’s work is, your world will come alive. You will wake up every morning with a limitless reservoir of energy and enthusiasm. All your thoughts will be focused on your definite objective… Valuable mental power will not, therefore, be wasted on trifling thoughts. You will erase your worry habit and become far more effective and productive. Interestingly, you will also have a deep sense of inner harmony, as if you are somehow being guided to your mission. It is a wonderful feeling.”
“Thoughts are vital, living things — little bundles of energy, if you will. Most people don’t give any thought to the nature of their thoughts and yet, the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. If you want to live life to the fullest, care for your thoughts as you would your most prized possessions.”
“Weak minds lead to weak actions. A strong, disciplined mind, which anyone can cultivate through daily practice, can achieve miracles.”
“When you run inspiring, imaginative pictures through the movie screen of your mind, wonderful things start to happen in your life. Einstein said that ‘Imagination is ore important than knowledge.’ You must spend time every day, even if it is just a few minutes, in the practice of creative envisioning. See yourself as you want to be.”
This book hit the spot for me this summer. I picked it up at a used book store in Singapore before I journeyed to Thailand for a week, and ripped through it in just a couple of days. At a time where I wasn’t sure if I was headed in the right direction and wanted to put more energy into things which fuelled me instead of drained me, this book was an injection of insight on how to think clearly, be honest with ourselves and live a life true to who we are. The book follows the journey of a millionaire lawyer turned monk, who hit a breaking point in his career after pursuing purely material things and a life of overworking and poor health. His downfall culminated in him having a heart attack in the middle of court, leading him to sell all his material items and fly to India, where he studied with a small group of wise monks called the Sages of Sivana before returning back to the United States and sharing his wisdom with his former Associate. It’s a pocket of wisdom I wish I could grant anyone with. While I can’t do that, the best I can do is recommend you pick up this sub-200 page book and dive in.
Talking to Strangers — Malcolm Gladwell
Top highlights:
“To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative — to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception — is worse.”
“You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.”
“The conviction that we know others better than they know us — and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa) — leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.”
Why I loved it:
In Gladwell’s newest book, he dives into the tendencies, misconceptions and unconscious habits we have which impact how we judge and interact with others. He illuminates these habits through case studies — diving deep into cases like how undercover spies go for decades without getting discovered, to how misreading an interaction can lead to a sexual assault case, to why we assume people in power have good intentions even when there is mounting evidence against them. I found that many of these unconscious habits were prevalent in my life and were just that: completely unconscious. The only note I have is that he doesn’t offer much of a solution or alternative way to negate some of these default behaviours. Instead, he explains that many of these innate tendencies, like trusting others, are required for society to operate well and the unfortunate consequence is that every once in awhile, an intelligent, ill-intentioned person can take advantage of the blanket of trust we lay over society to exploit these systems and commit crimes. For example, he touches on figures like Larry Nassar, Jerry Sandusky and other sex-offenders who took advantage of their access to children to commit horrific crimes and destroy the lives of many young people.
One important take-away I took from the book is that sometimes we have doubts about someone having bad intentions, or committing a crime, or lying, or having an eating disorder, or anything else it might be, but we convince ourselves it’s all in our head and there’s no reason to be concerned. Gladwell found that just having doubts is not enough to provoke action amongst most of us — we need to have enough doubt. For example, while there were some doubts about Bernie Madoff’s investing practices, most people did not have enough doubt to investigate. Oftentimes though, those first few twinges of doubt often do indicate something is wrong. Trust your instincts enough to at least get more information on what’s concerning you. Those doubts might be there for a reason. If someone seems suspicious, be careful — not paranoid or prejudiced, but careful. Do your research. Investigate your suspicions. Everything is not always as it seems.
This is a great read if you’re looking to learn more about human behaviour and have a fascination with interpersonal interactions and how some of the world’s greatest con artists and perpetrators of crime in society got away with it for so long without getting caught.
Autobiographies/Manifestos:
Principles — Ray Dalio
Top highlights:
“I learned that if you work hard and think creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives to pursue even better ones.”
“Observe past cause-and-effect patterns in lifetimes other than yours to understand and predict what could happen in your lifetime.” — This is why studying history is so important! Shout out to all the history majors out there, we need you.
A note on why I think Ray Dalio’s financial success should not be the only reason you do/do not read this book: Ray Dalio made a lot of money because his passion was precisely in the business of making a lot of money. Therefore, he succeeded by the primary ‘metric of success’ of the field he was in.
If you’re passionate about building a career in something that is not primarily financially measured or rewarded, you will likely not be one of the 100 richest people in the world, and that is OK. Simply align your expectations with how you expect to get rewarded for the success you’re striving for. For example, if you decide to pursue fine art, it will be much harder to crack the list of the 100 wealthiest people in the world compared to if you decided to go into managing money (many artists’ pieces often don’t even peak in value until after they die, for example). Both are important vocations for society, but the two are often rewarded differently and in different proportions. You can absolutely still be financially free and very successful in almost any field, but don’t get fixated purely on financial success if that’s not the primary metric of success in the specific field that you’re in.
TLDR: money isn’t the only indicator of success across the board.
Why I loved it:
Dalio’s story is the perfect example of where our education system often fails. He says he “sucked in high school”, got into college on probation because of his poor grades, but ended up studying economics and finance (which he loved) and got into Harvard Business School with a near perfect GPA. The education system tries to shove us in a box, instead of encouraging us to do the things which fascinate and inspire us. Dalio’s story is a great reminder that if you do what you’re interested in and work hard, you can excel at it. And if you hate something, don’t do it.
I originally thought this book was meant for the hyper-ambitious-financially-focused types who wanted to learn how Dalio became one of the wealthiest men in the world from scratch. However, once I got started, I was pleasantly surprised by Dalio’s vulnerability and honesty with the lessons he learned from his greatest accomplishments and his greatest failures . This is a fantastic read for those who have a ton of ambition, grit and lofty goals, but aren’t sure how to realize them or feel like they don’t want to conform to a path already laid out for them. Dalio was a creative thinker. He was bold and he was not afraid of taking risks. He thought things through logically, but at the end of the day, he was willing to write a new script for how things should be done in the world of investing. In doing so, he built Bridgewater Associates, one of the most successful investment management firms in the world, which now manages $160B in assets. His story is an inspiring one, and he teases out the principles he used to get where he is today.
Note: This was definitely a longer read, so if you’re still working on building your reading stamina, I would add this one to your list and save it for later. But once you’re ready for it, I doubt you will regret it. Lots of gold in here.
When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man — Jerry Weintraub
Top Highlights:
“I’ll tell you my biggest talent: when I believe in something, it’s gonna get done. When people say no — I don’t hear it. When people say it’s a bad idea — I don’t believe them. When people say it won’t work — I pretend they’re joking.”
“You have to be willing to walk away the most comfortable perks precisely because they are the most comfortable perks”
“Be willing to be lucky.”
“If you want to learn, find a person who knows and study him or her.”
“ People think that Hollywood and politics operate in different arenas, but they don’t. The world is very small at the top with a few thousand players running everything. Crossing genres is less about making connections with the leaders of other industries than climbing high enough in your own to get to the place where all the lines converge.”
“When I look back on my key moments, I see patterns: Whenever I felt the urge to get out of things, I told the truth instead. I asked when I didn’t know. I listened when someone was talking. I sold with joy, so my products were fun to buy. … Most important: I was never afraid to fail, which meant I was never afraid to try. I was never afraid to look silly which meant I was never threatened by a new idea.”
Why I loved it:
I listened to this book three times as an audiobook and then bought a hard copy because I loved it so much. Jerry Weintraub was a behind-the-scenes star who had a hand in some of the most famous Hollywood stars and movie productions of the past couple generations! Producer of the Karate Kid, Nashville, the Ocean’s Eleven triology, and others, Jerry created his own path as a movie producer while managing talent including Elvis, Frank Sinatra, John Denver, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and others. His autobiography is a thrilling rags-to-riches story so jam-packed with ridiculously improbable stories that it reads like fiction, with all our favourite Hollywood stars as the characters.
Most of all though, I found Jerry’s all in approach to life so inspiring. He really carved his own way: going from a poor, Jewish kid from the Bronx growing up in a tiny house, to becoming a Hollywood mogul, best friends with the president, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and owning four homes and a career full of accolades and incredible relationships. He somehow managed to do it with some heavy strokes of luck, a ton of grit and most of all, tremendous courage and creativity. One of my favourite aspects of the book is the emphasis he places on persistence. It’s more important than intelligence he says — it is the number one thing that will put you ahead. After reading his story, which above all else was chalk-full of persistence, it’s hard to deny that he is right. For anyone who is looking for a little inspiration on how to think creatively, entrepreneurially or just learn about a man who had a massive impact on the entertainment industry (he practically invented the idea of a concert), you will not regret picking up this book.
Stories (fiction)
The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho
Top highlight:
“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. And when you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you achieve it.”
A long-time recommendation from many people, the Alchemist is a gentle nudge at whatever feeling might be festering inside of us telling us to trust our gut and follow our intuition. Coelho makes this book just as powerful for thirteen year olds reading it in grade school as he does for a middle-aged person trying to re-discover a part of themselves they might have shelved for many years to pursue a ‘safer’ path. The main thesis of the book is to follow your gut, take chances and bet on yourself. It’s such a quick and electrifying read, I’d highly recommend it as a nice burst of fiction in your reading regimen to remind you listen to yourself more and re-discover the power of going after what you really want.
What Alice Forgot — Liane Moriarty
“She was busy thinking about the concept of forgiveness. It was such a lovely, generous idea when it wasn’t linked to something awful that needed forgiving.”
“She felt as though she’d been unforgivably negligent — careless! sloppy! — with the most precious, wonderful gift she’d ever received.”
“Love after children, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best…well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”
“But maybe every life looked wonderful if all you saw was the photo albums. People always obediently smiled and tilted their heads when a camera was put in front of them.”
Why I loved it:
I LOVED THIS BOOK! This was my first fiction read after what you can see was a long stretch of non-fiction or non-fluffy fiction and it absolutely captivated me. I’ve read a couple other Moriarty books (she’s the author of Big Little Lies), and they are all phenomenal. She crafts her characters so beautifully and the way she describes their thoughts and actions feels so candid and natural — it creates an instant connection between the reader and the characters. The reason I felt this book was so relevant was because I read it right at the turn of this new decade, and ironically the plot of this book is about the main character, Alice Love, hitting her head at the gym and forgetting the last 10 years of her life. Alice, a 39 year old mother of three, living in a fancy house with fancy clothes, is going through a divorce, is one of those does-it-all moms, runs all the school events, and is estranged from her sister.
However, she wakes up from a fall at the gym, thinking it’s 1998 and she is 29 years old, just married, pregnant with her first-born and recently moved into her first house which she plans to renovate with her husband. She recalls nothing from the last ten years — not a single memory of having kids, or why her and her husband act like they hate each other, nor why she no longer talks to her sister. The book follows her journey of trying to piece together how she has become this new person whom she barely recognizes.
The main lessons I took away from this book were:
If you don’t keep your priorities straight, if you let the little things get to you, if you hold onto resentment, if you become too self-absorbed without looking around to see how the people you love are doing — you can become a completely different person without even realizing it. Each moment is truly a blessing, and each important person in our life needs to be appreciated and acknowledged, not taken for granted.
Don’t take life too seriously and always embrace your inner child — life is more fun and light that way. This book made me think about what my 11 year old self would think of who I am now, and what I might think of my 31 year old self in 10 years. Would I recognize myself? Would I be proud of the person I have become? How will I continue to live by my core values as life hits in unpredictable ways over the next 10 years? What Alice Forgot had me reflecting on the same lessons non-fiction attempts to deliver, but in a much more natural and seamless way. This is why I love fiction, and it’s one of the reasons I made one of my goals for 2020 to read more fiction!
Evidently, this post ended up being much longer than expected, but I felt that I needed to do each book justice, because I took something unique away from each one. I hope this was enjoyable (congratulations if you got to the end!), and I’d love to hear what you think if you have read any of these books or are now up to reading them! I’m also very open to book suggestions, so feel free to send them to me via my blog or any other preferred method, and they may just make it to my 2020 book review in a year’s time.
Happy reading! Let your next chapter be one full of literary enjoyment :)