Books

This book is prescient. Written just a few years before the current pandemic, it highlights many of the problems we’re currently facing as a society: wokeness, general distrust in experts, and an increasing illusion that technology and information abundance is all that’s needed to become experts in a field and have opinions about everything. He highlights the issues of “an increasingly narcissistic culture that cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality of any kind”, and the increasing difficulty of having difficult conversations and discussions ....

Overview Step Smith is one of my favorite Twitter follows to learn about earning money online, living like a digital nomad and most of all, to learn about growth tactics (she’s grown multiple newsletter and online publications), so when she published Doing Content Right I instantly bought it, and it didn’t disappoint. The book is very easy to read, and it’s not meant to be read top-bottom. Treat it like a recipe book but instead of food, the end results are better newsletter CTAs, content design and placement, and overall better online presence for your content....

Notes I only gave this book a 6 out of 10 because I think Goggins' message is much more powerful when you hear and watch it from the man himself. In particular check out these interviews: Goggins on The Joe Rogan Experience Goggins on The Rich Roll Podcast This book is about action and taking control of your life. Each chapter ends with a challenge that Goggins recommends you go through....

Overview A monologue that reads like someone whispering kind truths to your ear over and over until you understand what life is about. This is a book to re-read constantly and to use as a tool when one is lost in the midst of life. Notes & Highlights Waking Up Spiritually means waking up All mystics—Catholics, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion—are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well...

Overview Even if you're a computer scientists (like myself) this is a great book that will teach you about important computer science principles using everyday situations and will help you to apply them to your daily life. Much as we use checklists, rules of thumbs and mental models to guide our thinking and decision making processes, algorithms—and the theory behind them—can be a great addition to our mental toolbox. Notes and Highlights They don't need a therapist; they need an algorithm....

High Level Notes Become Good And Findable So They Can't Ignore You Show Your Work by Austin Kleon is a great short read that distills great lessons about habits, productivity, and becoming better at whatever it is that you do. If you're starting out in your career, or want to build a following this is a must-read. Austin is a great marketer and this book shows it. Avoid audio versions if there are any and go straight for the physical book as it ships with great visualizations that help you better internalize the ideas....

Overview This book has good general investment advice but I was expecting it to be much more. If this is the first book on investing that you read or if you're not even vaguely familiar with the ideas of value investing and index funds, then it can serve as a well-rounded introduction to the subject. It was written by John C. Bogle himself, the creator of index funds and the founder of The Vanguard Group an investment firm with more than 6 trillion assets under management....

Overview No study of Stoicism is complete without studying Epictetus. In my view he's one of the best examples of what a stoic is and what stoicism is all about. He was born a slave and later became a freedman. So he was able to dedicate the rest of his life to study and teach philosophy in Rome. This book "Of Human Freedom" is a compilation of some of his teachings who survived mostly through the works of his student Arrian who compiled his teachings into the Discourses and The Enchiridion (a small handbook of stoic advice)....

Notes and Highlights It’s fair to say that we have advanced futher in duplicating human thought than human movement. Instead of a computer that thought and played chess like a human, with human creativity and intuition, they got one that played like a machine, systematically evaluating up to 200 million moves on the chess board per second and winning with brute number-crunching force. Means that sometimes we take shortcuts. The brain is still too complicated to understand although we’re trying hard to reverse engineer it (see Kurzweil)....

Notes and Highlights For success, like happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Only the man inside knows This refers to the man inside the prison. He is the only one that knows how difficult it is. Like a drowning man clutching a straw, my inborn optimism (which has often controlled my feelings even in the most desperate situations) clung to this thought: These prisoners look quite well, they seem to be in good spirits and even laugh....