#10: Books 2020 and Technologies in 2020s
Hey there đ
First of all, best wishes for 2021! Hope you enjoyed the end of the year.
In this 10th issue, Iâll share my favourite books from 2020 and some long-form articles I came across during the holidays.
Hope youâll enjoy it!
Favourite books 2020
Mainly due to the lockdowns and my discovery of e-books, I re-started my reading habit and thoroughly enjoyed it.
You can find the list of books that Iâve read in 2020 via the convenient My Year in Books overview from Goodreads. My favourite, 5-starred books were the following:
Non-fiction
Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight
The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts & Great Mental Models Volume 2 - Shane Parrish
Fiction
The Heart's Invisible Furies - John Boyne
Het moois dat we delen - Ish Ait Hamou
The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides
Articles Iâve loved
Prioritize strengths - Slava Akhmechet (4 min)
When the product is you, you can apply the three-bucket model of product management (game changers, showstoppers and distractions) to yourself as well. Patch your weaknesses, but invest the most energy in maximizing your strengths.
100 Tips for a Better Life - LESSWRONG (12 min read)
Although Iâm in general a bit wary of BuzzFeed-style lists, this one surprised me with some real gems (especially the last sections):
4. âWhere is the good knife?â If youâre looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.Â
46. Things that arenât your fault can still be your responsibility.Â
84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in you will want to join in the fun of righteously destroying somebody. Resist this, youâll only add ugliness to the world. And anyway, theyâve already learned the lesson theyâre going to learn and it probably isnât the lesson you want.Â
90. In general, you will look for excuses to not be kind to people. Resist these.Â
96. If other people having it worse than you means you canât be sad, then other people having it better than you would mean you canât be happy. Feel what you feel.
98. People donât realize how much they hate commuting. A nice house farther from work is not worth the fraction of your life you are giving to boredom and fatigue.Â
100. Bad things happen dramatically (a pandemic). Good things happen gradually (malaria deaths dropping annually) and donât feel like ânewsâ. Endeavour to keep track of the good things to avoid an inaccurate and dismal view of the world. Â
Observer effect - Tobi LĂŒtke (45 min)
In-depth interview with Tobi LĂŒtke, founder and CEO of Shopify. Real gold.
Notes on technology in 2020s (27 min read)
Long-read with predictions of the technological changes in the next decade, including topics such as biotech, energy, space and information technology!
The author (and I) are bullish on the science, so it all depends on the (urge of) execution!
Tweet
Favourite songs 2020
Podcasts
In this episode, Yale psychology professor Laurie Santos (from the viral âScience of Well-beingâ class - on Coursera) states (from a huge meta-study) that 40% of our happiness is predetermined by our genes and as little as 10% by our circumstances. She gives tips to improve and shape the other 50%!
Thanks for your most valuable resources, your time and attention! Which article did you like the most? Let me know!
Until next time,
Matthias