202402111559 Status: #📚 #antilibrary Tags: #reference ___ # Some Thing(s) 2023 > *“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”* > — [[Mark Twain]] #quote ## Summary I’ve always read a lot. Mum used to laugh about it, but as a single parent for most of my early years, I imagine she was grateful I had something that kept me both quiet and occupied. (I wonder what would have happened if they’d invented iPads in the 80s?) But over the years I’ve dedicated more and more time to it. These days, I spend the first 1-2 hours each morning reading, and probably 1-2 hours throughout the day listening to a book or a podcast. I'm convinced that if I have a superpower, this is it. I think it's had more to do with the successes in my life than any other one thing within my own locus of control (so like, beyond fact that I was born who I was, where I was, when I was.) In 2023 I changed my metric from how much I was reading to how much I was writing after I found out about Nikalaus Luhrmann and his Zettelkasten technique. So now, every day, I don't just read, I write. It helps me to understand what I'm reading, and connect it to what I know. I write notes in the moment, then go back and revise them later, constantly in conversation with a version of my brain. It's weird, but it's fun. And by forcing myself to publish it, I'm incentivised to constantly to simplify, clarify, and connect. ## Hit List My favourite reads, listens, thinkers and thoughts of the year: 1. [[What's Our Problem?]] 2. [[Poor Charlie’s Almanac]] 3. [[Good to Great]] 4. [[How to Take Smart Notes]] 5. [[Outlive]] ## Favourite Overall: What's Our Problem > *“When you’re the boss of the ideas in your head, you’re always willing to revise them. When there’s no amount of evidence that will change your mind about something, it means that idea is your boss. Humility is the awareness 
that no idea is worthy of being your boss.”* > — [[Tim Urban]] #quote Of everything I read in 2023, Tim Urban’s book on modern discourse had the biggest effect on me. I could actually feel it activating my cognitive dissonances, challenging the things I realise I didn’t feel comfortable challenging, and then moving my perspective on the world. It’s worth it for the epistemic framework of The Thinking Ladder alone. I think it also took a lot of guts to write this as a liberal — which is, as he points out, kinda the problem. Highly recommend. ## Favourite Podcast: Acquired, LVMH > *“You need ideas but the idea is just 20%. Execution is 80%.”* > — [[Bernard Arnault]] #quote Easily my favourite podcast of the year. Ben and David tell the full history of LVMH, and how Bernard Arnault turned a $15m investment in a bankrupt French textile company into the world’s largest individual fortune. The story of The Wolf in Cashmere is truly incredible. His ability to understand — and then execute on — the value of creativity is on a par with his hero, Steve Jobs. Also, their episode on Costco is classic stuff, and they get bonus points for being the only people to ever get Charlie Munger onto a podcast. ## Favourite Thinker: Charlie Munger > *“Whenever you think something or someone is ruining your life, it’s you.”* > — [[Charlie Munger]] #quote Over the last few years I’ve been spending more and more time studying Warren Buffett. Not just his investing and business strategies, but his approach to life. It’s not a stretch to say that Warren got most of what he knew from Charlie. It wasn’t until this year that I really, really started digging into Charlie’s wisdom in earnest, adn Poor Charlie’s Almanac is like going to the source. It’s every bit as good as everyone says it is. And every bit as timeless. Gutted that we lost him just 3 weeks shy of his 100th birthday. But then again I’m pretty sure he died with a smile on his face. ## Favourite Method: The Zettelkasten: How to Take Smart Notes > *“How do you plan for insight, which, by definition, cannot be anticipated?”* > — [[Sönke Ahrens]] #quote The Zettelkasten method is a bonkers system for creating an interconnected network of notes. While the method itself takes a bit of work to get going, the productivity that comes from it is insane. There are a few books out there about this, and a whole corner of the internet. I’d highly recommend Obsidian as the program you use, and there’s a whole community of people creating content and apps and whatnot. My only word of warning is: start small, start simple. Like any habit, the one that you do consistently is the one that will have the biggest impact. ## Favourite BioBro: Peter Attia > *“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”* > — [[Peter Attia]] #quote There’s a lot of bio-hacking going on about the internet rn. Bio-hacking sounds gross and lame, so I’d rather just think about it as “health”. Anyway of all the 6-hour-long podcasts and 3,000 page books and schlocky dropship businesses trying to sell you dick pills and NMN out there, my money’s behind Peter Attia. To my mind, he’s the most skeptical, the most thoughtful, and the most rigorous science guy out there. His book “Outlive” is long, detailed, and doesn’t have any just-do-this type tricks in it. It’s full of solid thinking, solid reasons, and solid frameworks. And I figure a few weeks reading for 10 extra years of a good and healthy life is a pretty good trade. *Podcast is a bit weedsy, but his mailing list and blog are great for further reading.* ## Favourite Business Advice: Good to Great > *“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”* > — [[Jim Collins]] #quote One of the things we Millennials* love to do is talk about how much capitalism sucks and how businesses of the 20th century ruined the planet and how we all need to take a more empathetic approach to doing business. What’s been interesting has been going back to a) the insights that drove the 20th C management class, and; 
b) the businesses in the 20th C that drove the most shareholder value. These are best outlined by Peter Drucker and Jim Collins, respectively. And it turns out that the insights are timeless: care about what you do, and the people you do it with. Work hard today, and don’t expect everything to change tomorrow. Who knew? *This goes double for Gen Z* ## The Full(ish) List Please note that there are indeed double-ups, because some of these books straddle more than one category. ### Creativity, Logic and Magic 1. [[The Art of Strategy]] 2. [[The Creative Act]] ### Psychology, Sociology, and Human Messiness 1. [[Kahneman_et_al-Noise]] 2. [[What's Our Problem?]] 3. [[Influence]] ### Biography, Autobiography, Wisdom and Bragging 1. [[Poor Charlie’s Almanac]] 2. [[Seeking Wisdom]] ### Politics, Power, and History 1. [[The Communist Manifesto]] ### Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Beyond 1. [[The Fabric of Reality]] 2. [[The Science of Can and Can’t]] 3. [[The Beginning of Infinity]] 4. [[The Pleasure of Finding Things Out]] 5. [[The Selfish Gene]] ### Sex, Relationships and Feelings 1. [[Mating in Captivity]] ### Health, Habits, Hacking, and Insufferable Virtues 1. [[Lifespan]] 2. [[Outlive]] 3. [[03 Beta Notes/The 4 Hour Body]] 4. [[How to Take Smart Notes]] ### Philosophy, Ethics, and Thinking About Thinking 1. [[What We Owe the Future]] ### Business, Strategy, Money and Management 1. [[Good to Great]] 2. [[Amp it Up]] 3. [[The Challenger Sale]] 4. [[The Qualified Sales Leader Alpha]] 5. [[Turning The Flywheel]] 6. [[The Almanack of Naval Ravikant]] 7. [[Warren Buffett Accounting]] 8. [[02 Antilibrary/Ground Rules|Ground Rules]] 9. [[Speed and Scale]] ### Technology, Startups and The Future 1. [[The Shallows]]