The Coaching Habit (Amazon) is a really helpful book about asking questions. It starts with the premise of offer less advice, and ask more questions (which obviously I am bought into). I also like the concept of “the advice monster”. It probably belabours the point a bit, but it’s a short read so that isn’t too […]
The War of Art (Amazon) is a book that could only have been written by a white religious man. Note: generally not the demographic I’m seeking reading materials from. The first two parts are essentially about a puritanical work ethic. The third part is some spiritual woo woo about creativity, and includes a little section on […]
The premise of Thanks for the Feedback (Amazon) is that we should get better at receiving feedback. I started feeling a little resentful of that because I think most feedback is bad (and quickly turns into advice). But I quickly got over it because the book is really helpful, and yes, it gave me some better […]
I'd heard about Radical Candor (Amazon) a lot but was put off by some of the things I saw about gender differences. Two colleagues finally convinced me to read it.It's a more applied lens on the concepts in Leadership and Self-Deception, and similar core to it is seeing other colleagues as human beings. The framework of […]
As I read Superhuman Social Skills (Amazon) I couldn’t stop thinking that the guy who wrote it used to be into pickup. There’s something cynical about the approach that makes me uncomfortable. I care a lot about being a good friend, and got some ideas about how to do better in social situations I’m less comfortable […]
Last year I re-read Leadership and Self-Deception, so this year I decided it was time to re-read the sequel – The Anatomy of Peace (actually set before Leadership and Self-Deception). I read these books for the first time a long time ago… in 2010? My manager at IBM recommended them. I internalized the lessons and think about […]
Everyone was talking about Hidden Figures the movie, so I figured I should at least read Hidden Figures the book (Amazon). It was amazing. First, the stories of these women go way beyond the snippets I’d heard about them. Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectories, but also graduated from high school at 14, spoke fluent French, and […]
Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction (Amazon) was as brief as the subtitle promised. A friend recommended it as a good primer, and as my understanding of Agile comes from university and osmosis, I bought the book and gave it a read. I appreciated how succinct it was, and feel like I have a […]
I thought Sex Object (Amazon) was a fantastic book. It was so real, so smart, and the observations mix with her own life perfectly. It’s full of killer observations about being a woman in the world, the way in which women are objectified, used, and abused. It captures horrifying things that happened – such as men on […]
80,000 Hours (Amazon) is a book more for early career people, so I didn’t get a huge amount out of it – other than validation on some of my choices and confirmation that others (**cough** grad school **cough**) were perhaps a bit questionable. There’s also a newsletter which I found interesting at first, but in general […]