The monthly newsletter covers the books I’ve read over the course of the month, any essays I wrote or challenges I undertook, and some other interesting articles, interviews, etc.   

Books

• Alchemy by Rory Sutherland (read and immediately re-read)
• On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt
• Fishing for Fun by Herbert Hoover
• Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight by David Krakauer
• Draft No. 4 by John McPhee
• General Fox Conner by Steven Rabalais
• Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer
• Loserthink by Scott Adams
• Latticework by Robert Hagstrom

Full list of books read in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

Any book, which is at all important, should be immediately re-read

Essays

• None

Teacher’s Reference Guides

• On Bill Gurley’s Above the Crowd – Bill is a famous VC with Benchmark Capital and has been blogging since 1996. It was fascinating to look back through time and see his thinking and thought process over these past ~25 years, specifically as it applies to technology and consumer internet companies. My favorite posts were: The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All, The Smartest Price War Ever, All Revenue is Not Created Equal, and The Thing I Love Most About Uber

Monthly Challenges

• Daily cold showers in the morning – Had moved away from cold showers for a bit and happy they’re back in my life.

Other

• Love seeing Paul Graham releasing new essays: The Lesson to Unlearn, Having Kids, Fashionable Problems, The Two Kinds of Moderate, Haters, Being a Noob
• A Conversation with Werner Vogels
• I’ve been a big fan of Tobi and Shopify for some time and these videos show why: The Future of Retail with Tobi Lutke, Shopify: A StarCraft Inspired Business Strategy 
• Ichiro Suzuki is Saying Farewell, Yet Still Perfecting a New Craft
• Randy Pausch on Time Management
• How Draymond Green Sacrificed to Build the Warriors’ Dynasty
• Masters of Scale with will.i.am
• Finding Mastery with Missy Franklin
• Tim Kreider’s Lazy: A Manifesto

Amor Fati Amor.

Blas

“Son, if the mountain were smooth, you couldn’t climb it.” – Wintley Phipps