My monthly newsletter covers the books I have read over the course of the month, the challenges I undertook as well as some other interesting articles, blog posts, interviews, tools, hacks, etc. 

Books

• Platform Scale by Sangeet Paul Choudary
• Modern Monopolies by Alex Moazed and Nick Johnson
• Resilience by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy
• The Master Switch by Tim Wu
• Chapters in My Life by Frederick Taylor Gates
• The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Full list of books read in 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

All great books should be immediately re-read

Teacher’s Reference Guides

• Diving into platform businesses has been exciting and I’ve learned a ton. The fact that platforms increase in efficiency and power as they scale, that they expand markets by bringing on new demand and supply and that they take advantage of network effects are some of the more fascinating aspects that I came across. 

Monthly Challenges

• Learning some basic dance moves – painful but making progress
• Lunch time meditation – didn’t get to occasionally but even 10 minutes makes a world of difference

Other

• Rebecca Rusch on self-distancing by pretending like you are giving advice to a friend
  
• Venkatesh Rao on the history of globalization and modernity through the evolution of corporations
• Seth Godin – Obedience and Inquiry, Counting Beans
• Abstract – beautiful Netflix original about design and designers
• Chef’s Table – Seasons 3 is just as amazing as the first two
• Farnam Street’s podcast with Naval Ravikant has a ton of wisdom
• Complex Systems and Sports – how complexity and systems thinking can be applied to sports and building effective teams
• Steven Spielberg – listen to the whisper
• Yuval Noah Harari on the benefits of meditation
• The “Finding Mastery” podcast with Michael Gervais is excellent – Cal Fussman is a great place to start but everyone I’ve listened to has some wisdom
• The “What I’ve Learned” section on Cal Fussman’s website is great – Muhammad Ali, Jeff Bezos, Pele, George Foreman
• The Progression Project podcast with Josh Waitzkin discusses how these two world class performers think about learning

Amor Fati

Blas

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” – Sigmund Freud