October 2020

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

• The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
• Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
• Invisible Engines by David Evans
• The Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
• Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore
• The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
• The Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen
• Monetizing Innovation by Madhavan Ramanujam, Georg Tacke
• Positioning by Jack Trout, Al Ries
• Tape Sucks by Frank Slootman

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

• I created a supplemental template to accompany The Infinite Game (An Excel spreadsheet will download if you click the template link above).Within the essay, I reflect on the importance of defining your "life dimensions" – areas of life that you deem important enough to prioritize. For me, those are health, family, friends, work, community service, personal growth, and spiritual growth. I’ve put together this simple spreadsheet to help keep me accountable in each of these various realms and thought it might be helpful for others as well. 

Teacher's Reference Guides

• I shared a "teacher's reference guide" for the ideas found within The Latticework's Worldly Wisdom discipline. The idea is to help keep these valuable ideas top of mind so that they can hopefully become second nature. It's also a great exercise to compress and distill some of these rather complex ideas into as simple (but no simpler!) a form factor as possible, getting to its true essence.

Monthly Challenges

• Magic Mind - tried this nootropic for 2 weeks and really enjoyed it. I took the first one as a shot and became extremely focused, like uncomfortably focused. The rest of them I sipped on throughout the morning and that was better for me and everyone around me (they're small, but potent!) Don't think I'll do this every month or on any sort of routine, but definitely enjoyed them and would recommend trying it out (no affiliation).

Other

• The Observer Effect with Daniel Ek
• What Working at Stripe Has Been Like by Patrick McKenzie
• The High-Return Activity of Raising Others' Aspirations by Tyler Cowen
• Early Work by Paul Graham

Amor Fati Amor.

Blas

"Well, I guess the only good strategy is one that no one else understands." - Ed de Castro, Data General

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