Amazon link I wish I could remember who linked to David Bessis’s Twitter thread explaining that we teach math wrong, as that thread and this one on why math talent isn’t primarily driven by genetics convinced me to buy his book, which was a delight to read. Bessis believes that the way we talk about […]
What would make “founder mode” effective?
Paul Graham’s essay on founder mode has gone viral this weekend, with people I follow sharing their takes like Shreyas Doshi and Cedric Chin and Ed Batista. I felt like chiming in as well, as it draws together several threads of thinking I’ve had over the years, and ties into my current thinking about the […]
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Dr. Peter Attia
Amazon link I’ve had several friends recommend Attia’s book to me over the past year as a way to live a longer and more healthy life, so I recently read it as part of my 50th birthday activities. Attia’s main premise is that current medical practices are about delaying death, figuring out how to keep […]
Reflections from an aspiring elder
I turned 50 this week, which has prompted lots of thoughts and reflections. I won’t offer 100+ pieces of advice like Kevin Kelly or 50 thoughts like this guy, and I don’t know if I qualify as what Chip Conley calls a modern elder, but I did want to share a few principles that have […]
The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks
Amazon link I had heard of the work of Gay and Katie Hendricks, including Gay’s idea of the Zone of Genius (as opposed to the Zones of Excellence or Competence that most of us spend our lives in) or Katie’s idea of integrity as energetic wholeness ((which I heard described by Jim Dethmer). So when […]
Conversations for Action and Collected Essays, by Fernando Flores
Amazon link “Conversation is not merely a prelude to action, it is its very essence. … People don’t merely use language to communicate their desires about the future; they create the future in language together by making commitments to each other.” Reading The Unaccountability Machine reminded me of this book of essays by Fernando Flores, […]
The Unaccountability Machine, by Dan Davies
Amazon link I read an online excerpt of this book and was immediately intrigued by the idea of an “accountability sink”, which is a mechanism by which “The communication between the decision-maker and the decided-upon has been broken – they have created a handy sink into which negative feedback can be poured without any danger […]
Black AF History, by Michael Harriot
Amazon link The subtitle of this book is The Un-Whitewashed Story of America as Harriott flips the spotlight, centering the Black and Indigenous experience, and treating White Americans as the supportive spectators. As he puts it in the introduction: The history I discovered in the middle room wasn’t just an alternative version of American history; […]
Be a Revolution, by Ijeoma Oluo
Amazon link This book, a follow-up from the author of So You Want To Talk About Race, is exactly what the subtitle describes: “How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World – and How You Can, Too”. While the book was well-written and easy to read, Oluo challenged me with stories that showed […]
Becoming artists in a post-AI world
I have had a couple conversations about AI this week where my perspective was surprising to others, so I wanted to more broadly share my thoughts to seed more possibilities about the future impact of AI. A few articles that prompted these conversations: (Aside: In originally editing this post, I realized the articles below are […]
