Favourite books
Books on business, self-improvement, and the things in between that have stuck with me. Amazon links are affiliate: costs you nothing extra, kicks me a coffee.
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The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Jorgenson's compiled archive of Naval's tweets, podcasts and essays. The clearest distillation I've found of how to think about wealth, leverage and time.
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Company of One
The argument for staying small on purpose. Jarvis's case is the reason I stopped optimising for headcount and started optimising for margin.
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Atomic Habits
Habits compound; willpower doesn't. Clear's framing of identity-based change is the part that actually stuck.
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Meditations
A Roman emperor's private notebook, two thousand years old, still the best stoicism primer I've read. Worth a re-read every year or two.
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The 4-hour Work Week
The four-hour part is bait; the real argument is automate, delegate, eliminate. Half the playbook for my consulting years came from this book.
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REWORK
Short chapters, sharp opinions, no MBA filler. The Basecamp founders' contrarian take on running a business: meetings are toxic, planning is guessing, scaling is overrated.
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Why We Sleep
The single most productive change I've made in the last decade was sleeping more. Walker's case is uncomfortable to read at 1am and that's the point.
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Don't Make Me Think
Krug's first rule of usability is the title; the rest of the book is enforcement. Every UX heuristic I use traces back here.
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Managing Oneself
Twenty-something pages, a career's worth of questions. Drucker's framework for knowing your strengths is the one I come back to whenever a decision feels off.
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How To Win Friends And Influence People
Almost a hundred years old and still the sharpest book on dealing with people I've read. Read it once for the lessons; re-read it once a year for the reminders.
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Quiet
The case for introverts in a culture that defaults to extroversion. Cain explains why the loudest person in the room usually isn't the right one to listen to.
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The Little Book Of Hygge
The Danish manual for slowing down. Picked it up during a stressful patch and it earned its keep: half permission slip, half practical guide to making evenings feel like evenings.
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