A summary of the books I read in 2022

Written August 7th 2023.

Every year I write a summary of the books I read during the year. In 2022, I read a total of 21 books - 7 non-fiction, 14 fiction.

I have been writing these summaries since 2018, but It was only in 2022 that I started to realize that 20% of the books I read are responsible for at least 80% of meaningful knowledge. These books have an outsized impact on my thinking and performance. And so I am learning to lean into the 20%, to find out what makes them so impactful so that I am able to find more of those types of books to read and so that I can commit myself to multiple readings of them. Meaningful books demand multiple readings.

That said, here are the two books on my 20% list for 2022:

• Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows - I can’t believe it took my so long to stumble upon the field of Systems Practice. In 2019, I read Daniel Kahnemen’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” and was introduced to the concept of Mental Models. It completely transformed the way I think and make sense of the world. This was the same effect discovering Systems Thinking had on me, perhaps even more so. I had been introduced to The field of Systems Thinking while as an engineering undergraduate, however, then, it was wrapped in overcomplicated engineering lingo, and so I crammed enough to pass and that was it. Now I see Systems Thinking / practice with fresh eyes, understanding eyes, and yes, it is a complicated topic, however, reading this book by Donella Meadows was helpful in making sense of it. Even then, I had to take regular pauses while reading to allow my brain to rest from the strain of trying to understand the ideas. Everyone should learn Systems Thinking, and everyone should start with this book.
• The Almanac of Naval Ravikant - Stumbled upon Naval’s quotes on Twitter, which was also where I stumbled upon this book by Eric Jorgensen. I love reading Naval’s writing because it is so contrarian to everything else I hear on the hype train of tech Twitter where I live. His views on doing great work, how to make money and generally how to live are so thought-provoking. This book curates his ideas shared via different mediums over the years. Naval is one of the best communicators I have come across, having one of the highest insights to words ratio.

Other highlights

• All John Maeda’s books. In 2022, I read all three of John Maeda’s books, The Laws of Simplicity, Redesigning Leadership, and How to Speak Machine. I love John Maeda’s writing because they cover broad topics and somehow manage to be profound in all as well. This isn’t surprising once you learn a little bit about his story and how he has somehow managed to perform at the highest levels of art, design, engineering, business within his career. His breadth really resonates with me because, like him, I have a wide cross-disciplinary range, albeit not as accomplished as he is. Read his books if you want to see the beauty of breadth in action - the connections of ideas and concepts from several domains to produce unique and original arguments and explanations that cause one to stop and reconsider everything they know. Looking for where to start? How to Speak Machine teaches you how to relate with our soon-to-be AI overlords (not really, but read it nonetheless).
• It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried. Their thinking and value about how to do work resonates so strongly with me. Like Naval, their ideas are contrarian to a lot of the common practices in business. For example, they recently moved their product, Basecamp, from the cloud back on premise (gasp) and are advocates for others to do the same. In this book, they argue that your life need not be consumed by work, and that good meaning and impactful work can be done while maintaining a very healthy life. They offer a couple of suggestions for how to achieve that.
• StoryBrand by Donald Miller. This is the clearest, most actionable book on brand storytelling that I have ever read in my life. I also read “Marketing Made Simple” by the same author and it was pretty good too.

Other books

• The Great Mental Models Vol. 2 by The Knowledge Project: Mental models from Physics, Chemistry and Biology. We are literally surrounded by models we can learn from.
• The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo: Was curious about how Vitalik Buterin (and apparently a bunch of other folks) started Ethereum. Wild and nerdy!
• Built to Sell by John Warrillow: Was curious about learning how to position your company, so it’s sellable. The short answer: Build systems.
• How will you Measure your Life? by Clayton Christensen: A reflection on choosing meaningful metrics to measure what success means to you. Definitely deserves a re-read!
• Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns
• The Business of Expertise by David C. Baker

Fiction

I am very much in my Science Fiction Supremacy era. All the fiction books I have read in the last three years have been within this genre - except for Shogun by James Clavell, which is historical fiction, which I reread this year, and which is one of the greatest stories I’ve ever read, period.

• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: Loved it for benevolent aliens, an unlikely friendship, hard science, survival porn and the massive twist at the end.
• The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang: Loved it for the sense of AI existential dread that kept mounting as the book progressed
• Extracted book series - Extracted, Executed, Extinct: Easy to read, intense action scenes, oversimplified time travel mechanism. Wasn’t my favourite time travel novel. Wasn’t my worst.
• Shogun - James Clavell. Made me almost cry, almost.
• Iron Maiden: Good premise, but I was constantly distracted by the excessive feminist rage.