My Essential Reading List for 2021
My Essential Reading List for 2021
Avthar's Weekly Wisdom #37 (1/10/2021)
Welcome to edition #37 of Avthar's Weekly Wisdom!
🔥 This newsletter is where I share practical wisdom about self-mastery, startups, health and happiness, all to help you live better. My goal is for you to discover one thing that can change your life, in a big or small way, every week.
Here's what I want to share with you this week:
📚 My Essential Reading List for 2021
It’s said that you’re better off reading the hundred or so greatest books of all time, over and over again, rather than reading every new book that’s published, or trying to read as many books as you can.
I pondered what my 100 greatest books of all time would be and which of them I’d want to re-visit in 2021. While I didn’t come up with 100, I came up with enough to last me the entire year. Here’s what made my list:
Avthar’s 2021 Essential Books
“Way of the Peaceful Warrior” by Dan Millman
“A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle
“The Bhagavad Gita” translated by Eknath Easwaran
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari
“The Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin
“The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
“Become What You Are” by Alan Watts
“Direct Truth”, “A Master’s Secret Whispers” and “Atmamun” all by Kapil Gupta
“Poor Charlie’s Almanack” by Charles Munger
“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig
“Extreme Ownership” and “The Dichotomy of Leadership” by Jocko Willink
“As One Is” and “Total Freedom” by Jiddu Krishnamurti
“The Manual” by Epictetus
“The Power of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
“The Path of Least Resistance” by Robert Fritz
“Striking Thoughts” By Bruce Lee
Avthar’s 2021 Essential Audiobooks
“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brene Brown
“Out of Your Mind” by Alan Watts
“Falling into Grace” by Adyashanti
“Ego is the Enemy” and “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday
“Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith
“Rising Strong” by Brene Brown
“Tao of Pooh” by Benjamin Hoff
“What to Remember When Waking” by David Whyte
“Deep Work” by Cal Newport
“The Diabetes Code” by Jason Fung
“Twelve Rules for Life” by Jordan B Peterson
Note: I might update this post in future with short explanations for why each book made the list. Until then, I suggest following your intuition and pursuing the titles that appeal to you. Also, let me know if you’d like me to publish reviews for, and interesting takeaways from, any of the titles above.
Life-changing Links
🏆 On Self-Mastery —
The Best Way to Learn Programming: In the age of technological leverage, programming is perhaps the most valuable skill in the world. It’s also lucrative as far as getting a job is concerned. This begs the question: What’s the best way to learn how to code? The answer is not reading a book, or taking a course, or learning important theoretical stuff you might never use.
The best way to learn programming (or a new programming language, library or technology) is to use it to solve a problem you have.
I’ve used this method to learn how to create web apps and iPhone apps (without prior experience) for the startup I co-founded and it’s the same method recommended in this clip from the conversation between AI researcher, Lex Fridman and George Hots, security hacker and founder of Comma AI, a self driving car company. Necessity is the best driver for learning.
🚀 On Startups —
Stratechery: This is the best source of information on technology and business on the internet today. It’s a blog about the intersection of business strategy and technology (The story behind the name is Strategy + Technology = Stra-tech-ery). It’s written by Ben Thompson, an ex-Apple, Microsoft and Automattic employee who’s now a business writer and analyst.
I always assumed recommending Stratechery was like recommending Google as a good search engine, but after speaking with a friend who’s quitting his job to pursue a startup and finding out he’s never heard of it, I felt it warranted a recommendation in this newsletter.
As someone from an engineering background, Stratechery was my self-taught MBA and helped me think through strategic questions during my time as a startup founder (for example, questions around business models, differentiation, distribution etc). It’s trademark hand-drawn diagrams (like the one shown above about Facebook’s use of user data) make even the most dry concept memorable and understandable.
I’d recommend starting with the concepts section or by reading articles related to companies you’re interested in. My favorites concepts are Aggregation Theory, Disruption Theory and Platforms and Ecosystems. There’s also the Exponent podcast, which discusses many articles of Stratechery in audio form, of which my favorite episode is Episode 115: Business Matters.
💪 On Health —
Zero Fasting: With growing scientific evidence on the health and longevity benefits of fasting, you might be thinking about starting intermittent or longer fasts this year. I’ve been using the Zero fasting app to track my fasts for almost 2 years and highly recommend it.
Zero has four core components (1) a timer to track your fasts , (2) a resources section for you to learn about fasting and how to do it safely and effectively, curated by Dr Peter Attia, (3) a dashboard to track your fasting progress, with data sync to and from Apple and Google health, so you can see how fasting correlates with overall health changes, and (4) a journal to track how you feel during fasts.
🙏 On Happiness —
The Unrelenting Truth: One warning before you listen to this podcast: Kapil Gupta is not for everyone. The ideas he speaks about are direct, uncompromising and truly contrarian, in a way that challenged many of my deeply held beliefs and assumptions. For some reason, the ideas and truth he conveys resonate with me, and so I’m sharing this podcast which introduces some of his fundamental beliefs for you to listen to and meditate on.
👨🏽💻 What I'm up to these days:
I’ve been pondering some themes for me to focus on during 2021. They include: effortlessness, natural effects, rhythms, empty space, the neurobiology of living well, life as a creative act, life as just so, sincerity and genuineness. I’m also curious about the ideas of no prescriptions, not chasing or seeking and not following “shoulds” or “musts”, which are related to the ‘effortlessness’ and ‘natural effects’ themes. Let me know if you find any of those interesting and I’ll aim to share my reflections of those themes of interest in more depth.
🙏 Thank you again for your time and attention. I wish you a week of happiness, success and peace!
Avthar
🐦 @avthars
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