Reading books has been a positive change in my daily routine this year. Using the work-from-home lifestyle as a trigger, I was able to get back into the habit and ensure I read at least a few pages every night before I sleep.
I wrote a blog earlier about my 5 favorite business books that I read this year, so I wanted to highlight my 5 favorite books overall, outside of the business genre. These books honestly have been profound experiences and I’m sure I’ll come back to them over the years for very different reasons. Each one of these books would go on my all-time list and be my top recommendation for anyone interested in those themes.
A. Atomic Habits by James Clear
This 2018 book is a simple guide to help you focus on the right behaviors for you. The author does a great job talking about the mindset you need to make these changes. He provides supporting evidence to show how it’s your habits, rather than your goals, that will allow you to make meaningful change. Especially in a year like this, when so many things are out of your control, this book helped me get a better handle on my routine and start a few habits that I hope to continue for years to come.
My Favorite Quote
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.”
Key Takeaways from the Book
These behavior-related concepts can help you enforce the habits you desire:
Aggregation of Marginal Gains: A 1% improvement every day for a year results in 37x improvement over the year, so if you start at 10, you end at 370! Conversely, a 1% drop every day for a year and you’d end up at only 3% of where you started.
Habit Stacking: This is an easy trick to start new habits by inserting them into your existing daily routine, making it a sequence. For example, if you’d like to eat more dry fruits, start having them in the morning right after you brush your teeth, so it becomes a part of your routine.
B. Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
This 2017 book came to my attention as it was on Bill Gates’ 2019 book list. For most of us, we’ll spend a quarter to a third of our lives sleeping. The author provides evidence from numerous studies that show a positive correlation between good sleep routines and better memory retention, creativity, regulation of emotions, productivity, and numerous other desirable traits. It’s also a powerful weapon to boost our immunity and a lack of sleep can increase the probability of getting many afflictions like cancer, heart disease, latter life mental complications, and other similar problems you’d rather avoid. The best part of the book is the suggestions to help improve your sleep patterns and your quality of sleep.
My Favorite Quote
“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day—Mother Nature’s best effort yet at contra-death.”
Key Takeaways from the Book
This book has many interesting points about the science and evolution of sleep, but I’d like to highlight some of the tips provided by the author to improve your sleep habits:
Check if you’re getting enough sleep: If you can fall back asleep by ten or eleven a.m. after waking up in the morning, that’s a sign of lack of sleep. Alternatively, if you cannot function at your best without caffeine before noon, that could also be a sign of self-medicating your state of chronic sleep deprivation.
If you want to delay your sleep to a later hour, high exposure to late afternoon daylight can help delaying the sleep pressure you feel later in the evening.
Our core body temperature drops as we fall asleep. That’s why a hot bath prior to sleep helps as it dilates the blood vessels on the surface, quickly radiating inner heat, leading to a drop in core body temperature. Splashing your face with water has a similar effect.
C. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics and pioneered the field of Behavioral Economics. In this book, he describes the human mind and all the fallacies in our thinking through numerous psychological experiments conducted by him and others over many decades. The gist of the book is that our mind, much like a computer, has a System I and System II mode of thinking. System I is fast and emotional while System II is slower and more logical. He shows that our System I often fools us without us realizing, basically proving that humans are irrational without knowing about it.
My Favorite Quote
“We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.”
Key Takeaways from the Book
There are multiple examples of our brain effectively fooling us without our realization.
Selective Attention Test: I won’t give away the results for this one but if you go to the short Youtube video (1:21s) at this link and attempt the test, you might be surprised with your selective attention skills.
Another example is when your brain tries to take the easy way out. Answer this question: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Your brain will always first guess $0.10 but when you give it a little more thought or do the calculation, you see the answer is $0.05. But you cannot help your brain’s initial impulse.
D. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens is on the reading list of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. When you read the book, it’s easy to see why so many people recommend it. The book walks through our evolution starting with homo sapiens becoming the dominant species, the agricultural revolution, the industrial evolution, and the latter dominance of religion, science, and money. It offers a unique perspective on many of these topics and raises ethical questions around the progress for the species but the fall of the individual.
My Favorite Quote
“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”
Key Takeaways from the Book
There are many controversial topics in this book, so I’d recommend reading it with an open mind. Some of them are facts that you might not have thought about and aren’t yet willing to admit about our species, like:
Extinction of Species: Our species is the reason for half of the planet’s big beasts being extinct, even before we invented iron tools or the wheel. We are by far the deadliest species in the history of this planet.
The Price of the Agricultural Revolution: The author claims the agricultural revolution was a fraud for the individual. We worked harder and got a worse diet while being stuck to a place unlike the forager phase. It was better for the species and increased our lifespan, but the individual was worse off.
E. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
If I ever had to recommend a how-to guide to manage your money, this would be it. It’s a simple read with timeless lessons about money that I’d call a must-read for any young adult (and even older adults). I know I will go back to this book every few years to ensure I’ve internalized the lessons. The author puts it perfectly stating that managing your money is less about your intelligence and more about your behavior.
My Favorite Quote
“Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time.”
Key Takeaways from the Book
There are many takeaways from this book but the ones that stood out for me were:
Confounding Compounding: Warren Buffett had a net worth of $84.5 billion earlier this year. He made $84.2 billion of that after he turned 50 and $81.5 billion after his mid-60s. The reason for his success is his ridiculous longevity starting at age 10 and continuing even now at 90 and letting compounding do its magic.
No one is crazy: Your experiences with money might only be like 0.00000001% of what happened in the world but drive 80% of how you think money works in the world.
Honorable Mention: A book that just missed out is The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee. This gripping story about life for a girl and her family in North Korea and their struggles to get out really shows the unimaginable lives lead by millions around the world.
I hope you found these reviews helpful and might add a book from the list to your reading list. Are there any amazing books that you read this year? Leave it in the comments below!
Cover Picture Credits: instagram.com/pictorialjournal/
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