As the year 2023 winds down, I took a trip down memory lane to reflect on a few books I have read in the last few months that have profoundly influenced me. I am an ardent believer that books are one of the best ways to learn something new and authors/writers are a special breed of human species. Reading a book makes you humble about the fact that there could be a better way to make something happen, it opens up your mind to look at things from a different perspective and learn from someone who has done it without you knowing that person. Here are five books I go back to when needed and I highly recommend to everyone.

Resilient by Rick Hanson:

A book that teaches you how to build a calm, confident and happy character in you. It outlines mechanisms you can implement to build a resilient you and be relentless in achieving your goals. One thing that stood out for me in this book is the concept of “Self Compassion”.

Professionally, I have been in the tech industry for almost two decades and that’s to with companies that operate in a hyper growth mode. One area where we techies don’t do a great job is to pause to celebrate wins or give each other enough credit. It’s not that we are ungrateful people, it’s because we are super focused on solving the next problem. It’s that inertia to move on to the next thing or the mindset that things can always get better takes the better out of a moment of pause and celebrating accomplishments. In this environment, you can always fall into the trap of being overly self-critcal and feel incompetent. So self compassion is necessary.

Self compassion is to take a pause for yourself and give yourself enough credit for your accomplishments even if the world doesn’t stop to reward you. Self compassion is not complacency, it’s self fulfilling, self resolve and healthy appreciation for yourself. In this book, Rick outlines a fine balance of Grit, gratitude, learning and compassion to build a confident person.

Principles by Ray Dalio:

A 500 plus pages filled with wisdom on what defines a human being, how to lead a life with principles and implement mechanisms to ensure those principles are withheld. Whether it’s work or personal life, this book outlines why successful people are able to achieve their goals even if it looks insurmountable at times. Many times, we look forward to others telling us what we should do. However, if you want to be a leader you need to know what you want. Nobody can tell you what you want better than yourself. People can teach you how to do something but they cannot teach you what you want.

Two principles that stuck with me from this book are “Accept the reality and deal with it” and “Be radically open minded”. By accepting the reality you go into a problem solving mode vs complaining mode and being radically open minded and transparent makes you a lifelong learner. This book teaches you how you want to take feedback from people that matter to you. The sentence that stuck with me is the following.

Dreams+Reality+Determination = A Successful life. 

A Ride of a lifetime by Bob Iger

In this masterpiece, Bob Igor has outlined, nothing is easy or gifted in life. You have to go through the grind and make it happen for yourself and for others that look up to you. Like a Disney movie, he beautifully outlines how he navigated tough situations throughout his career by bringing the right balance of business acumen and hard work or persistence. Success isn’t served on a platter. You have to work for it and then only everything else falls in place. The relentless efforts he took to see his company prosper shows his dedication to his company, his employees and his shareholders. Whether it’s making a deal, bringing in new innovation or dealing with people dynamics, he took matters to his own hands and worked at it.

One thing that stood out for me is how he handled “career inflection points”. We all go through career inflection points, especially if you are ambitious and want to drive your own destiny. During these inflection points, you get to make hard decisions to pick the right path. One thing that impressed me quite a lot is how Bob handled these inflection points in his career by focusing on the outcome, giving people the benefit of doubt and keeping bruised ego aside. 

Hidden potential by Adam Grant

My favorite author, Adam Grant has once again created a masterpiece. This book should be a textbook for everyone in their freshman year. It teaches you how to extract those hidden potentials in you. There is not really any secret sauce behind having a successful attitude. It’s all about how you unravel those hidden potentials that you already possess. Adam outlines examples of how successful people behave like sponges. They absorb new ideas and let go of the old ones.

He highlights the absorptive capacity of human beings. This is an ability to recognize, value, assimilate and apply the new information. This makes you a proactive and growth oriented person rather than a reactive and ego driven person. Adam outlines how done is better than perfect and how you can stop beating yourself on any disappointment. Beating yourself will create a bruised you. Being kind to yourself during any shortcomings will allow you to learn from missteps and grow from there if you want to achieve greater things.

People Powered by Jono Bacon:

Bacon led the Ubuntu community which has created massive value to many tech companies. In this book he has artfully crafted the process of building a community that can create massive value for the world. How do you inspire highly opinionated members of a group to come together,  work as a team to build something meaningful without getting any monetary benefits?

The concept of community building doesn’t apply to the size of communities that Bacon has built, it can be applied to any leaders who wants to influence a group of people outside of their direct reports.  Defining key owners and their roles, outlining what success looks like, bringing people together and iterating on the implementation of the plan were my key learnings from this book.