Notes

I read 34 books in 2021 which amounted to about 11’500 pages. I deliberately didn’t set a “reading goal” for the year because I preferred not to focus on quantity, but rather maximize enjoyment and utility. Here are six books, both fiction and non-fiction, that stood out for me. Fiction The Peacemaker’s Code – Deepak Malhotra Deepak Malhotra is a Harvard professor who focuses on negotiation and diplomacy topics. This book is a fun and exciting way to learn about these topics in a fictionalized scenario. The main character, professor Kilmer, is a historian who gets involved into an alien landing that threatens humanity. He needs to apply his skills of negotiation and diplomacy to save the earth. This book is a treat. Just the excerpts from professor Kilmer’s fictional book on history alone are worth it. You also get fundamental concepts and principles of negotiation on the side, while you’re sucked into fast and gripping storytelling. ...

How to treat people is a fundamental question of life. To find your answer, you can take the thorough route and read deeply in the field of ethics, ponder the different approaches and answers to this question. After such in-depth study, you can decide which of those options rings most true. You can also take the simple route. Just take an existing heuristic from your parents, philosophy, or religion, that guides your behavior. Arguably the most famous one-liner in ethics is the golden rule, as found in the bible: ...

In 2014 Keith Rabois gave a Stanford lecture on how to operate a startup. It boils down a CEO’s daily activities based on 9 points that he or she should be focused on. While the principles laid out are great for current and upcoming founders or CEOs, they apply to team management in general and if you want to create a high-performing team these principles help you to do that. Simplify It’s a natural tendency for every system to increase in complexity over time. Teams add more rules, processes, tools, and projects. This needs to be avoided. Your job is to look out for unnecessary complexity and reduce it. Simplify through omitting what is not that important and deleting no longer relevant documentation, tools, and processes. ...

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying, `It’s the strong swimmers who drown.” Charlie Munger There are two fundamental strategies for how to play a game. The first one is to beat the other player by actively scoring points. The second is to avoid losing points and waiting for the other to make mistakes. ...