Resources

This will be an evolving list of other things I’ve looked at, read, absorbed, etc. It will never be complete.

(These are mostly books… I read a lot.)

• So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport

  I loved the message of this book: be smart, don’t just act smart.

• The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef

  A good look at how you can learn to incorporate new ideas and paradigms into your current understanding.

• Ready to Be a Thought Leader?: How to Increase Your Influence, Impact, and Success by Denise Brosseau

  I didn’t love this whole book, but it did have some neat ideas about social thought leadership which I thought were good – some ideas of just starting a “thinker’s dinner series” and such.

• From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks

  A discussion of what it means to get older and how that impacts the way you think and how you should evolve your career to match. (Hint: it involves moving into more thought leadership…)

• Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation by Dorothy Leonard

  An absolute classic of knowledge and innovation management.

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

  A great book on personal productivity, but valuable more for its emphasis on “collection systems” to avoid losing ideas.

• Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide by Doris Graber

  A classic about how people understand the “news,” meaning a never-ending stream of new information, and how they integrate that with what they already know. A good background on how to understand how people incrementally learn over time.

• Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte

  Not perfect, but I like the idea of a book concentrating on nothing but helping you organize your thoughts.

• How to do Great Work by Paul Graham

  A magisterial blog post from a legend in software engineering about how to “do the work.”

• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by Willian Zinsser

  A classic about how to explain things well in words.

• How to Grow Professional Relationships by Tejas Kumar

  A discussion and model for how professionals work together and network.