How I pick a book to read next

To pick a book, I see if:

• I can apply something or everything from it immediately at work or personal life

• I'm curious about the content

As of today, I have 5 books in my next-read list and here's why:

1. Dyson: A Life of Learning through Failure A Life of Learning through Failure — To learn about Dyson's approach of building products. He designed 1000s of prototypes before getting it right.

2. Samsung Rising: Inside the secretive company conquering Tech Inside the secretive company conquering Tech — To learn about how this Korean giant works. Probably will get a lot of insights for running Native.

3. Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress — To learn frameworks with examples, which will help me review the GTM work that the team is currently doing for an upcoming product.

4. I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons — Curious about this topic and in one of my favourite forms, cartoons.

5. The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness — A friend at work gifted me. I think I already have this courage but if he's given me this book, I need to get some more courage.

I picked Dyson from the above list because that's the book I can apply the most in my day-to-day. The team's solving very hard problems with Tap design, mini PCBs, small components and more. I think Dyson's book will be most useful for me at the moment.

I didn't pick the Samsung book because I imagine it would be similar to the Inside Apple book, focusing more on work methods that I can apply over several months.

I didn't pick Demand Side Sales because solving the product problems is higher in priority this month.

I didn't pick I think, therefore I draw because I'll finish it over a 3-hr flight in coming week or so.

I didn't pick Courage to be disliked because it's not something I'm worried about at the moment. Will pick it up over a weekend later.

How I read a book

I used to read cover-to-cover many years ago as my default method. Naturally. That's the only way I knew. I picked a few things from YouTube, Naval Ravikant, Ryan Holiday on how to read properly. I don't follow them all but have my own remixed version. Here are some:

• I can read with distraction when I'm at home. I typically have an old sitcom running the background as white noise when I'm reading.

• In any other place, I need full focus

• I can't read in public places like cafes, the garden, or on vacation

• I look for interesting bits first using the index or table of contents and skim through those pages

• I then jump to reading, 99% of the times cover-to-cover

• I take copious notes in the page margins

• I highlight important points in the book and write my ideas, questions, and pointers on the margins

• After finishing, I keep the book aside and only revisit a week or two later.

• Then I move all my notes to flash cards — one idea one card, one inspiration one card

• I then revisit those cards and make new ones by compressing the insights further or adding my own takeaways and examples

• Then I publish the notes on this blog for my later reference

• I am not too strict about this process. I sometimes directly publish my notes and revisit them every few months

• My notes and takeaways from a book get trimmer over time.

There's a book about reading books.

Q1 2024 read list

The books I read (with notes) and why I read them.

1. Unreasonable hospitality

2. Tetris

3. Xiaomi

4. The 22 immutable laws of marketing

5. The goal

6. The making of a manager

7. Creativity

8. Eat. Delete.

9. A technique for producing ideas

10. Build

11. The weather man

12. Inside Apple

13. Ghost world

14. The economy class founder