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Favorite Books I’ve Read in 2023

Posted by claudiolassala in books on January 31, 2024

Here are my favorite books read in 2023, in no particular order.

Born a Crime

I enjoy Trevor Noah’s comedy. I had seen and heard good things about his book, so I read it. And loved it.

I like how he structured his memoirs. I like how he jumped around and weaved the story in a manner that kept my interest from cover to cover.

The book is a love letter to his mom. There are so many great life lessons she shared with Trevor, which he shares with his readers. This is one of my favorites:

“Learn from your past and be better because of your past, but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.” – Patricia Noah

Learning the things she has gone through and her outlook on life is very inspiring.

Trevor’s description of his life growing up in South Africa was very relatable for me due to some similarities to my growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Be Useful

I enjoyed reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, Total Recall, a few years ago. As an immigrant, I’m drawn to the story of other immigrants. As I watched some of Arnold’s interviews talking about Be Useful, his new book, I knew I’d read it.

Quick read.

A short excerpt from the introduction:

Knowing where you want to go and how you’re going to get there, willingness to do the work and the ability to communicate to the people you care about that the journey you want to bring them on is worth the effort.

Many lessons that both leaders and followers should learn and apply. To start, be useful.

Fahrenheit 451

Loved the book. Even got the illustrated adaptation and watched the movie made in 1966.

I’ll likely have a dedicated post to share my thoughts about this book.

I’m glad I got the 60th anniversary edition, which includes much extra content about the book and its relevance.

On the Shortness of Life

I thought Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life to be an easier read than Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and Epictetus’ Enchiridion (both great reads, regardless).

This quote is as relevant today as it was over 2000 years ago:

People are frugal in guarding their personal property, but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

This quote:

“Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course.”

…made me think of something I wrote for this song a few years ago:

Out of Many One

In 2021, I watched Jimmy Kimmel interview former US President George W. Bush. I’ve never been much into politics (growing up in Brazil and always hearing and experiencing cases of corruption pushed me away from it), but I remember Bush was the president when I first moved to the US, so I was interested in that interview.

Two things intrigued me:

  • First, knowing that he picked up arts (painting, more specifically) after he left office. It made me think of everybody, myself included, who thinks they’re too old to learn a new skill. What kind of skill would I consider learning in my late 60s?
  • Second, hearing that his new book, Out of Many, One, was a collection of his paintings of some of the immigrants he has met, and their unique stories.

If you’ve been reading this far, you have seen a common trend for my favorite books last year: Trevor Noah, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then Bush’s book about immigrants.

I got goosebumps reading through some of the stories because they’re so relatable to me.

And I’m curious to know if the former president saw immigrants in that way all of his life, through his presidency, or only after he came out of office.

While he was president, I was busy trying to adjust to the culture, to the language, to a new chapter in my life, and the image I had of him does not align with the refreshed image I now have, as far as his thoughts of immigrants are concerned.

Poems for the Dark

Everybody has bad days.

In 2022, I watched a video of a singer who went by the name Nightbirde. “How can a person fighting cancer, with a short life expectancy, write and sing a song called ‘It’s okay’?” Just as I had that thought, I heard her say in the post-performance conversation:

You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.

Her words, lyrics, and interpretation felt very real and very deep.

I looked up some of her music and followed her story online, hoping she’d get better.

After she passed away, I heard about her book of poems and immediately got it, knowing it would have great thoughts and that the proceedings go to the Nightbirde Foundation, which helps young women with breast cancer.

Some of her poems are dark. Visceral. But real. They speak of real thoughts, feelings, and emotions of somebody experiencing them and managing to articulate them into words.

When I’m having a bad day, I often listen to her music and/or re-read some of her poems, as it helps me bring my thoughts to a different perspective.

As somebody involved with building software and always hearing the industry refer to people as “users”, forgetting that they are people, a passage like this makes me reframe my thoughts:

I am a science experiment
Onlookers take notes
I am a statistic, one sheet in a stack of test results

How many more pieces can I lose
Before I am more robot than human

A passage like this reminds me to use what I have to overcome struggles:

May all of this dirt become the mountains that we stand on
And not the ground that buries us

And a passage like this reminds me to not only use my struggles as a foundation to overcome difficulties but that I can also use it to pave the way for others:

I am hoping that these words can be breadcrumbs to follow,
So those who crawl through this cavern
Will see that there is a way through

Start with Why

I read this book for the first time in 2019 and have used Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle for several things since then. Seeing through the why-how-what lenses sends me back to the time when I started this blog in 2004 and decided on its tagline: “Why do we do this again…?”

I’ve drawn a golden circle to gain clarity on everything I do for Beyond the Track (to understand why I do it).

I also used it to better understand things I do with Improving, making it easier for me to understand [where our values meet](link to my blog post) and be more intentional about the goals I commit to.

This passage in the book accurately describes what led me to Improving:

No matter where we go, we trust those with whom we are able to perceive common values or beliefs.

I enjoyed the 2nd read just as much as I did the 1st, and I’m sure I’ll revisit it in the future.

The Mutt

Skateboarding played a great role in my life growing up. I was never good at it, but I enjoyed doing it, and I enjoyed hanging out with my buddies. That was the mid to late 80s.

Rodney Mullen was featured in magazines alongside the other heroes that our skateboarding community in Sao Paulo could only dream of ever seeing in person.

For the last six years or so, Rodney came back to my attention through his TED talks and several interviews I’ve found online. For me, he is such a joy to listen to. Very intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, and naturally humorous.

I absolutely loved the book. Very easy read, hard to put it down.

His approach to training through deliberate practice early in his early teenage years easily shows how he got to be head and shoulder above all of his competition, and how he became such an influential skater. His work ethic at such an early age was impressive.

He was so stupidly good at what he did, that other people sold his skills for him. He was totally focused on his craft. Who can do that these days? Musicians, writers, actors, software developers… we all have to not only work on our craft but also how to sell it.

Listening to (and reading) Rodney’s words about community, competitors, and innovation brought me another level of respect for him and for the sport. Did you know that skaters at a competition root for their rivals, encouraging them to keep trying a hard trick, and cheering for their successful runs? Where else do we see that?

That persecution from the outside helped us bond.

That passage took me back to when I was 12 years old and couldn’t skate because the city mayor had outlawed skating. My friends and I had to skate in front of our houses, hiding our skateboards if the police drove by.

The Pomodoro Technique

The first mention of the Pomodoro Technique on my blog dates back to 2010, when attendees of the Virtual Brown Bag mentioned it as one of their favorite things learned in our meetings.

I started applying the technique a few years before that, and still practice it daily. I’ve posted some thoughts about it a while ago.

When I first heard of the technique, there used to be a PDF book explaining it. Last year I thought it would be a good idea to read this updated book as a refresher and to see if anything new was added to it.

Many people think: “Why do we need a book for it? Set a timer for 25 minutes, work, take a break, rinse, and repeat!” There’s more to it. I recommend reading the book if you’re interested in the technique.

This passage was a good reminder for me of why I enjoy the technique:

Better use of the mind: greater clarity of thought, higher consciousness, and sharper focus while facilitating learning.

Around the same time I read that sentence, I ran into this quote by Eckhart Tolle, which I believe fits well with the theme:

Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts.

There’s also this bit in the book: work, track, observe, and change to improve if you need to. It reminded me of the thinker and doer minds described in the book The Inner Game of Tennis.

Something new I found in the book is the suggestions around using the technique with microteams. Made a note to give it a try.

As I said, there was more to it than working in 25-minute increments. The book made me develop thoughts and make connections that help me get a little better every day.

Together Is Better

Short, sweet, and impactful.

I liked the book so much that I gave copies to all of my team.

One of my favorite quotes from it:

Bad teams work in the same place. Good teams work together.

,

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Meeting Interesting People

Posted by claudiolassala in books on April 14, 2023

I’m meeting a lot of interesting people.

I’m meeting people who seem to think and talk just like me, even though our mother languages aren’t the same.

I’m meeting former presidents, senators, and their wives. Republicans and democrats.

I’m meeting people who made important decisions and later changed their mind.
People who talk about other people or subjects; sometimes they agree with each other, sometimes they don’t.

I’m meeting poets. Philosophers. People who speak with very polished language, others who have a potty mouth.

I’m meeting people who have never existed, yet, their stories resonate with me.

I’m meeting people who speak to me from the past.
Some have been long gone. Sometimes I wish we had met when they were still alive. Sometimes I’m glad I didn’t.

I met a youngster who translates wise words from the past into words I can understand with my limited command of the language.

I met people who told me a fictional story written in the past, about their future; a future which is my present.
And stories about their future which is also my future.

I’m meeting my heavy metal heroes, and learning about their struggles and successes.

I’m meeting people I haven’t heard from in decades.

I’m meeting extraordinary people who have accomplished amazing things in their life and are willing to share their stories.

People who are able to say so much using so few words.

I’m meeting people who help me ask important questions in life.
People who give me advice I can use in many areas of my own life.
They teach me things in a manner I can relate.

I’m meeting people whose storytelling skills take me on adventures I may never get to experience myself, or maybe I will.

People who are sharing knowledge with me I didn’t even know I’d either need or be interested in.

I’m meeting people I feel compelled to introduce them to friends and colleagues.

I’m meeting immigrants whose stories of proving others wrong I enjoy a lot.

I’m meeting with people to discuss lessons learned from other people we’ve met.

I’m meeting a lot of interesting people.

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Thoughts On Books – A Complaint-Free World

Posted by claudiolassala in books on April 6, 2023

Will Bowen’s A Complaint Free World is among my favorite books read in 2022.

Going through my notes I see that I’ve done a lot of pondering and it still makes me think deeply through many of the points raised.

Here is a summary of some of my thoughts on it.

Best Advice

This piece of advice sums up the book for me:

Don’t hold back, don’t hold it in, just make sure you are stating only the facts, to someone who can resolve the issue.

Don’t cry out. Speak up.

Stop Whining like a Baby

We complain. Too much.

“The squeaky wheel may get the grease. But if it squeaks too much, it ends up getting replaced.”

Brilliantly put. That one stuck with me as it put into words some of my own experiences.

Venting

But sometimes we just need to vent a little. Right?

Well, no.

Venting is a form of complaining.

People will mirror what they see. Our words. Our body language.

Complaining is like bad breath…

“It seems that complaining is like bad breath – we notice it when it comes out of someone else’s mouth but not when it comes from our own.”

As our awareness of our own complaints go up, so does our perception of complaints from others.

I started being aware of things I used to complain quite a bit before, stopped doing that, then got annoyed when others did the complaining I used to, and then found out I became aware of it and learned to smile at myself and move on. Rinse and repeat.

When asking “why me?”

Our complaints are often followed by the question “why me?”

We can also ask the same question when we’re grateful for someone or something.

Using a Jar of Awesome and sharing that Gratitude helps with that.

The fifteenth

The author talks about a friend who had established a practice of having only one day every month when he could complain about something. That day was the 15th.

The point is that, by the time the 15th comes, he had already forgotten what he wanted to complain about.

The practice of distancing ourselves from the things that upset us is one that yields great results.

Focus Beyond the problem

“Not every problem needs to be overcome, just the ones stopping you from getting where you want to be.” – Ann Hill

The book talks about looking through the problem. Instead of talking about or focusing on the problem, switch over to the desired outcome, and only to people who can either provide the solution or help us get there.

Criticism and Sarcasm

Both criticism and sarcasm are forms of complaint.

Criticism: it made me rethink how I conduct code reviews.
Sarcasm: it made me think before I use sarcasm (“what’s the complaint disguised as sarcasm?”)

Summing up

I’ll be revisiting my notes on this book multiple times. There are many other things I’ve picked up from it that I decided to leave out of this post to keep it short. But I want to close this with a great passage about leadership:

Leadership can be a daunting task. The use of criticism is an indication of a leader who lacks the resources to truly lead.
A leader’s job is the careful balancing of inspiration and direction.

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Remembering what I read

Posted by claudiolassala in books on March 16, 2023

Last year I’ve run into this video on How to Read Faster, by Mark Mason, which includes tips on remembering what you’ve read. I figured I can also share some of my thoughts about it.

Why do I highlight passages on books?

When Mason talks about remembering what you’ve read, he mentions he sees no value in highlighting books. He thinks of it from the standpoint of how (or why) we normally have to read at school: “you’re tested on what you’ve read”.

I don’t do it from that perspective.

Highlighting makes me slow down when I’m speed reading. It makes me tell my brain “that’s important/interesting… take your time.”

When I finish the book, I come back and go through the pages, looking for my highlights, and often I find things I wanted to explore further.

Why do I take notes as I read?

Same reason as with highlighting.

Note-taking makes me slow down and further assimilate the content I’m reading.

I write down my own words to connect with the content. I use words from anecdotes and similar experiences or existing knowledge that I may want to associate with the content.

How does this apply to my life?

The notes and highlights help me think how the content applies to my life.

Talk about the ideas with other people

Mark also mentions this idea. I’ve been recommending people do that as a deliberate practice to improve their public speaking: learned something new or had some challenging experience? Tell someone else over lunch or at a water fountain conversation!

Many of my talks are created like that.

Printed vs Ebooks

I’m used to consume books in all different types of formats. But I’ve noticed that it’s easier for me to remember information when I read a printed copy. There’s something about picking up a book, flipping through the pages, feeling the book’s weigh… that seems to help me.

Do I want to remember everything?

I do NOT want or need to remember everything. I’m usually fine with knowing in which book I’ve read about something so I can later go back to it for more. Having a good process and system to find that faster is a bonus.

With that said, I haven’t had to read a book with the goal of taking a test in several years.

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Thoughts On Books – Head First Design Patterns

Posted by claudiolassala in books, Software Development on March 2, 2023

Just wrapped up a book club on Head First Design Patterns (HFDP). Here’s a summary of what I shared at our Lightning Talks.

I read the “Gang of Four” (GoF) book, “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software“, in the early 2000s. That was a tough read for me; very dense, and hard to relate to. Good book, but not what I needed at the time.

Then ran into the 1st edition of HFDP in 2005:

I loved the way the book taught the concepts, using a good mix of analogies with real-world things I can immediately relate to, principles, and some code in between. I’ve been recommending that book to whoever asked, and wanted to revisit it to see how well it aged.

For the book club, we picked up the 2nd edition, published in 2021:

As with the 1st edition, all the source code is Java, which I’ve never worked with. But that doesn’t matter because the code is there only to give examples of the concepts (the most important thing) explained. The knowledge acquired is transferrable.

With that said, there was one chapter that I think spent too much time explaining some very specific aspects of Java, but that didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book, as I could visualize its counterpart in .NET. I do see that section being a little harder to grasp for developers who may solely focus on the frontend, though.

Going through the book this 2nd time, I realized that when I read it the first time I still didn’t know about the SOLID principles; that I learned a couple of years later. This time, I noticed I was anticipating where they were going with some explanation, and eventually, they’d drop in things like “Dependency Inversion Principle”. While the book calls out DIP, it never mentions SOLID. I can’t recall if the 1st edition mentioned anything related to SOLID at all. Anyway, I enjoy learning in a spiral, and it was good to revisit the content from this perspective of having acquired more knowledge and experiences over the years.

Speaking of experiences, the book club had a good mix of previous experiences; some members already had a lot, others were just getting started, some had more experience with backend than frontend development, some had more with functional programming than object-oriented programming languages. It all added to our having great conversations.

Here are some of my key takeaways…

Principles

The book does a good job at sharing not just patterns, but also principles, which help us understand better why certain patterns exist. Here are a few examples of principles that were brought up:

Program to an interface, not an implementation

That’s the D in SOLID: Dependency Inversion Principle, or DIP, already mentioned earlier.

Favor composition over inheritance

I first learned OOP in Visual FoxPro in a very inheritance-heavy way. It took me a while to understand and internalize why I should favor composition over inheritance.

This is what made the lightbulb go off for me:

Swapping behaviors with inheritance is done at compile time.
Swapping behaviors with composition is done at run time.

There are other things to consider, such as composition making it easier to follow the Single Responsibility Principle, but understanding the power it brings to run time behavior is huge.

Principle of Least Knowledge

Aka Law of Demeter, I kind of like Principle of Least Knowledge better.

For a common example, let’s try this one:

cart.Items.Add(product)

The code above doesn’t do things to the cart; it does to the cart’s Items property. Is that a list, a collection, or what? That’s excessive information. How about this version, instead?

cart.AddItem(product)

That way, the code only knows of the cart and it adds a product to it; how it stores the items is none of our business.

A simplistic way to think about it: too many dots reaching into an object means bad!

Patterns

The book covers one pattern per chapter, including Strategy, Observer, Decorator, Factory, and Command.

There’s a chapter on Compound Patterns, more specifically, Model-View-Controller (MVC). That one mentions other patterns that are often part of MVC: decorator, adapter, abstract factory, observer, strategy, composite, and iterator.

The very last chapter lists “leftover” patterns (about 10 of them). What was interesting to me is that there are a few patterns that would probably not be considered leftovers if the book was focused on .NET, such as Mediator, Builder, and Chain of Responsibility.

OOP vs FP

I’ve been seeing a number of people putting OOP down in favor of Functional Programming, steering away from content on design patterns because “that’s what the old folks do”. Why not leverage both?

Take as an example this snippet that uses the Command pattern:

That’s the OO way of implementing it, with classes, methods, and interfaces. Since the Do method takes in an ICommand interface, that parameter could also be wrapped in a decorator(s) or adapter, implemented as different strategies or created by factories, etc.

One could argue that if the ICommand interface only has one method, Execute, it could be replaced by a function, represented in the snippet below as an Action:

Action is a delegate, which in C# is an object that represents a reference to a method (or function). Those can also be created by factories, wrapped in decorators, etc. So we’re in OO land, but approaching it with a functional perspective.

When working in functional languages, one can also leverage knowing design patterns, and their intent, and then consider whether they’d be appropriate in solving a problem there. Concepts such as commands, adapters, proxies, and factories, are out there and may come in handy, regardless of language, syntax, you name it.

Patterns in life

I like how the book uses things from life, such as restaurant menus and TV remotes, to explain the concepts.

It’s a fun exercise to look at other things around us and how they relate to some patterns.

Take this image as an example:

The plug and the outlet work together based on agreed interfaces; the outlet sees the plug, and the plug sees the outlet.

What if we want to put a timer to shut off the outlet after a certain time? We use something like this…

Or we could also use something like this:

Heck, we could even use both. The plug and the outlet wouldn’t care; they wouldn’t even know those decorators were there.

What if the plug and the outlet conform to different interfaces (standards)? We use an adapter (but we can also still use those decorators)!

Anti-Patterns

I really like how the book defines anti-patterns:

An Anti-Pattern tells you how to go from a problem to a BAD solution.

Shared Vocabulary

One of the main reasons to learn design patterns is to build a shared vocabulary; we can condense full sentences, paragraphs, and long explanations, down to a single word. That is, as long as everybody in the room knows what that pattern is! If people aren’t familiar with it, that’s an opportunity to learn and grow together.

I like the book’s list of great places to leverage the shared vocabulary:

  1. In design meetings
  2. With other developers
  3. In architecture documentation
  4. In code comments and naming conventions
  5. To groups of interested developers

Zen mind is a Beginner mind

Do not let all that pattern knowledge overly influence design decisions.

Yup, always go with the simplest solution. Let patterns emerge.

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Read one book or many at a time?

Posted by claudiolassala in books on January 26, 2023

Should we read one book or many at a time? I’ll tell you what my experience has been, hoping that it may help you experiment and see what works best for you.

As an English as a second language teenager, I started to read one fiction book after another for many years. That is, I’d read daily, and as soon I finished one book, I’d start the next one.

Fast forward to 2016, when I shared how I was catching up with my book reading. At that time, I said “I have the bad habit of starting to read several books and then taking a long time to finish (I just finished a book that I started to read 3 years ago!)”

Why did I refer to that habit as bad? Because it takes a long time to finish? So what?

I’ve since realized that I can finish reading a book within a timeframe if needed; when I’m in a book club, or taking a course that has deadlines for the reading assignments. For all other books, I just take my time. No need to hurry.

I picked up Tribe of Mentors in 2018, and finished it in 2022! At some point I’ll skim over it again, reflecting on highlights and notes I wrote for the book.

Be always reading

But back to reading many books at a time. I keep doing that. It’s a habit. Not a bad one.

Mark Manson brings up that up as one of his tips on how to read faster: read more than one book at a time.

For the record: I don’t necessarily want to read faster. I want to be always reading.

I try to choose books that are very different from each other; e.g., a technical book and soft skills book.

Sometimes I do end up starting books that turn out to have some overlap. That’s ok; I take note of that, often exploring differences between the different authors’ perspectives, or where they overlap.

What I’m reading at the moment

As I write this post, these are the books I’m actively (daily) reading at the moment:

These are the ones I read a few pages every week:

And this is one I read a few pages every month (I started it in 2017. No rush.):

What, when, how

I’ve been somewhat specific about what time of the day I read each book, and even which format (printed, ebook, audiobook).

The “morning” books are usually the ones I’m reading as part of a book club and I want to take more notes and reflect more on what I read, so I can have better conversations with the groups. I favor printed copies for these.

The “evening” ones are easy-reads that won’t get my mind too engaged with, otherwise, I’m not letting my mind rest while I sleep.

When I’m reading technical books, I favor reading those in the morning, so to stretch my brain, getting it active for the day. Again, I don’t want to feed the mind with complicated stuff right before going to bed; I used to do that, but not anymore.

I have been marking up the book with highlighters and writing notes directly on the pages and on stickies. When I finish the book, I go through it again, processing my notes, connecting them to other thoughts, which helps me wrap up books that take me a while to get through.

A conversation with multiple people

Here’s another way I’ve been thinking about this practice of reading multiple books at a time.

Say we walk into a party, strike conversation with someone, and 15 minutes later realize we couldn’t quite connect. Should we stick talking with that person through the end of the party? Maybe we should thank the person for the chat and politely check out.

Or maybe we did connect with the person and can tell we could easily spend hours chatting, but, we also notice that there are a few more people we’d like to connect with at that party. How about we exchange contact information, write down a few words to remember the context of the conversation, and then go chat with the other people?

We can approach books as conversations with their authors. Start the conversation, and if we’re having a good time, keep it going (or write some thoughts down and come back to it later).

But if it’s dragging and we feel it’s going nowhere, put… it… down!

We do NOT have to finish every book we start.

Sometimes I do feel like giving up on a book, but if it was highly recommended, I may stick with it a little longer, asking myself why I’m not enjoying it: is it the author’s tone, their analogies with which I can’t connect, too many points I heavily disagree with?

Whatever the case, I may find out I am the problem, and can think of ways to change my perspective in how I’m approaching my reading of such book.

So be always talking to many people. Be always reading.

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Favorite Books I’ve Read in 2022

Posted by claudiolassala in books on January 13, 2023

Here are my favorites books read in 2022, in no particular order.

A Complaint Free World

In 2022, Improving has started a company-wide initiative called Come Together to “bring Improvers closer, no matter the distance.” Each month had a theme; for instance, January was wellbeing), and April was spirituality. For the latter, one Improver decided to extend the experience by running a book club, and the book chosen was Will Bowen’s A Complaint Free World. That book had been on my radar for a while, so I was glad to join the club.

The book has made me rethink some things:

  • Criticism and sarcasm? Both are a form of complaint.
  • Venting out frustrations? Not a great thing to do.
  • Yelling at an automated voice system? Not great, either, bud.

I took lots of notes and will likely condense some of them into a blog post. For now, here’s one of my favorite quotes on the book:

The squeaky wheel may get the grease. But if it squeaks too much, it ends up getting replaced.

The Untethered Soul

As we wrapped up the book club on A Complaint Free World, the group enjoyed it so much we decided we wanted to run another club on a similar group. After tossing some ideas around, we’ve landed on Michael A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul.

Easy read. I finished it quickly. We’re taking it easy with the book club, having the meetings without rushing it.

I’m glad we’ve picked up this book after the previous one, as it helped me look at similar ideas through different perspectives.

Chapter 12, Taking down the walls, is my absolute favorite. I could see that chapter turned into a movie. Or at least that’s how effective the author was at making me visualize what his words describe.

I wish I could draw that visualization. Since I can’t, I’ll drop an image here to remind me of it.

Atomic Habits

I started reading James Clear’s blog posts a few years before Atomic Habits was published. Some of his posts on identity building and related topics resonated with me, I followed some of his tips, and it made a difference. I read the book as soon as it came out, and it was a great refresher for the content I had already consumed. I either gifted or recommended the book to many people, and a good number of them came back to say they loved it.

Then, a group of Improvers showed interest in reading the book. What do we do then? Book club!

This was one of my favorite book clubs. We had a nicely-sized group, with folks joining from many of our offices.

It was great to hear about the habits different people were trying to either stop or start, their challenges, and also see some us getting teaming up as accountability partners.

Going through the book again while discussing it with such an engaged group of people was absolutely great.

And as it has become a tradition: we’ve wrapped up the club with many of us giving lightning talks to share our main takeaways, offered to another group of Improvers who were interested in hearing it.

Telling you, Improvers are a different breed. It’s part of our culture.

How to Live

How to Live was one of my favorite books in 2021:

“It has been only 2 months or so since I’ve read the book, and I’m planning on reading it again very soon“

And I did. I started on January 1st.

The 2nd time through was even better. I highlighted different passages, wrote down new notes on old passages, pondered more.

I’ll drop here two of my favorite passages.

On Learning

Teaching and learning are telepathy.
We can connect across oceans and centuries.
Words written by someone long ago and far away can penetrate your mind.
Share what you learn so it can be received by others, even when you are long gone.

On Making Memories

To enjoy your past is to live twice.
Nostalgia is memories minus the pain.
Turn your experiences into stories.

Last year I’ve also run into this great interview with Derek, in which at some point he talks about How to Live. I enjoyed listening because he helped me visualize some points I had missed when I read the book.

Anything You Want

Another re-read. Another one by Derek Sivers. I got an email letting me know the 3rd edition of Anything You Want – 40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur was out. I remember I enjoyed reading the 1st edition several years ago, so I figured it was a good time to revisit it. Also, I love Derek’s writing style and approach to book publishing, so I support him and hope he keeps putting out great content.

This book is a very quick read, filled with great gems. Here’s a couple of my favorites:

Starting with no money is an advantage. You don’t need money to start helping people.

And this one:

Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it.

How to Write One Song

Up until I’ve read this book, I don’t think the following words had ever come out of my mouth: “I’m a songwriter”, despite having written many songs.

An Improver mentioned this book to me and I decided to check it out. As I read through it, I thought “hey, I’ve been doing most of those things for years!” So there, I am a songwriter!

Reading the book and trying out some of the techniques was a fun. A few lyrics for my most recent song, “From a Distance”, came out of that.

Since many Improvers ask me about my songwriting process, I created and taught a 3-hour class last year to teach them, focusing on writing lyrics, with some of the activities borrowed from this book. That was a ton of fun! One of the attendees took on the challenge and wrote his own lyrics for “From a Distance“, and we’ll be co-creating a Part 2 for that class, to share with others the lessons we both learned: him writing his first lyrics, and me getting to see my own creation interpreted and heard through a different perspective.

How to be Perfect

I got a little bit obsessed about the TV Series The Good Place. To this date, I watched its 4 seasons 3 times!

A comedy show that talks about philosophy? Does that work? Well, that one worked for me. And its series finale is my favorite one to date.

When I heard that the show’s creator, Michael Schur, was publishing a book to talk what he learned about philosophy and how he used it in the show, I knew I had to read it. I did, and enjoyed it.

My favorite part about the book is the author’s take on happiness and flourishing:

I prefer “flourishing,” because that feels like a bigger deal than “happiness.” We’re talking about the ultimate objective for humans here, and a flourishing person sounds like she’s more fulfilled, complete, and impressive than a “happy” person. There are many times when I’m happy, but I don’t feel like I’m flourishing, really.

Here’s Michael Schur’s “How Ethics Can Help You Make Better Decisions” TED Talk, where he goes over what triggered him to look into philosophy and eventually creating a TV show about it. Fascinating how we can turn our experiences around and make great things out of it.

Specification by Example

This book have been on my radar for a long time. I recommend it to anybody interested in Behavior-Driven Development, Given-When-Then (aka, Gherkin), and related practices.

The Design of Everyday Things

The book Badass: Making Users Awesome was among my favorites both in 2020 and 2021. Lessons learned from the book and applied to my work even inspired me to create a new “UX for Devs” type of talk (here’s a link to a recent presentation).

That book had also recommended several other books, and I decided to pick one of them next: The Design of Everyday Things. And guess what we did at Improving? Yup, book club!

Great attendance and great mix: half of the attendees were developers (including two devs from my own team), and the other half were UX designers. This mix was perfect for different perspectives and experiences to be shared. Having some of my teammates participate was also excellent, as we got to practice lessons learned together, building a common vocabulary, and sharing with the rest of our team.

I took a ton of notes on this one and keep going back to them to further refine my thoughts on what I learned.

Denny Kruep, one of my teammates who participated in the book club, will be presenting lessons learned from his perspective: Improving Software Design with Everyday Things. This is a free virtual talk happening January 18th, at 12pm CST. Click here to register and know more.

The Inner Game of Tennis

This is a great book, not just for those who play tennis; its lessons are valuable to anybody who wants to learn anything, and also to those who enjoy teaching others.

I’ve been playing tennis once a week for a couple of years now, as well as riding my motorcycle at the track almost every weekend. I’m applying lessons I’ve learned from this book to both sports and seeing good results. It’s also making me rethink how I normally teach and coach others, not just in sports, but on anything, really.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

I’d guess a lot of people do and a lot people don’t pick up this book because of its title. I’m not generally offended by language used like that, so I had to pick up this book after getting a good number of recommendations for it.

In nutshell: this book is about deciding what to care about. That simple.

And I like the humor.

Here’s a good video summary by the author himself. Disclaimer: Mark Mason does drop F-bombs.

Working Effective with Legacy Code

I’ve read this book when it first came out and have been recommending it to several developers over the years. I felt a need to read the book again and decide whether I should keep recommending it. Short answer: yes.

And how did I do it? You guessed it right: book club!

The book has aged well for the most part, which speaks a lot to a programming book published so long ago.

Many lessons have stuck with me after all these years and I still apply the techniques almost on a daily basis. Some had been internalized so deeply I forgot I had picked up from this book.

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