2021 in books
What I have learned from my reading and listening habits
I’m kind of happy to re-write this post one year after the original as reading was not part of my life in the past. For this year, I organized myself a little differently:
I balanced reading and listening. Both are well done but I’m still trying to better understand which kind of book is better for each method.
Write the article once I finished the book, this helped me a lot to write this article today
I have selected the books as I understood it was valuable to me, not make a short list.
The main idea of the post is to have a nice recap of all the books I’ve read during 2021 and keep this good habit up to date. You can also see my last year in the books too.
Hope you enjoy it!
Organizações infinitas: O segredo por trás das empresas que vivem para sempre (Infinite Organizations)
Thanks to StartSe Partners that published a very important mindset book that actually describes many of the behaviors that companies should understand in order to continue existing. Time has changed and what worked on the past will not guide us to the same success of today. We need CEOs and CxOs to have this kind of reading monthly basis! Congrats!
It’s incredible how huge corps are still stuck in a fixed mindset and using a lot of really expensive employees to discuss clearly wrong subjects that many times create problems that shouldn’t exist. They have not realized that today’s game is not clear by the rules and for survival purposes you must adapt your thoughts to experimentation, innovation and a lot of collaboration. Decrease high org hierarchies and be open to what your customer really needs to achieve. The book helped me to enforce my strong mindset of openmind and experimentation, and increase the relevance of innovation and strategy. Hope this book goes to other languages also.
Flowers for Algernon (Hardcover)
This book reminds me of the importance of not only reading technical and business books. I was so deep into technical reading, self helping, corporate and positivity books that I forget how important it is to read novels where the learnings came from your emotion and empathy. This book gets me in a sensitive moment and could help me to understand a lot of how people’s behavior can float. I’m glad a friend gave me this book as a gift. Big lesson for next year is maybe to select more novels and histories where we can learn by the history.
Tribos — Precisamos de um Líder (Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us)
The thing that surprised me a lot is how the book is organized. Topics instead of well structured chapters allowed me to better connect with the examples. Many times, I was also motivated to re-read some of the small explanations. We all should read this book once a year! The way Haemin organizes the book is easy to dive into the many different areas of our lives, the diversity of examples, including religion was key to my engagement. As much as we may think we have everything under control, this book guides me to many different ways of facing reality, from the way it goes to self care to all the aspects and dilemmas we need to face with courage. Highly recommended, and I think I found a better book for newcomers managers.
That book triggered many dejavu moments. Many times you may want to swap PartsUnlimited by your companies names as many of the key situations in the novel are real and we struggle a lot with it outside the book. One of the first books I have enjoyed with deep references in history and also with a good level of technicalities explained in a high level maner so even CxOs can understand. The book was quite heavy, but it made its points. Good comparisons using history and connecting small culture pieces with daily decisions. The culture we live in is set by the actions we do daily, find the delta, change the actions. We are what we eat, what we see and what we listen to, but to change, we need high level sponsorship, only this can break the comfort zones of the teams and truly help the business to grow.
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
I enjoy a lot of books that go deep into the past and also in some tales to help us to reconnect with why we are doing whatever we are doing, it goes into the knowledge of how we behave in a specific way. True time many histories have been modified by us, and with that we lost the connection of why we start some behavior doing things automatically. One of the learnings is that everybody has his own sad story, do not victimize yourself, we can learn a lot in these moments even if someone is around you, not you. It’s really difficult for me to connect with all the woman aspects in the essense of the book, but for sure it helped a lot of people around to connect some dots.
Audaz: As 5 competências para construir carreiras e negócios inabaláveis nos dias de hoje(Bold?)
Mauricio found the perfect way to inform the readers without scaring them too much. This book is a real guide to leaders, entrepreneurs and almost anybody willing to understand how our world has changed thru technology, how businesses are being disrupted and how we should adapt. Language is easy and the examples he points out are crystal clear. The books also explore some human behaviors that requires some attention as well some huge enterprise mistakes that are still happening nowadays.Hope this book will be available in english soon.
Escute o que ela diz: O que os homens precisam saber (e as mulheres falar) sobre trabalhar juntos (That’s What She Said)
Should be part of every man’s journey to wear women’s shoes. In this book, with several examples, we can understand all the disparity women have been facing along the years, generation after generation. This book helped me to open my eyes to behaviors I’ve done in the past, that can effectively help to avoid perpetuation by me and other men. Man’s are a real part of the problem, and we all need to be more than just aware, we may understand specific behaviors in order to help to balance diversity of thought.
Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done Book 2)
Excellent book. This reading gives me some nice examples of how our mood and spiritual state can relate with our performance in any task. More than managing our time, we should be able to identify our mental state to execute the tasks that better fits to each one. To be able to improve ourselves in a exponencial way, we must understand that our mind is a key resource of the strategy. Our mind determines our mood that affects how hard we can push over our determination, otherwise time can be wasted in many different forms. Understanding and controlling our mind is for sure something that is worth the reading.
Sexo No Cativeiro (Em Portuguese do Brasil)(Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic & the Domestic)
This was one of the heavier books I read so far, it was advice from my psychologist to better understand me and some of my behaviors. Besides the author wrote the book with many histories from couples she faced, the book helped me to understand behaviors that were analyzed by her looking for the disparity of one side of the couple. She explains in many different ways how we create our desires, fetishes and deep thoughts we cannot avoid having and goes to possible reasons why. After all, this book helped me a lot to understand couples and why many of us struggle to understand some automatic behaviors in marriage.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
After reading “The Infinite Game” and watching his TED talk it is a must to read ‘Start with Why’’. Many of the history and examples make us understand the very differences of striving business to huge enterprise failures. Purpose of the focus of a new corporate culture that truly embraces value aggregation on our society. It’s incredible that after many years we still face companies with a so deep comand control mindset just ignoring society and people’s behavior change to continue looking to the same numbers in old fashion manufacturer style methodologies, that every single day frustrate many employees.
Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
That one was my boss’ suggestion. Nice book to make us think outside of the box. Good navy examples to connect with nowadays behaviors. Our brain functions are still being studied by scientists but it is guaranteed that we need to experiment with new sensations in order to train or raise the abilities of our mental capabilities. Now I can justify my willingness to go to burning man with science…. Brilliant! Great reading.
The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
That was a trick one. I enjoyed it a lot, it is superficial but covers well the essence of the big techs and why they are so present in the market. One of the best ways to explain Apple’s hegemony that I have read, going deep in how they connect the human behavior of desire with the brand strategy. If you want to discover how the business works in the biggest 4 tech players, this may be the book.
Leadership in 100 Days: Your Systematic Self-Coaching Roadmap to Power and Impact — and Your Future
Old but gold. I took it as a guide as I was moving to a new job position after many years in the same company. Days are well structured, and the book is kind of easy for you to use as a framework for your daily mornings. I felt I could use it to guide me to my days, but not necessarily following every work but adapting. That was a good experience of 100 days.
Talvez você deva conversar com alguém: Uma terapeuta, o terapeuta dela e a vida de todos nós(Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
Maybe we all should. Therapy opens my eyes to see things in a whole new perspective . Looking through the routine of a therapist was an interesting journey to try somebody else’s shoes. It Reminded me that I already behaved like John and was skeptical, as well it reminded me that we all have our own time to evolve, to listen more, to get interested in things we aren’t before, and that’s ok. This book connects a lot with the “True Acceptance” article that I wrote last year. That was an incredible book.
Do mil ao milhão: Sem cortar o cafézinho (From 1$ to $1M without cutting ouf yout coffie)
Finance was never my strong point. Not that I fail with it, I just don’t get interested easily. The book is easy to read and teaches us personal finance in a really simple way. We all will commit mistakes, mostly because we had no knowledge or fear, it’s ok if you have a mindset on learning from your mistakes. Well written Nigro’s book is a good start for people that do not take care at all of money and want to start investing with a little knowledge.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
That one was my CTO’s recommendation. I enjoyed that I read the book reviewed as the laws changed. My guess is that nothing is IRREFUTABLE, time will change, as will people and circumstances too. We for sure will have this book as a good guide but I do believe we can evolve ourselves by understanding what are the needs around us. There are lots of good examples in the book and it’s a good way to understand that your team of talents needs to be diverse in many different aspects. I decided to make a g-form to get my team’s balance, this helped me also to classify and understand what was the best approach to talk with one of the team members.
Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day
Jay guides us to understand and segment better how we can define purpose in our life’s. Narrated by him it was truly insightful and reflexive. Reciprocity mindset and a life of serving are topics he truly delivers and made me reflect more about myself. During the last few years I’ve been in a deep life transformation moment, and many times, Jay’s social media profiles are able to not only motivate me but also inspire me to be good to everyone around me.
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
As a friends/mentor recommendation, this book was interesting to read. There’s some people that rather make the difference without any spotlights.Lessons in this book are intense. Joining people through coach and love was his passion, and without any major noise he made a true difference in many billionaire companies and founders’ lives. More than that, this books truly deliveries the essence of coaching without any spotlight or show.
Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection
We all should read this book once a year! The way Haemin organizes the book is easy to dive into the many different areas of our lives. As much as we may think we have everything under control, this book guides me to many different ways of facing reality. From the way it goes to self care to all the aspects and dilemmas we need to face with courage. Highly recommended. It also connects with feeling of acceptance and the fact we all commit mistakes and can learn from it.
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy — and How to Make Them Work for You
Author uses very nice language to explain to us about the impact of platforms in our society. We are living in a new generation where centralized powers are losing space to platforms that are creating a healthier relationship between all sides in the transaction. Platforms are still in its early stage, but it already affects a lot of monopolies world wide. Excited to live the next years on this journey and help companies to truly understand the essence of its clients to generate value.
The Amazon Management System: The Ultimate Digital Business Engine That Creates Extraordinary Value for Both Customers and Shareholders()
Fantastic way to start 2021!!! This book helped me to understand better many of the tools and methods used by Amazon to run its machine. From the day one model to the 2 types of decision, this book was a good way to deep dive into amazon operations and also Bezos head. It’s all about generating value in the long term, that was key and it was explained with lots of real examples.
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=D That was a very good way to remind me of all the books I’ve read this year. As much as this post is for me, I hope you have enjoyed it.
Regards
