Reading

Tiago Forte

Forte's CODE method for capturing and organising what you learn so it's there when you need it. Slowly reshaping how I take notes and keep a personal knowledge base as I read.

Héctor García & Francesc Miralles

A gentle look at the Japanese idea of a reason to get up in the morning, drawn from the centenarians of Okinawa. Reading it slowly, a few pages at a time, which feels like the right pace for it.

Josh Kaufman

A broad, self-taught tour of how businesses actually create and capture value. As an engineer who likes to own more of the product, it's filling in the vocabulary I never got formally.

Seth Godin

Reframed marketing for me as finding the smallest viable audience and genuinely serving them, not shouting at everyone. The "people like us do things like this" idea stuck with me the most.

Jonah Berger

Berger's STEPPS framework finally gave me language for why some things spread and others don't. The chapter on practical value and social currency changed how I think about sharing my own work.

Hans Rosling

A calm, data-driven argument that the world is better than the headlines suggest. It made me more suspicious of my own instincts and quicker to ask what the numbers actually say.

Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschäppeler

Fifty thinking models in a pocket-sized book — Eisenhower, the personal performance review, the conflict resolution grid. I keep coming back to it when I need a quick frame to untangle a decision.

James Clear

The most practical book on behaviour I've read — systems over goals, and making the good option the easy one. I still lean on the "make it obvious, make it easy" checklist when building a new routine.

Henry Manampiring

A popular Indonesian take on Stoicism for everyday anxiety and overthinking. On the list because a calmer, more deliberate mindset is something I keep wanting to practise.

Tan Malaka

Tan Malaka's Indonesian classic on materialism, dialectics, and logic as a way of thinking. Curious to read it both as history and as a lens on how we reason here at home.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb on rare, high-impact events and how badly we reason about uncertainty. Picking it up next to sharpen how I think about risk, both in markets and in shipping software.

Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman's map of System 1 and System 2 thinking has been recommended to me too many times to keep putting off. Next on the list for understanding my own biases.