Reading
A running list, with one line each. Mostly about how work gets done, with detours.
Fall 2026
- Working Backwards, Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. The best description of the six-page memo, and why it beats slides.
- The Mom Test, Rob Fitzpatrick. Short, blunt, and the reason I stopped asking users whether they liked things.
- Shape Up, Ryan Singer. Appetite over estimates. I did not agree with all of it and it changed how I scope work anyway.
- The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman. Read it for the doors. Stayed for the error chapters.
- Endure, Alex Hutchinson. The limits are mostly in your head, and the book is honest about which ones are not.
- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Samin Nosrat. The book that made the two-burner stove enough.
- Deep Work, Cal Newport. Half of it is advice I ignore. The other half is the reason I keep mornings empty.
- The Boat Who Wouldn't Float, Farley Mowat. Recommended by my sailing instructor as a warning. Read it as encouragement.
- High Output Management, Andrew Grove. Old, dense, and still the clearest thing written about what a manager is for.
- An Everyone Culture, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. Assigned in a seminar. Kept it.