What I will do differently after the books I read in 2020

One of the upsides of 2020 was having ample opportunity to dig into my backlog allowing me to hit my reading goal for the first time since 2017. For this year’s recap, I’ve decided to change the format from 2019 and 2018, transitioning from takeaways to motivation & focus. I’ll explain why I decided to read each book and what is the one thing I would either like to remember or do differently moving forward.

This year’s list had a few emerging themes: product management was in focus again, financial freedom became a desire, self-knowledge and reflection became a necessity, and non venture-backed entrepreneurship became an experiment.

And in case you’re curious, if I could only have read one book this year, it would have been Rituals by Casper ter Kuile. It is now abundantly clear to me that quality of our lives depends on the quality of our habits and rituals, Casper’s book catalysed a number of adopted rituals that I will be sharing in an upcoming post.

Disclosure: each book is linked to an affiliate link to Amazon to make it easier to look up and purchase if you’d like to.

1. Principles of Product Management by Peter Yang

Why: I have this never ending FOMO of not keeping up with product management practices since entering the world of venture capital, it’s my way of balancing the investor/operator mindset.

1 Thing: “Product managers build leadership skills through adversity. When your product fails to gain traction, when your team falls apart, when your manager gives you tough feedback → all opportunities to be a better PM and person.”

2. Worry-free Money by Shannon Lee Simmons

Why: Most of my assets have been managed in Singapore and moving funds over to Canada required me to do a bit of a refresh on Canadian investing.

1 Thing: I’ll keep an emotional scorecard of how my expenses are making me feel from 1–5 and slowly purge those that repeatedly have a low score, it’s quite a refreshing at to look at a budget in my opinion.

3. The Visual MBA by Jason Barron

Why: My parents, since I graduated from my Bachelors have constantly asked when I’ll do my MBA, while it is looking more and more that it’s not worth the ROI for my particular career, I do think the learnings are valuable. I was gifted this as a Christmas present last year and saw it as an opportunity to sharpen my toolkit.

1 Thing: A simple concept I’ve come across many times now but it was presented as a ladder that helped me remember it better. Laddering value to a person helps you understand the JTBD in a step-wise fashion: product feature (ludicrous car speed) → product benefit (get places fast) → personal benefit (feel young or like a superhero)→ personal value (youthfulness or Tony Stark).

4. Ready for Remote by Gary Walker

Why: Given that I was launching a new office for Entrepreneur First and building out the team from scratch during a pandemic, I wanted to make sure to take into account best practices of remote working.

1 Thing: I ran a session with the team on what basic norms are of remote work but also facilitated a session that would generate new rituals for the team to give responsibility and trust bottom up to the culture we wanted to build.

5. Testing Business Ideas by David J Bland

Why: I’ve been a huge fan of all of David’s books, and have paper copies of every single one that I’ve brought with me back and forth from Canada to Singapore. 1-click auto-buy from Amazon.

1 Thing: For every type of business idea I have, I jump to the experiment page which describes the sequence of tests to run depending on business model and customer type. I usually fall into the routine trap of defaulting to customer interviews, Low fidelity prototype mindset and need to remember that tests will differ greatly depending on the hypothesis.

6. The School of Life by Alain de Botton

Why: a friend in Toronto was trying to bring the School of Life brand to Toronto and it sparked a series of book ravaging by the publisher that involved weeks/months of overdue self-reflection.

1 Thing: “Anxiety is not a sign of sickness, a weakness of the mind or an error for which we should always seek a medical solution. It is mostly a hugely reasonable and sensitive response to the genuine strangeness, terror, uncertainty and riskiness of existence. The single most important move is acceptance. There is no need — on top of everything else — to be anxious that we are anxious. The mood is no sign that our lives have gone wrong, merely that we are alive.”

7. How to Overcome your Childhood by The School of Life

Why: I recognised a number of my own personal childhood traumas (from a child’s perspective) from reading the School of Life that I wanted to dig into further.

1 Thing: Recognising the Golden Child complex I was brought up in and seeking the belief of a momentous truth that “life does not need to be golden in order to be valuable; that we can live in baser metal forms, in pewter or iron, and still be worth of love and adequate self-esteem. And even though this has nothing to do with the original expectations one was asked to shoulder, that realisation will be the truly exceptional achievement.”

8. Self-Knowledge by the School of Life

Why: I was thirsty for more self-exploration, it felt like emotional highways were finally unclogged and exposed to bare.

1 Thing: “Ambition that doesn’t know itself comes out as anxiety”, this compounds my overall reflection that ambition is a trap and I will seek adaptation instead, especially after 2020.

9. How to Think More Effectively by the School of Life

Why: As I got through the more emotional traumas exposed my brain got into the way and I wanted to dive into the more strategic areas of self-exploration.

1 Thing: Before jumping to anger to “consider others with love means forever remembering the child within them. Our wrongdoer may be fully grown, but their behaviour will always be joined up with their early years. We’re so keen to treat others Ike the adults they are that we overlook the need occasionally to perceive and sympathise with, the angry and hurt infant lurking inside.”

10. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Warner Klemp(Re-Read)

Why: Reading the School of Life books reminded me of compounding my leadership principles. I have since added this book into my annual re-reads.

1 Thing: When faced with adversity and trauma, ask myself, “what is life trying to teach me in this moment, what am I supposed to learn here?”. Combination of taking radical responsibility and learning through curiosity, two of the commitments of the book.

11. A boy and his dog at the end of the world by Charlie Fletcher

Why: It was recommended as a top book of 2019, I really love dogs, and I was burnt out of reading non-fiction.

1 thing: Honestly, the only thing is that I really want to live a life where a dog is in my family.

12. The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

Why: One of my goals is to scale my workshops into a Udemy course of some sort to share my (work) battle scars and before venturing into that space, I wanted to dive deeper into how learning occurs from a principled level.

1 Thing: As an overachieving generalist, I have in many occasions lacked the appreciation for how long it takes to compound your learning into a craft, the level of depth that was explored between building specialism in both martial arts and chess to me was a beautiful art. The next time I find myself thinking it can’t be that hard, I’ll just remember how Josh explored the idea of balance in Tai-Chi and how all encompassing any one single breath could be.

13. What do we do Now by randy silver

Why: It popped up on my LinkedIn news feed and I wanted to help frame guidance to our founders on EF on how to tackle the complexity of change being catalyse by COVID.

1 Thing: A reminder to set aside regular deep thinking time as opposed to only reactively in “war-time”, and struggling to just keep up during “peace-time”

14. Obviously Awesome by April Dunford

Why: When mapping out the Toronto ecosystem for network nodes, April Dunford came out as “the” person for positioning.

1 thing: I will use the positioning canvas as a complement to the business model canvas to have a narrative for “defining how you are the best at something that a defined market cares a lot about.

15. Why you will marry the wrong person by the School of Life

Why: With a title like that, how could you not give it a read. .

1 thing: Recognising that everyone including myself and my partner is crazy at varying levels and loving is something we learn to do, not something we fall into.

16. Forever Employable by Jeff Gothelf

Why: I met Jeff in Singapore during Mind the Product, and wanting to eventually experiment with being a solo-entrepreneur made this one a no-brained to read.

1 thing: I will remember that “it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the most outlier story that no one has my story, no one has been exactly where I’ve been and experienced what I’ve experienced and that there’s an evergreen of basic content, not just the C-level type. Everyone has to start somewhere and usually at the bottom is where they can benefit most.“

17. Designing your life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

Why: COVID has changed many things including the identity and goals of many professionals in the world. This has been a book that I have kept on my shelf for years, and

1 thing: Some problems are unsolvable, they’re called gravity problems and they need re-framing before they can be tackled. The next time I feel anxiety from a gravity problem, I’ll take a step back and re-frame it before spiralling into despair.

18. So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo

Why: I want and need to further educate myself in a problem that I have witnessed and likely have been unknowingly complicit to.

1 thing: I will remind myself that race is a social construct and has no bearing in science. It was constructed to justify a racially exploitative system and to lock People of Color into the bottom of it. Whenever I am in a conversation about race, I need to ask myself, am I trying to be right, or am I trying to do better?

19. Your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bet-David

Why: Saw it pop up on my news feed and I’ve following Patrick on YouTube over the last while.

1 thing: Integrating love languages into managing direct reports as well as figuring out how to give praise more effectively. I’ve learnt the hard way over the years that giving positive feedback with the same amount of care as negative is crucial for a strong feedback culture.

20. The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile

Why: Chanced on this book in a store the Junction area of Toronto and probably is the most important book I’ve read this year.

1 thing: Create and iterate on rituals that help increase the quality of my life and those around me, like a tech sabbath between Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.

21. Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon (re-read)

Why: it’s part of my annual re-read list, I feel imposter syndrome almost every single freaking day, so I’ll probably continue reading this every year.

1 thing: every time I feel like an imposter, I remember that everyone is stealing something from somebody or something and that there isn’t such a thing as a new idea, “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” Mark Twain

22. The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary

Why: One of the founders on the EF program recommended the book. There are so many takeaways and this is one of the first books I’ll write a more detailed review on.

1 thing: Block off at least 2 hours day to focus on on your number 1 priority goal.

23. Invaluable by Maya Grossman

Why: I happened to chance across Maya’s work on LinkedIn and was following her in the months leading up to the book launch.

1 thing: Whenever I start my next role, I’ll make sure my learning machine is more structured and deliberate (and pair it with Your First 90 days).

24. Personality Isn’t Permanent by Benjamin Hardy, PhD

Why: I’ve been following Ben’s posts for years and was always a fan of his no bullshit style of writing.

1 thing: A thought provoking concept for me was the re-framing of authenticity, according to Ben you can’t really truly be authentic to yourself because your authentic self is your future self as your personality is ever-evolving and constantly malleable.

25. What’s Your Problem by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

Why: After reading designing your life, I was looking for a more tactical way to re-frame problems and this popped up on my GoodReads.

1 thing: For the next time I face a gravity type problem to use the problem canvas to seek clarity on whether or not it’s the right problem to solve.

26. Product-Led Growth By Wes Bush

Why: I’ve been following Wes on LinkedIn and there was a promo for the book and jumped on it.

1 thing: As PM I’ve worked primarily in sales-led companies and it was a breath of fresh air to read through another model to work with. In my previous roles, my mitigation for being user-centric was to create a cross functional team as the product is nearing delivery as opposed to integrating it from the beginning. Product led companies requires the culture to be built around creating customer value and not hitting quotas, and whenever I start my next company it’ll likely be product-led.

27. Talking to Humans by Giff Constable(re-read)

Why: A colleague reminded me of this book that I had read years ago but have been using the Mom Test as the customer development bible. I think Talking to Humans helps complement it to figure out what to ask next once you’ve identified a hair on fire problem.

1 thing: For every customer development call, though my script will be user led, I’ll have a background set of questions shared by Talking to Humans that I fill out passively.

28. Zero to Sold by Arvid Kahl

Why: Reading through the Startupbuilder.mba launch and went on a rabbit hole thread of Twitter threads which listed this as must-read book.

1 thing: As a PM I’ve been trained to be problem focused, primarily because when I was hired into a role the customer base was pre-determined, the mental shift to going audience-first was quite resonating for me.

29. Build What Matters by Ben Foster, Rajesh Nerlikar

Why: I’ve been following Prodify over the last little while and wanted to see if I could scale out my product consulting beyond the few engagements I’ve had.

1 thing: 10 Dysfunctions of a product team and to make sure to integrate them into regular retrospectives.

30. The Practice by Seth Godin

Why: AltMBA was a catalyst in my life, a big reason why I decided to move back to Canada, so I’m keen on reading anything from Seth. As I shift my focus to include more creative ambitions, I thought of it as a book of mantras to kickstart my new exploration.

1 thing: Funny enough the major takeaway from the book was serendipitous, the last prompt I shipped in my AltMBA was titled, focus on the “how” not the why and Seth makes a concerted push to focus on the process, not the outcome.

31. Product Management’s Sacred Seven by Parth Detroja, Neel Mehta, Aditya Agashe

Why: Their other book Swipe to Unblock was on my reading list. I also wanted to gift a book to one of my mentees and figured I would quickly read up on it as well.

1 thing: Metric models for the type of business model employed was quite useful in breaking down what key metrics matter for each type of business (SaaS, user-generated content, freemium, marketplaces, etc.)

32. Groundwork by Vidya Dinamani and Heather Doherty Samaras

Why: Another one on my product FOMO list, honestly probably the best product management book I read this year.

1 Thing: Focus on the three practices: creating strong hypotheses, conducting scrappy research and be able to crate strong buy-in and commitment.

Hundred: What you learn in a lifetime by Heike Faller and Valerio Vidali

Why: Found at the same bookstore I found the Ritual book at, felt like it was a good coffee book table to use as a reminder for focusing on things that add meaning.

1 thing: bake many of these reflections into my personal memento Mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death.

Thanks for making it down this far!

Frankie