The Right Book at the Right Time

It’s cheesy, but I’ve always thought there was a certain magic in reading the right book at the right time.

This quote caught my eye recently and reminded me of a year of transitions I had a decade ago. In 2012, I went from scale at Amazon to scaling Twitter, came into my own as a manager, and had several life changes to boot. And I happened to read 3 books during that year that have shaped my approach to work (and life) over the last 10 years.

So what are these evergreen books? And what were my notes-to-self as I read them?

The Effective Executive

This book taught me that time management is the foundational skill for a leader.

• managing time as the most precious resource

• blocking off time to actually work

• measuring time to make adjustments

• efficiency is not effectiveness

• outcomes over output, which requires operating on a longer time horizon

• focus on high-leverage vs time spent

Essentialism

My takeaway from this book was the need to be intentional about your choices.

• discipline required when trying to scale but used to saying yes to everything

• started journey on strategic learning (vs tactical execution)

• multi-tasking is a myth and single-tracking is how real problem solving happens

• living intentionally vs going along with status meetings, career ladders, etc

• not feeling guilty about saying “no” - origin of principle “no is a complete sentence”

• not chasing optionality, just because it’s en vogue to not commit

Creativity Inc

This book has tons of best practices on building an org that outlasts you.

• operationalized feedback systems are critical for a self-learning org

• psychological safety required to communicate and experiment, otherwise isolated incrementalism

• great teams vs great charters - diversity of team in every sense

• getting team to express it’s diversity in ideating, decisions, etc

I’d love to hear from readers about their right book at the right time moments - please chime in via comments👇. And if you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing.

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further reading / references

• the intro quote is from a book recommendation newsletter (fun fact: before finding my niche talking about product strategy / execution / leadership I almost started a newsletter focused on reading suggestions)

• you can find Kindle (of course, fanboi for life) versions of each of the books listed above here, here, and here

• some of you may remember this poll about books that need to exist

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childish drawing / interpretation