This Is Strategy by Seth Godin

I somehow got plugged into Godin’s work several years ago, and I’ve admired how he can mold key insights into pithy, powerful posts. This Is Strategy is brilliant & timely. It’s about systems & time & projects & people. It offers repeated reminders of simple questions that are so often lost as we’re plowing ahead: Who’s it for? What’s it for? A great read regardless of whether you’re new to or experienced in strategy work.

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

Burkeman structured this book as a deliberately paced journey. Divided into 4 sections, each 7 chapters just a few pages in length, the idea is to read a single chapter each day and build towards confronting, even embracing, the finitude of life. (If you grew up in a religious household as I did, you might feel some similarity with the daily devotional.)

I chose to move through this at the recommended pace. I also elected to write a brief reflection/reaction after each reading. Having just read Four Thousand Weeks at the end of the year, the concepts felt familiar, with some new insights & anecdotes, but slowing down the pace lended deeper personal engagement with them. Highly recommend!

Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes by Sunita Shah

IMO, this should be on everyone’s reading list, now more than ever. Shah trained as a physician and is now a researcher in organizational psychology investigating influence & what drives us to comply. She lays out a definition of defiance, not as a lack of obedience but of rejecting demands & actions that don’t align to our core values. Shah presents a framework for defiance (a true no) paralleling that of consent (a true yes) which she clearly distinguishes from compliance (going along with something without, e.g., the knowledge or autonomy to make an informed decision). She also highlights how defiance is an action, not a trait, that exists along a spectrum. Not all defiance looks like rebellion (and indeed rebellion isn’t always defiance). I learned a lot of science, and this book is changing my thinking in decision making and showing up in the world.

Resilience That Works: Eight Practices for Leadership and Life by Marian Ruderman, Cathleen Clerkin & Katya Fernandez

This comes from the Center for Creative Leadership and is a quick, practical read. It tackles the topic of resilience and what we can do as part of our everyday to help us better respond to the chronic and acute stresses of work and the rest of life. There’s a lot here that I already practice, but there were good nudges and reminders of areas I could tap into more. It ends with an exercise to help you get very tactical in growing resilience practices. Definitely valuable if you find yourself saying you don’t have time for such practices.

Subtract by Leidy Klotz

Loved this book! Klotz has a fascinating background—former pro soccer player, trained in architecture & engineering, collaborating with psychologists & other distant fields. He’s an exemplar of the interdisciplinary researcher, and he’s a fantastic writer to boot. The central premise is that, in attempts to fix or improve things, humans overwhelmingly try adding & are incredibly prone to ignoring opportunities to remove something, even when it would deliver objectively better results. Klotz lays out the driving factors—biological, psychological, societal—and ways to nudge us towards considering subtraction. This isn’t about minimalism. It’s about learning to recognize different ways to change systems.

This Ordinary Stardust by Alan Townsend

Wow. This was devastatingly beautiful. Townsend is an ecosystem ecologist, and the book is a remarkable blend of science communication & memoir. He draws on several scientific fields to tell a story of a changing world, which becomes a doorway to his personal story of moving through the world with trauma and grief. The writing is polished, but Townsend doesn’t sand down the edges of his experience or emotion. It’s a brilliant read that cuts deeply.