Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• There were lots of macro distractions this week (snow in Atlanta, wildfires in California, etc.). I can’t control or impact any of these kinds of things, so I want to do a better job of tuning them out next week.

What I learned:

• No material learnings related to this project this week. This is concerning. I should be learning something every week (if not every day).

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

Last month, I set a goal for the Christmas holiday (see here). The goal was to write a blog post series on a book I’d read. I’ll get straight to it. I failed. There’s no real excuse. There’s no one to blame. I just didn’t check this box. I view every failure as a learning opportunity, so I looked for the lessons in this one.

I summarize each book by creating a digest, which I use to create a blog post series. I can’t create a quality blog post series without the digest. Creating the digest was the big obstacle to hitting this writing goal. It’s a manual process that requires multiple blocks of concentrated time totaling more than ten hours. I somehow forgot this when I set the goal. Reading is different—I can pick up a book and read a few pages if I have five extra minutes. I can’t do that with writing.

If I want to get back into the habit of creating digests, I need to ensure that I have several blocks of time exceeding ten total hours—or figure out how to use technology for digest creation. I probably won’t consistently have the blocks of time, so I’m aiming for option number two.

A few days ago, I shared the stats around my reading for 2024 and what I learned from the process. I included the total number of books I read and the number of books by month. A few people have asked me for the list of book titles. I can see the value in this and want to share my reading list in an easy-to-consume way.

In a perfect world, I’d have a list I can update weekly as a dedicated page on the blog after I finish each book. That way people could easily see the current list anytime. I did some digging, and the available tools for this aren’t great. Goodreads has a few widgets that can be added to a blog, but I don’t like them.

I’m going to keep searching to see if I can find a tool that allows me to update and share my reading on my blog. I might ask some developers how involved it would be to build a custom widget. Hopefully, I’ll find a solution to this problem.

In the meantime, I’ll manually share my reading list from last year via a blog post. It’s not ideal, but it checks the box for now. Hopefully, I can get that list published in the next week or so.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 44
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 273
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Finished reading John Train’s The Money Masters: Nine Great Investors: Their Winning Strategies and How You Can Apply Them, a biographical anthology about nine public market investors
• Updated draft of taxonomy using learnings from the exercise of creating four hypothetical outputs for users (see here)
• Created a concise mission statement
• Create a concise vision statement
• Created a list of potential new metrics for this weekly email update
• Created a clear problem statement
• Analyzed Google data and generated more title ideas for blog posts and other content types
• Continued linking blog posts about the same book
• Continued updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Pick two types of output and associated user problems and create an approach and workflow to solve each problem
• Get feedback on the problem, vision, and mission statements from two seasoned entrepreneurs
• Share the draft taxonomy with two people
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-nine was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• The same issues as last week around being productive. I just didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped to. It was another holiday week, but even so I was frustrated because I felt I should’ve done more.

What I learned:

• A friend is starting a company, so we worked on mission and vision statements together. We gave each other feedback. That wasn’t planned, but it worked out great. He brought a fresh perspective and provided great feedback and edits.
• The vision statement is hard to craft and takes time to get concise. I can’t do it in one sitting. But working on it forced me to crystallize my thinking around how the future could look if what I’m creating is successful.
• I shared what I learned from reading 52 books. See here. A few people asked to see the list of books. I need to figure out a way to publish that list on my blog. Ideally, I’ll be able to easily update it weekly when I finish a book. Goodreads offers a widget that can plug into a website, but it’s pretty bad. I might have to share manually via a blog post for now and figure out another solution that I can update weekly down the road.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

This summer, I set a goal of creating 100 podcasts about books I was reading. It forced me to start tracking my reading in a spreadsheet. It’s nerdy, but it was necessary because every week, I read a book, wrote a blog post series, and created a podcast series about each book. The spreadsheet helped me keep everything organized. I paused the latter two after the summer because they were too inefficient and time-consuming, but I kept updating the spreadsheet and reading a book a week.

I looked at the spreadsheet as I was reflecting on the books I read in 2024. I figured I’d share some stats and learnings.

High-level stat for 2024:

• Books read: 52

2024 breakdown by month:

• January: 0 (I did read, but I can’t remember what books)
• February: 2
• March: 6
• April: 6
• May: 7
• June: 5
• July: 4
• August: 5
• September: 4
• October: 3
• November: 5
• December: 5

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Reading two books a week was too aggressive. I tried it in the March–May period, but I wasn’t absorbing as much of what I was reading or making as many connections. I was focused on finishing the books, which isn’t why I read. The pace was too fast, so I reduced it to a book a week, which feels more sustainable.
• Sharing what I learned from my reading was the big unlock. It took my learning and thinking to another level. Writing a blog post series and recording a podcast series forced me to identify insights and organize and communicate my thinking. The key tool in that process was creating a digest of each book, which was an extraction of the information I found important in each chapter, along with my insights.
• E-readers, such as Kindles, are great devices, but I prefer reading physical books. I highlight and add notes about insightful sections and ideas in the books. Those highlights and notes are trapped in each book, so finding and using them later is difficult. See here for more. As I’ve read more, this has become a painful problem. Trying to find something sometimes means reviewing several books’ notes and highlights. Experiencing this pain led me to several feature ideas for the “book library.”
• Reading a book is simple—but learning from what I read is more involved. It’s inefficient and involves lots of steps. The process of sharing what I learn from my reading is complex. It’s hard and has many steps and lots of moving pieces. This realization led me to add several more feature ideas to the “book library.”
• The value in reading lots of entrepreneurial biographies is that you’re exposed to the best ideas and experiences of entrepreneurs, and you can pull from them when you’re faced with a problem. The challenge is that this requires a great memory or knowing exactly where to look to quickly find something you’ve read. I don’t have a photographic memory, and I don’t always remember where I read something. I want to make it easy to find what I’ve read, which will be a big part of the “book library” MVP.
• My best ideas in 2024 came from piecing ideas together from various books. Making those connections was a great way to build upon what other entrepreneurs figured out. Solving a problem by building upon the knowledge of others rather than starting from scratch led to my having better ideas. I’m not an idea guy, so this was perfect for me, and I want to do more of it going forward. I don’t think this has to be completely manual and inefficient. Figuring out how to solve this and incorporate it into the “book library” is challenging, but I think it can be done, and I’m excited to figure this out because it’ll be a huge unlock for myself and others.

Those are my takeaways and reading stats for 2024!

2/26/25 Update: I finally published a list of all 52 books. You can see the list here.

2/27/25 Update: I created a searchable list of all the books I’ve read, and I’ll be updating it weekly. See here.

The year 2024 was one of learning and following my curiosity. It was a good year that took me places I hadn’t anticipated. I was curious about how others approached learning, so I did a learning survey. That led to my sharing what I read from books in blog posts. That led to my sharing those blog posts in audio format. That led to my creating 100 podcast episodes about what I learned from books. From that I realized how difficult it is to read, retain, and make use of what I read. That sparked my figuring out how to solve this problem, which led to the book library project. It’s been fun. I’m excited about the potential of this project and can’t wait to see where it goes in 2025.

From a growth perspective, this past year felt different than other recent years. I think that consuming a book a week drove this feeling. The bits of information I consumed built upon one another and led to a deeper understanding of many topics that I can put to use this year. My learning was supercharged, which was nice. I enjoyed the challenge of learning from so many books and the mental growth it led to. And that was after only nine months. I can only imagine what it will lead to if I do it for a full calendar year, and I intend to continue it in 2025—hopefully with the help of my book library.

Today, I worked on crafting a concise vision for my book library project. I tried using the same approach I used to craft my problem statement a few days ago, but Gemini and ChatGPT weren’t as helpful with this exercise. Developing a hypothetical vision of what the world could look like is a lot different than making a declarative statement about the problem you’re solving. Neither tool did a great job with the former.

A resource I did find helpful was something I wrote earlier this year. In this post, I shared my thoughts on the mission and vision statements from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. In that post, I reference two videos in which Armstrong states his company’s mission and vision individually and ties them together. One of the videos even ties it all back to Coinbase’s strategy.

Articulating a vision of what the world could look like if your company achieves its mission isn’t easy, and it takes time. I’ve had it rolling around in the back of my mind for months. A strong vision is invaluable. It focuses people on what could be built, not what you’ve already built. They start to view your current state as temporary, overlooking its many flaws, and focus on the future—the possibilities—and how you can get to your desired future state. People start to think about the journey you’re taking and what it would be like to be part of it.

A vision statement is a powerful tool, especially for early founders. It can separate you from other founders and help you land customers, partners, recruits, and investors. I didn’t have a vision for my first company, and that was a mistake I don’t want to repeat.

I’m glad I spent time on this. Next, I’ll circulate a few versions of my vision among friends and eventually narrow it down to one.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 43
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 266
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Finished rereading Howard Marks’s Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, a framework for navigating cycles in various asset classes (real estate, public debt, stock market, etc.)
• Created four hypothetical outputs for users of the “book library” and reviewed them with my developer friend; see more here.
• Refreshed my blog—posts about the same book can now be connected; see the other changes here
• Created a clear problem statement
• Identified likely root causes of data quality issues; pinpointing the fixes will require some trial and error
• Continued linking blog posts about the same book
• Continued updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Create concise vision and mission statements
• Create a list of potential metrics for my weekly updates that better reflect the updated direction of this project
• Share taxonomy draft with one person
• Continue linking blog posts about the same book
• Continue updating descriptions for blog posts about the same book
• Analyze Google data to generate more ideas for creating blog post titles

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-eight was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• I’ve been struggling with what the taxonomy should look like. I’m not really sure why this has been hard.
• I wanted to get more things done this week than I did. It was a holiday week, but I was still frustrated.

What I learned:

• Dedicating time to craft a concise problem statement felt like an important step forward. I should have done it long ago. I didn’t define the problem early enough at my first company, which caused unexpected issues later that were painful to correct.
• The problem is the highest level of thinking and the priority for every company. Everything revolves around the problem being solved. The vision, mission, values, etc. all become easier to define when the problem is clear. If the problem isn’t clear, there can’t be clarity on anything else. The problem is the foundation and compass for the business.
• I’ll craft the vision, mission, and values next. Doing these at the same time feels very natural now.
• Creating examples of outputs the book library will generate was another great exercise. It helped with alignment and prioritization. Thinking through what needs to happen to achieve each example was thought provoking. See more of my thoughts here.
• The quality of the database data is heavily influenced by the process used to parse and classify it. There needs to be a defined approach. Without one, the results aren’t consistent and quality isn’t great.
• People don’t understand what you’re doing when you say “AI.” When I use “natural language computing,” things click and people get it.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!