I read 42 books this year. Not a single one made the ten best things I read.
In 2021, online writing on blogs is the highest quality information available.
Far better than anything you’ll get from watching the news or reading the mainstream media.
So, what were the 10 best things I read in 2021? Here they are, with my top takeaway from each, in case you don’t have time to read them all.
1. The Great Online Game by Packy McCormick
The Great Online Game is played concurrently by billions of people, online, as themselves, with real-world consequences. It is free to play, and starts simply: by realizing that you’re playing.
2. No Floor, No Ceiling by Dror Poleg
The internet matching machine is fuelled by content. The more of it you produce, the more likely you are to reach the people who’d value what you have to offer.
3. The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online by David Perell
Writing online is the fastest way to accelerate your career. The ultimate goal of building a personal brand is to have a “Personal Monopoly.”
4. How to Use Evernote for Your Creative Workflow by Tiago Forte
What would it look like to use Evernote to give you a second brain?With such a system in place, the more randomness and uncertainty you are exposed to, the faster you will be propelled to interesting places.
5. Stripe by Mario Gabriele
Yak shaving is what you are doing when you’re doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you’re supposed to be working on. Stripe is the “greatest yak shave of all time.”
6. A Datadog platform dive by Hhhypergrowth
Today’s applications are no longer monolithic applications housed in tightly monitored & secured on-prem data centers. Not only is the application itself programmable, but the application stack, & the underlying infrastructure, are.
7. Paytm from Idea to IPO by Marc Rubinstein
Vijay Shekhar Sharma hasn’t written a book of his own, but he has written 36,000 tweets. In order to get a handle on the company, Marc looks through them.
8. Axie Infinity: Infinite Opportunity or Infinite Peril? by Abhimanyu Kumar
Axie Infinity is the poster child of blockchain games. Yet under all the hype, there are some fundamental issues that can bring the game down if gone unfixed.
9. The CSPO Pathology by Marty Cagan
We as an industry are suffering from a pandemic, but there is no vaccine. What is it? People confusing a product owner with a product manager.
10. Choosing Your North Star Metric by Lenny Rachitsky
Which metric, if it were to increase today, would most accelerate my business’ flywheel? Choosing your ideal North Star Metric depends on your context.
Cleanse your 2022 information diet by reading these 10 writers and I guarantee you will be smarter. Each is prolific, and will have many more pieces to come.
The most overlooked resource isn’t books. It’s great online writing.
