Spring Reading: Book Recommendations
Now that the new season is here, I wanted to share a couple of interesting books I’ve read in the past few months that met the 3 criteria of a worthy recommendation: 1. Thought-provoking 2. Proposes a new perspective on certain topic and (most importantly) 3. Easy read.
1. The Psychology of Money
Most personal finance books enlist a set of “principles” on which you should act on, the difference with this one is that the author doesn’t claim that these ideas will get you to financial freedom, but rather will better guide you when taking financial decisions.
Short and concrete, the insights shared in this book resonated a lot with my own personal views. Would recommend to anyone being relatively new to investing. Link
2. Think Again
by Adam Grant
I’m not a huge fan of Adam Grant, but I must admit that the storyline really aligned with some of my own personal findings and learnings throughout life. I’m glad somebody had the capability of putting these ideas together and conceptualize the great benefits of reassessing our core beliefs and thought process. Questioning everything is a good mental exercise because it keeps our minds updated and enable growth in our personal and professional lives. Link
3. The Molecule of More
The book does a great job on explaining how dopamine interferes with our daily decision making process, it’s astonishing to think we are not driven by rationality but by a series of chemical imbalances in our brains. From making huge personal and professional decisions, dopamine levels in our brain can determine whether we choose to eat a radish over a chocolate cookie. Link
4. The Infinite Game
by Simon Sinek
Great insight as to what makes us fail in so many endeavours: jobs, companies, personal relationships or even sports. The author claims we live in a world in which short term (finite minded) strategies or objectives won’t be sustainable in the long run, rather, if we adhere to a long term vision (or a “just cause” as Simon calls it), the probability of succeeding will be greater mainly due to the fact that our efforts will become something natural and part of our identities and these eventually will evolve into habits. Link
5. Thinking in Bets
by Annie Duke
“Figure out the possibilities and take a stab at the probabilities”.
Throughout the book the author claims that all of our decisions involve a certain percentage of uncertainty and we should embrace it, in the form of forecasts involving different scenarios. Another good concept which she introduces is how we tend to attribute good outcomes to good decisions and bad outcomes to bad luck, personally, I felt identified with that finding and now I became more aware of this bias. Link
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