Bookshelf
What I read, and what it changed about how I work.
This is not a reading list. Most of the books here are not business books at all. A psychoanalyst from 1899, a retelling of the Mahabharata from the losing side, a Japanese idea about calm. I read them the way I read a company: looking for the thing underneath the thing.
Every book on this shelf gets one question. What does it change about how a business should be run? If the answer is nothing, it does not make the shelf.
01
The book, honestly
What it says, and whether it was worth the hours. Some of these were hard going. I say so.
02
The one idea I kept
Not a summary. One idea that stayed with me after the rest faded, and why.
03
What it means for how we work
Where I have seen that idea play out inside a real company, and what we do differently in a workshop because of it.
On the shelf
Reading “Ajaya: Roll of the Dice” Reminded Me That Every Villain Has a Version
Anand Neelakantan retells the Mahabharata from Duryodhana’s side, and the uncomfortable truth is that nobody in a company thinks of themselves as the villain either.
Reading Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” Made Me Listen Differently in Meetings
Freud’s distinction between the dream you remember and the wish underneath it turns out to be the most useful idea I have found for reading what is actually said in a meeting.
Reading “The Way of Nagomi” Changed How I Think About Calm
Ken Mogi’s The Way of Nagomi quietly rearranges how you think about calm, ambition, and what a sustainable high-performance life actually looks like.
“Clarity is not the absence of complexity. It is the courage to name it.”
What are you reading right now? I would like to know. Send me the title.
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