Reading

How to Build a Brain

These books are essential to understanding how to control your own life and shape yourself.

• Livewired — David EaglemanThis is a textbook on how to live. Knowing how the brain works allows you to control your life. Eagleman's class at Stanford was one of my favorite classes ever, and I have recommended it to all my family members.
• Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel KahnemanUnderstanding how humans think allows you to change your mind and become the person you want to be.
• Atlas of the Heart — Brené BrownYour ability to deal with feeling is limited to your conceptual vocabulary. This book defines feelings and makes you aware of them, thus giving you the power to change them.
• Tribe — Sebastian JungerHumans need belonging and shared purpose.
• Incognito — David EaglemanMost of the mind runs below awareness. Understanding the subconscious and how it is shaped allows you to choose the direction you're heading.
• The Brain: The Story of You — David EaglemanIdentity is a process, not a thing. The brain ultimately becomes what you make it.
• Wild Problems — Russ RobertsThe biggest decisions can't be solved on a spreadsheet. At some point you need to act and accept what comes with that.
• Outliers — Malcolm GladwellSuccess is timing and accumulated advantage as much as raw talent.
• Emotional Intelligence 2.0 — Bradberry & GreavesPeople with average IQs outperform higher ones 70% of the time. This book is helpful for understanding social behavior.
• Meditations — Marcus AureliusControl what you control. How you feel is up to you. Your feelings are inside your mind.
• Think Faster, Talk Smarter — Matt AbrahamsLearn to reframe things how you want to see them. You will become what you practice because the brain adapts to what it experiences. This Stanford GSB course was one of the most impactful I've ever taken.

How the World Works

Understanding how the world works allows you to choose your place within it and know how to get there.

• Same as Ever — Morgan HouselUnderstand what is constant about the world and learn how to build around those constants. The safest way to get what you want is to deserve it.
• Fooled by Randomness — Nassim TalebMost success is luck pretending to be skill. Try to differentiate the process and the distribution of outcomes it could have created from the outcome you actually see.
• What is Life? — Erwin SchrödingerEverything naturally moves towards chaos and disorder. Yet cells can stay stable. Understanding how things stay alive is key to understanding how they will act and where they will move.
• Free to Choose — Milton FriedmanSociety is markets of people pursuing their own interests. People will always pursue their own interests.
• Getting (More of) What You Want — Neale & LysAlmost everything can be approached as a negotiation. Understand how things actually work to get more of what you want.
• Zero to One — Peter ThielChoose not to compete. Operate in an area where you will have no real competition. Then win, and grow.
• How to Rule the World — Theo BakerPeople are motivated by incentives. Politics is an engineering problem. Exceed your limits of conceivable ambition. It is also an accurate depiction of student life at Stanford.
• The Ascent of Money — Niall FergusonMoney and credit are the scaffolding behind human progress. The same patterns and crises repeat because each generation forgets the last. People always generally have the same tendencies and behaviors.
• The Big Rich — Bryan BurroughFortunes are built and unwound on big, concentrated bets.
• The Tipping Point — Malcolm GladwellChange builds quietly, then breaks in one moment. This is about how things become trends. Be the person who connects and helps people.
• Trump: The Art of the Deal — Trump & SchwartzThink big, keep your options open, and sell the story. Know what you are doing and be prepared for every room you're going in to.
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich — Ramit SethiMoney comes from behaviors and time. Let the right behaviors play out over time. Show me someone's calendar and spending and I'll tell you their priorities.
• 7 Powers — Hamilton HelmerPower is the set of conditions that create persistent differential returns. Peel back the layers and find the one thing to bet on.
• The Art of War — Sun TzuTo best understand how things work, just do. Time in the market, on the battlefield, or just generally acting will teach you more about reality and how things work than anything you can hear. Learn the lessons for yourself by experiencing them.

Investing

Understanding how to allocate resources properly can make you the highest achieving and most efficient version of yourself.

• The Man Who Solved the Market — Gregory ZuckermanJim Simons understood how the world works and designed his strategy and his company to fit within it. His philosophies are very influential to me.
• Active Portfolio Management — Grinold & KahnIR = IC × √breadth. This formula is how life works. Your returns equal the success of your bets times the number of uncorrelated bets you make. If you want high returns, either make a lot of bets or make very successful ones.
• A Man for All Markets — Edward O. ThorpLearn how to size your bets based on the advantage you have. This requires having an understanding for what likely edge you have and what size of bet you could make to achieve maximum gain while avoiding ruin.
• Inside the Black Box — Rishi NarangThis is a map of what a systematic fund actually is and how quant works. If you want to learn quant, this is the book I'd recommend.
• The Psychology of Money — Morgan HouselThe expectations and emotions around money move it more than math does. People tend to prefer the illusion of control over the reality of uncertainty.
• The Outsiders — William ThorndikeTo get differentiated returns you need a differentiated process.
• The Quants — Scott PattersonThis book covers famous quants, how they grew their businesses, and how edges are generally created.
• Hedge Fund Market Wizards — Jack SchwagerThis book shares stories about different investors. Get a sense for what their methods are then think about whether that matches your logic or what you would do differently.
• When Genius Failed — Roger LowensteinAlways protect yourself. Do not be in a position where you can go to 0. Engineer to avoid total ruin.
• How to Make Money in Stocks — William O'NeilOperating with a set of rules, no matter how primitive, generally beats going by feel.
• The Secrets of Sand Hill Road — Scott KuporLearn to take asymmetric risk where your upside is much greater than your downside.

Preparing for the Intelligence Economy

This is how the future will look and how we should prepare for it.

• The Singularity Is Nearer — Ray KurzweilThis gives a timeline for how society and technology will progress. Understanding where things are going helps you prepare for them and act thoughtfully instead of reacting.
• Multi-Agent Collaborative Intelligence — Edward Y. ChangHuman development and how societies are organized should inform the structure of AI systems. Ed has been a great mentor to me, and I've spent countless hours in his office.
• The Singularity Is Near — Ray KurzweilIntelligence compounds exponentially. The capability of technology will be able to dwarf humans soon. That is the way things are going, despite how many people want to avoid thinking about that.
• Principles of Scientific Management — Frederick TaylorThis is the founding text of operational management and talked about the best ways to increase output when people worked in factories. Its general principles still apply today, and it explains a lot of traditional corporate structure.
• Situational Awareness — Leopold AschenbrennerThis essay provides a general map of how AI tech will progress.
• The Safety Net — David EaglemanA connected civilization engineers itself to survive shocks. Resilience is the property of a system.
• The Runaway Species — Eagleman & BrandtCreativity is recombination. People bend, break, or blend what already exists.

How to Spend a Life

Life is meaningful when you can turn your values into actions.

• The Almanac of Naval Ravikant — Eric JorgensonOperate in areas that compound. Be in fields where your time or work can build on itself and take you to a higher place. Play long term games with long term people.
• Die With Zero — Bill PerkinsThe point of having money is to convert it into experiences. Experiences with people pay memory dividends, allowing that bond to continue into the future.
• Skin in the Game — Nassim TalebWords mean nothing without congruent actions. Learn how people think by observing what they do.
• Antifragile — Nassim TalebBuild things that gain from disorder. Disorder is a constant. Prepare for it.
• The Wright Brothers — David McCulloughProducts built from relentless iteration and first-principles engineering shape the future.
• Band of Brothers — Stephen AmbrosePurpose, trust, and community give meaning, even under extreme hardship.
• Never Eat Alone — Keith FerrazziCommunity is the most valuable form of capital.