The 2020 Booklist

Here are a few of the books that I most enjoyed and had the largest impact on my thinking in 2020. I offer them in hope that you will find one that enriches your life as much as they have enriched mine.

 Atomic Habits, James Clear. A perennial New York Times bestseller that explores a research-based system for how to make the most of our lives by building habits and processes to realize our most productive best selves.

Impactful Quote: “The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.”

Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh. The long-time CEO of Zappos revolutionized business thinking, demonstrating that a company could care for its customers, employees, and community while making a profit and having a lot of fun doing so. Tony passed away tragically in 2020, but his zeal for people, and doing well by doing good, will continue to have an outsized effect on American business culture.

"...when a customer calls looking for a specific style of shoes in a specific size that we’re out of stock on. In those instances, every rep is trained to research at least three competitors’ Web sites, and if the shoe is found in stock to direct the customer to the competitor. Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time.”

Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl. The autobiography of an Austrian Jewish psychologist who survived several years in Nazi concentration camps. I reread this book for the first time in 20 years. No single book provided me a better perspective on the potential of mankind and how men and women can overcome the world's darkest times.

Impactful Quote: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

The Psychology of Money - Timeless Lessons on Money, Greed, and Happiness, Morgan Housel. A wide-ranging and accessible collection of essays carrying a wealth of common sense on our money, our brains, and the personal side of personal finance.

Quote: “Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant.”

Superthinking: The Big Book of Mental Models, Gabriel Weinberg and Laura McCann. The founder of search engine DuckDuckGo and his wife present this readable encyclopedia of mental models- or systems and lenses through which to see information and decision making.

Impactful Quote:

“Major life, career, and organizational choices can be thought of as bets on the future. You can be either right or wrong in these bets. If wrong, you won't achieve the success you wanted; if right, you will. However, to achieve a really high degree of success, you will need something extra: to be contrarian in your bet.... being 'right' doesn't lead to superior performance if the consensus forecast is also right."

The Trees of San Francisco, Mike Sullivan. A guide to the array of tree varieties growing throughout the City of San Francisco. With museums, the performing arts, and indoor dining closed for the majority of the year, this book's twelve walking tree tours increased my enjoyment of the city tree by tree and increased my knowledge of botany easily by a factor of 10.

Impactful Quote: "Australia and New Zealand make up 5% of the earth's landmass, but they're much more important than that to San Francisco's urban forest. The two countries have contributed a total of 20 of the city's 50 most frequently planted trees."

The Whole Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Daniel Siegel. A practical exploration of research and parenting guide on how to implement the science of how children's brains develop and mature.

Impactful Quote:  “Too often we forget that “discipline” really means “to teach”—not “to punish.” A disciple is a student, not a recipient of behavioral consequences. When we teach mindsight, we take moments of conflict and transform them into opportunities for learning, skill building, and brain development.”