What your CEO read this summer
Team Letter | August 28, 2023
Aug 28, 2023
Happy Monday Tuesday, Alpaca!
What I Read This Summer
I cannot believe we are rounding out the last week of summer! With everyone back in school, our office in top shape, a new BEAUTIFUL website to start promoting, and so much good work ahead of us for the new school year, I didn’t want to miss some reflection on the reading and learning we did this summer through Independent Study.
I have long admired Bill Gates’ regular practice of taking “reading vacations” – a stack of books, a place far away from home and office, and a focus on learning and absorbing knowledge across different topics, genres, and ideas. Steven Johnson says of Gates’ practice in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, “By compressing his intake into a matter of days, it gives new ideas additional opportunities to connect to themselves. It’s easier to remember something you read yesterday than something you read 6 months ago.”
During the months in summer when Alpaca isn’t shipping packs, we each take on projects that move the needle for the company in a new way, and we each pick a reading list. This summer, my reading motor was turned up extra high, so I got the opportunity to have a lot of ideas collide and connect in my head.
My top 3 for the summer, along with what I learned from each one:
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson’s book offers 7 patterns that drive innovation, and dispels the idea that innovation is some kind of divine gift bestowed upon some and not others. The theory that ideas need to collide and connect to one another in order to drive something brand new into the world was brand new to me. And the quote from the book that’s on a post-it note in my office: “being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore.”
Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Told through an absolutely beautiful fictional story of friendship and business partnership, this book taught me more about video game development and how gaming businesses are built than I ever knew I wanted to know. Turns out, it’s fascinating. As a bonus, I also learned a bunch of new words from this book, like ludic (fun!), susurrus (a whispering or rustling sound), and my favorite, weltschmerz: the nostalgia one experiences as when visiting an old school and finding that the desks were so much smaller than in one’s memory.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
This book now has a permanent spot by my bedside. After finishing it, I found myself picking it up, turning to any page, reading that, and thinking about it the rest of the day. It’s a book about building your life’s work as a practice, and doing so with a mindset of abundance, growth, and connection. It’s the best book I’ve read all year, and I bet I’ll say that when I read it again next year.
Note: Buy the actual physical book and download the audiobook (I know! I know.). The book itself is designed beautifully and comes with lined pages in the back to record your favorite notes and passages. And the audio is narrated by Rubin which adds greatly to the experience.
In case you’re thinking about a reading vacation yourself and you need ideas, here’s my full list from the summer:
Non-fiction
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
The Light We Carry
Where Good Ideas Come From
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Choosing to Run
The Betrayal of Anne Frank
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Sales Acceleration Formula (re-read)
Fiction
Magic Hour
Such a Fun Age
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Uncommon Type
Hello, Beautiful
Looking for Alaska
Still Reading
Zero to One
Thinking Fast & Slow
Inbound Marketing
Look for some time on our collective calendars SOON to discuss and celebrate that work more fully in early September. But in the meantime, I tried to distill my summer reading into a single article with what I learned, here. Let me know if anyone needs to borrow a good read!
Let’s go get it this week!
KB