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The Biggest Lessons from 110 Books

2022-03-21 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 31:32 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books and reading (also: Business and entrepreneurship, Productivity and time, Mindset, motivation and happiness, Relationships and personal life) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present, His medical past

Ali tours the 110 books on his bookshelves (90 read, 20 on his to-be-read list), giving each one's main lesson and who it suits: self-improvement, productivity, dating, money and business books such as The Minimalist Entrepreneur, Oversubscribed and The E-Myth, study guides, the fiction that shaped his childhood, and the books of his Deep Dive podcast guests.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A tour of 110 books: 90 read, 20 on the to-be-read list

  • ★★ Ali tours the 110 books on his bookshelf: 90 he has already read and 20 are on his to-be-read list. — 00:00:00

00:00:16 — Self-improvement books: Think Big, Atomic Habits, The 7 Habits, Can't Hurt Me, The Gap and the Gain, The Third Door, Mindset, The Daily Stoic, Superhuman Social Skills, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

  • ★★ Grace Lordan (quoted): In Think Big, behavioural scientist Grace Lordan's thesis is to think big, setting a goal for the version of ourselves we want to be, then break it down into smaller steps. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali says Think Big's advice sounds obvious, but the book holds loads he did not know and found surprising. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ James Clear (quoted): Atomic Habits by James Clear says that to build good habits and break bad ones we should focus on small 1% improvements over a very long time, and sets out four laws of habit change. — 00:00:58 · Atomic Habits, James Clear
  • ★★ Many people Ali knows tell him Atomic Habits is the single best self-improvement book they have read, and often the only one. — 00:00:58 · Atomic Habits
  • ★★ Ali has not yet read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, only several summaries, his favourite on Shortform; it is on his to-be-read list because every flick through it impresses him. — 00:01:27 · Shortform
  • ★★ Ali recommends David Goggins's Can't Hurt Me as the Audible version, where after each chapter the narrator talks with Goggins in the studio, going deeper into it. — 00:01:56 · Audible
  • ★★ Ali is not a fan of David Goggins's philosophy in Can't Hurt Me that suffering is good and must be pushed through, which does not suit him as he is "kind of soft", but calls it a really good book. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ben Hardy (quoted): The Gap and the Gain by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan says we should measure ourselves by the gain, how far we have come, rather than the gap to where we want to be; applied to every area of life, this makes us more confident, happier and potentially more successful. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Ali calls Alex Banayan's The Third Door, which he thinks he read in 2019, one of his favourite books of all time, and has recommended it to many people. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali says The Third Door sounds like career and business advice but is a narrative: 22-year-old student Alex Banayan sets out to interview the world's most successful people to learn what made them tick at his age. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali calls Carol Dweck's Mindset, on fixed versus growth mindset, a good but dense, academic and sometimes dry book, and says most of its value comes from the Shortform summary or his Book Club video. — 00:03:24 · growth mindset, Shortform, Book Club
  • ★ Ali reads Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic email but has not read The Daily Stoic book, which he finds nice to flick through. — 00:03:24 · Ryan Holiday
  • ★★ Tynan's self-published Superhuman Social Skills, read a few years ago, helped Ali become a better storyteller and treat his social life as something he could actively improve. — 00:04:13
  • ★★ Ali likes clinical psychologist Julie Smith's Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? because it need not be read cover to cover: it is a guide to the different issues we may struggle with in life. — 00:04:42

00:05:11 — Time and life: Time Smart, Make Time, Deep Work, Four Thousand Weeks, Empowered, Anything You Want, The Courage to Be Disliked

  • ★★ Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky is one of Ali's favourite productivity books of all time. — 00:05:11
  • ★★ Ashley Whillans's Time Smart is on Ali's to-be-read list as part of the research for the book he is writing. — 00:05:11
  • ★★ Cal Newport (quoted): Cal Newport's Deep Work says the secret to getting things done is to lock yourself in a room and work for extended periods without being interrupted. — 00:05:11 · Cal Newport, deep work (concept)
  • ★★ Deep Work is pretty dense, Ali says: you do not need to read it to get the core idea, and can read a summary instead, for example on Shortform. — 00:05:41 · Shortform
  • ★★ Oliver Burkeman (quoted): Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks says our struggle to manage our time is misguided: life is short and we can do only a finite number of things, so we should choose deliberately what to cut and what to do rather than chase ever more productivity. — 00:06:10
  • ★★ Ali likes that in Empowered Vee Kativhu speaks very much from her own personal experience, and calls it a beautifully designed book. — 00:06:39
  • ★★★ Derek Sivers's Anything You Want, 40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur, is one of Ali's favourite books of all time and probably in his top three books that changed his life. (hedged) — 00:06:39 · Derek Sivers
  • ★★ Ali describes The Courage to Be Disliked, a dialogue on Adlerian psychology, as making controversial points such as that trauma does not exist and that all problems in life are interpersonal relationship problems. — 00:07:08
  • ★★ Ali says a Book Club episode on The Courage to Be Disliked is coming in a little while. — 00:07:08 · Book Club

00:07:36 — The Power of Now, Ego Is the Enemy, Antifragile, Digital Minimalism, Kapil Gupta's books, Hell Yeah or No, The 4-Hour Workweek

  • ★ Ali is reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now: he does not quite get it yet, but says he gets glimpses of enlightenment as he reads. (playful) — 00:07:38
  • ★★ Ali has not read Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism cover to cover: he read a summary, thinks he got most of the insights, and it is part of the research for the book he is writing. — 00:08:07 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ When Ali tweeted at Kapil Gupta that he was starting to read one of his books on enlightenment, Gupta replied that Ali was probably not ready for it. — 00:08:07 · Twitter
  • ★★ Ali bought about 10 copies of Derek Sivers's very short Hell Yeah or No, gave eight away to friends, and fully recommends it as life advice. — 00:08:36 · Derek Sivers
  • ★★★ Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek is the single book that has most changed the trajectory of Ali's life. — 00:09:05 · The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Will Storr (quoted): Will Storr, whom Ali interviewed on the Deep Dive podcast, argues in The Status Game that everything we do as humans is ultimately geared to increasing our social status. — 00:09:05 · Deep Dive

00:09:13 — Status, dating, parenting, money and love: from The Status Game to The Course of Love

  • ★★ When Ali asks himself why he does YouTube, it is hard to get away from the social status, prestige, money and fame that come with being a YouTuber. — 00:09:34
  • ★★★ Logan Ury's How to Not Die Alone is the book that has most changed Ali's love life; his now girlfriend recommended it to him when they first started dating. — 00:09:34
  • ★★ The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is probably the Kindle book Ali has highlighted most: he felt he was highlighting every sentence. (hedged) — 00:10:04 · Naval Ravikant, Kindle
  • ★★ Ali calls Mark Manson's Models by far the best book he has read on attracting women: it teaches men to become more attractive by cultivating inner confidence and strength and improving themselves, not by tricks, manipulation and routines. — 00:10:33
  • ★★ Ali has listened to Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting twice on Audible; not yet a parent, he hopes to apply it when he becomes one, and recommends it to anyone who has ever been a child. — 00:11:02 · Audible
  • ★★ Derren Brown's A Little Happier condenses his big book Happy, one of Ali's favourite books on happiness and Stoicism; Ali recommends the main book if you can get through its somewhat difficult prose. — 00:11:02 · stoicism
  • ★★ Derren Brown is Ali's absolute dream guest for his podcast. — 00:11:31 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Bill Perkins (quoted): Bill Perkins's Die With Zero says you should reach the end of your life with $0 in your bank account; having more means you have done something wrong. — 00:11:31
  • ★★ Bill Perkins (quoted): Die With Zero says that money for your children should go to them in their 20s or 30s, when they can make the most of it, and money for charity should be given now, since charities need it right now. — 00:11:31
  • ★★ Ali sees Die With Zero as a book about making the most of life: treating money as something to exchange for life experiences rather than hoard, as many of us do. — 00:12:00
  • ★★ Ali has read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus a few times; it is somewhat controversial now for being gendered, but it gave him tools for understanding how his way of communicating differs from that of most of his female friends. — 00:12:00
  • ★★ Shawn Achor (quoted): The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor holds that people who are happier perform better at work, rather than better performers being rewarded and becoming happier. — 00:12:30
  • ★★ Vicki Robin (quoted): In Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin says money is what we exchange our life force for: we could get work's other benefits from volunteering, so we really work for money, and recognising that changes our relationship with work. — 00:12:59
  • ★★★ Your Money or Your Life genuinely changed Ali's relationship with money and enormously shaped his decision to leave medicine. — 00:12:59
  • ★★ Alain de Botton's The Course of Love is one of the three books Ali has given as a gift most often. — 00:12:59
  • ★★ Alain de Botton (quoted): In The Course of Love, Alain de Botton's point is that love stories stop when a couple gets together, but most real problems start afterwards; understanding that stage gives us the tools to overcome them. — 00:13:28

00:13:57 — Austin Kleon's trilogy, Jab Jab Jab Right Hook and the business and management books

  • ★★★ Austin Kleon's Show Your Work first encouraged Ali to start a blog and later a YouTube channel, and has had an enormous impact on his life. — 00:13:57 · Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon
  • ★★ Ali recommends Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist to anyone concerned about originality and creativity, and Keep Going, with about 10 tips, to anyone struggling with creative blocks. — 00:13:57 · Austin Kleon
  • ★★ Gary Vaynerchuk (quoted): Gary Vaynerchuk's Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook teaches making a living on the internet by leading with free content and value for the audience (jabs) and occasionally landing a right hook, an ask such as subscribing or buying a product. — 00:14:27 · Gary Vaynerchuk
  • ★★ Ali wishes he had discovered Who: The A Method for Hiring two years earlier: he read it only a few months ago, after already hiring about 16 people. — 00:14:27
  • ★★★ Sahil Lavingia's The Minimalist Entrepreneur is now one of the books Ali most recommends to people thinking of starting a business, because it puts building a community first and a business second, which he thinks is the right order in 2022 and beyond. — 00:14:56
  • ★★ Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money, with its rules on how money affects our psychology and life, is one of Ali's favourite books about money. — 00:15:25
  • ★★ Huel founder Julian Hearn recommended The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing on the Deep Dive podcast; Ali is reading it and encouraging everyone on his team to read it. — 00:15:25 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ali recommends The New One Minute Manager, a really short read, to anyone who is a manager. — 00:15:54
  • ★★ Patty McCord's Powerful, on how Netflix creates a high-performance culture, is a really good read for anyone running a business with a team, though not relevant to most people. — 00:15:54 · Netflix
  • ★★ The Millionaire Fastlane is one of the books Ali most recommends to anyone thinking of starting a business: encyclopedic, packed with useful insights and easy to read. — 00:15:54

00:16:40 — The Pathless Path, Happy Sexy Millionaire, Bullshit Jobs, Never Split the Difference, The Unfair Advantage, The E-Myth

  • ★★★ Ali has given away about eight copies of Paul Millerd's The Pathless Path, with ten more in the studio, because he loves giving it to anyone struggling to figure out what to do with their life. — 00:16:40
  • ★★ Ali fully recommends Steven Bartlett's Happy Sexy Millionaire, 20 chapters of life lessons, as very inspiring and nice to listen to on Audible. — 00:17:38 · Audible
  • ★★ David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, on the rise of pointless work, is a really entertaining read for Ali, who read it on paper and marked passages with stickers. — 00:18:07
  • ★★ Ali has listened to Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference twice on Audible and gets new insights about negotiation each time. — 00:18:37 · Audible
  • ★★ Ash Ali (quoted): The Unfair Advantage by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba says success is not just about hard work but also about unfair advantages that many successful people had. — 00:18:37 · unfair advantage
  • ★★★ The E-Myth Revisited, read in 2019, is the book that most changed Ali's life once his business was successful; he recommends it to creators and entrepreneurs whose businesses succeed but who feel burnt out because they have not delegated or built a team. — 00:19:06 · The E-Myth

00:19:35 — Overlap, Traction, Oversubscribed, The Mom Test, study guides, reference books, Bootstrap Your Life

  • ★★ Sean McCabe (quoted): Sean McCabe's Overlap says not to just quit your job for a side hustle: overlap them, working on the side hustle evenings and weekends until it makes enough money for you to quit, if that is what you want. — 00:19:35
  • ★★ Ali came across Overlap after he had already done it by accident, and recommends it to anyone who wants to build a side hustle while keeping their job. — 00:19:35
  • ★★ Traction, read in 2021, was probably the book that most accelerated his business that year, as The E-Myth was in 2019; Ali recommends it to businesses with more than three employees and says it is not very relevant before that. (hedged) — 00:20:04 · The E-Myth
  • ★★ Ali loves It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work by Basecamp's DHH and Jason Fried and has read it about four times. — 00:20:33
  • ★★ Ali has not read Ray Dalio's Principles cover to cover, treating it as a reference book, but finds Dalio's way of achieving and setting goals particularly interesting. — 00:20:33
  • ★★★ Ali calls Daniel Priestley's Oversubscribed, read repeatedly and his most highlighted Kindle book of all time, required reading for creators running a business; others will probably get little value from it. — 00:21:03 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali and his team read Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test for their customer interviews on how to make their courses better. — 00:21:32
  • ★★ Ali has listened to Nine Lies About Work twice and finds it really interesting for employees who do not enjoy their job and for managers who want to make things better. — 00:22:01 · Audible
  • ★★★ Ali fully recommends Unjaded Jade's The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need to students looking for a better way to study for exams. — 00:22:01
  • ★★ Ali wrote two or three paragraphs of The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need, for a section on spaced repetition and timetables. — 00:22:01 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ali treats Tim Ferriss's Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors as reference books: he opens them at a random page and always finds useful insights about life. — 00:22:30 · Tim Ferriss
  • ★★★ Ali used to recommend Make It Stick to all students before Jade's book came out; it is still a very good read, on learning more effectively in general, not only studying for exams. — 00:22:30
  • ★★ Oliver Cookson, author of Bootstrap Your Life and founder of MyProtein, turned £500 into £350 million; Ali flew to Monaco to interview him for the Deep Dive podcast. — 00:23:11 · Deep Dive

00:23:26 — Sponsor read for Brilliant

00:24:57 — Second shelf: Brandon Sanderson and the fiction of his childhood

  • ★★ The Stormlight Archive is now Ali's favourite fiction series of all time after Harry Potter, which nothing can beat for nostalgia, and Brandon Sanderson is now his favourite author of all time. — 00:25:00 · The Stormlight Archive, Harry Potter (book series), Brandon Sanderson
  • ★★★ Ali says newcomers to Brandon Sanderson should start with The Final Empire, the first Mistborn book, because The Way of Kings is a bit slow to get started. — 00:25:00 · Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson
  • ★★ The Famous Five series, starting with Five on a Treasure Island, is what first got Ali into reading. (hedged) — 00:25:59
  • ★★ Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses, which Ali first read at about eight, first introduced him to the ideas behind racism and prejudice. — 00:26:28
  • ★★★ Robert Muchamore's Cherub books had a huge impact on Ali at 11 to 15: his first business idea, with school friends, was a spy agency for kids, with a forum and a website teaching lock picking and hacking. — 00:26:58

00:27:04 — Podcast guests' books, storytelling and writing books, memoirs and Simon Clark's Firmament

  • ★★ The Cherub spy-agency project first taught Ali web design, and he says the books formed the basis of his business activities for the next 16 years. — 00:27:27
  • ★★ Ali will be interviewing Dr Alex George, author of Live Well Every Day, on his podcast at some point. — 00:27:27 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ali has interviewed Dr Rupy Aujla, author of Doctor's Kitchen 3-2-1, on his podcast; the episode will be up on the Deep Dive channel at some point. — 00:27:27 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Krissy Cela's Do This For You, though aimed at women, is a solid read for Ali on motivation, consistency and discipline, things he sometimes struggles with. — 00:27:56
  • ★★ Matthew Dicks's Storyworthy, the best book Ali read in 2020, is a really good book on how to become a better storyteller. — 00:28:25
  • ★★ Matthew Dicks has a new book coming out, which Ali has early access to; Ali hopes to do a Book Club episode on it as it launches in the next few months. (hedged) — 00:28:54 · Book Club
  • ★★ Ali plans to read Ricardo Semler's Radical, recommended by Noah Kagan, this year (2022), because Semler ran his business in a rogue fashion more in line with how Ali wants to run his. — 00:29:24
  • ★★ Ali is still in the structural stages of his book, so John McPhee's Draft No. 4 on writing is not yet relevant to him. — 00:29:24
  • ★★ Ali says many principles of The Checklist Manifesto apply to businesses, especially for creators: turning the things you do as a creator into processes with checklists is really useful. — 00:29:53
  • ★★ Ali fully recommends Tara Westover's memoir Educated, a harrowing story that made him cry in places. — 00:30:22
  • ★★ Ashlee Vance's biography of Elon Musk only goes up to about 2015, Ali thinks, but is a really good introduction to Musk and how he became who he is. (hedged) — 00:30:22
  • ★★★ Ali owes his friend Simon Clark, author of Firmament, a lot: Clark was the inspiration that first started his YouTube channel in 2017. — 00:30:51

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Cherub · Oversubscribed · The E-Myth · The Minimalist Entrepreneur · The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need

Also: People: Alain de Botton · Alex Banayan · Alex George · Alfie Kohn · Alfred Adler · Ash Ali · Ashlee Vance · Atul Gawande · Austin Kleon · Ben Hardy · Bill Perkins · Bobby Siegel · Brandon Sanderson · Cal Newport · Carol Dweck · Chris Voss · Dan Sullivan · Daniel Priestley · David Goggins · David Heinemeier Hansson · Derek Sivers · Derren Brown · Elon Musk · Gary Vaynerchuk · Grace Lordan · Hasan Kubba · Jake Knapp · James Clear · Jason Fried · Jay Shetty · John McPhee · John Zeratsky · Julian Hearn · Julie Smith · Kapil Gupta · Krissy Cela · Logan Ury · Malorie Blackman · Mark Manson · Matthew Dicks · Michael Gerber · Morgan Housel · Nassim Taleb · Naval Ravikant · Noah Kagan · Oliver Burkeman · Oliver Cookson · Paul Millerd · Ray Dalio · Ricardo Semler · Robert Muchamore · Rupy Aujla · Ryan Holiday · Sahil Lavingia · Sean McCabe · Shawn Achor · Simon Clark · Stephen Covey · Steven Bartlett · Tara Westover · Tim Ferriss · Tynan · Unjaded Jade · Vee Kativhu · Vicki Robin · Will Storr

Projects: Book Club · Deep Dive

Works: A Little Happier · Antifragile · Anything You Want · Atomic Habits · Bootstrap Your Life · Breaking Dawn · Bullshit Jobs · Can't Hurt Me · Deep Work (book) · Die With Zero · Digital Minimalism · Do This For You · Draft No. 4 · Educated · Ego Is the Enemy · Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future · Empowered · Famous Five · Firmament · Four Thousand Weeks · Happy Sexy Millionaire · Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine · Harry Potter (book series) · Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone · Hell Yeah or No: What's Worth Doing · How to Not Die Alone · It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work · Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook · Keep Going · Make It Stick · Make Time · Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus · Mindset · Mistborn · Models · Never Split the Difference · Nine Lies About Work · Noughts and Crosses · Overlap · Powerful · Principles · Psy-Changeling · Radical · Show Your Work! · Steal Like an Artist · Storyworthy · Superhuman Social Skills · The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing · The 4-Hour Workweek · The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People · The Almanack of Naval Ravikant · The Checklist Manifesto · The Courage to Be Disliked · The Course of Love · The Daily Stoic · The Final Empire · The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive · The Gap and the Gain · The Great CEO Within · The Happiness Advantage · The Millionaire Fastlane · The Mom Test · The One Minute Manager · The Pathless Path · The Power of Now · The Psychology of Money · The Status Game · The Stormlight Archive · The Third Door (book) · The Unfair Advantage · The Way of Kings · Think Big · Think Like a Monk · Time Smart · Tools of Titans · Traction · Tribe of Mentors · Twilight · Unconditional Parenting · Who: The A Method for Hiring · Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? · Your Money or Your Life

Organizations: Basecamp · Brilliant · MyProtein · Netflix · Twitter

Concepts: deep work (concept) · growth mindset · happiness advantage · life energy · spaced repetition · stoicism · unfair advantage

Places: Monaco

Products: Audible · Gumroad · Huel · Kindle · Shortform

Also centred on Oversubscribed: 5 Steps to Start Your First Business

Also centred on The Only Study Guide You'll Ever Need: How to Make Productivity Healthier

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