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Some books from where I took ideas for this article: - The Wealth of Nations - Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance. - Jefferson’s bio & his writings. - Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letters. - The Origin of Species. - Notes from Underground. - Deep Simplicity. - Conditioned Reflexes. - Built from Scratch. - Fingerprints of the Gods. - Cicero’s speeches. - Snowball, Buffett’s bio. - Poor Charlie’s Almanack. - Ice Age. - The Principia. - Newton’s correspondence. - Darwin’s autobio. - Scale. - Michael Mauboussin’s articles. - Buffett’s shareholder letters. - Sam Walton’s autobio.

The 20 books that are worth a college degree (major in investing): 1. The Wealth of Nations. 2. The Origin of Species. 3. The Prince. 4. From Third World to First. 5. Deep Simplicity. 6. Franklin's Other Writings. 7. The Principia. 8. Poor Charlie's Almanack. 9. Guns, Germs, and Steel. 10. 1984 or The Brothers Karamazov. 11. Jefferson, the Art of Power. 12. The General Theory. 13. Warren Buffett's letters. 14. Financial Intelligence. 15. Thinking Fast and Slow. 16. The Intelligent Investor. 17. Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable. 18. The Outsiders. 19. Built from Scratch. 20. Zero to One. Optional for deeper dive into investing: - Nick Sleep's letters. - Lessons from the Titans. - Made in America. For deeper dive into literature: - The Great Gatsby. - The Picture of Dorian Gray. - 100 Years of Solitude. For deeper dive into people: - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. - Leonardo Da Vinci. For deeper dive into history: - Africanus, trilogy. - Biography of the Caribbean. - Jefferson's Other Writings. Other interests: - Biology: The Selfish Gene. - Climate change: Silent Spring or Ice Age. - The subconscious: Man and His Symbols. - Complex systems: The Quark and the Jaguar.

Peniel might be the most well-read person I've come across. Astounding list of books.

The reason behind each pick: - Poor Charlie's Almanack. The other day, a friend asked me for a book recommendations that would "rewire his brain." This is the only book I could think of that changes your thinking on so many levels. - Guns, Germs and Steel. We are largely ignorant about what has happened before us. This book gives you a fantastic framework for the past 10,000 years. How things played out. - 1984. Winston remains sane in a world full of craziness. Thinking is banned. Reading and writing are prohibited. Humanness is forbidden. - Deep Simplicity. The most complex systems are rooted in deep simplicity. Whenever you see something crazy complex (DNA, biological matter, the motion of bodies), it's always a few things interacting with one another and compounding over time. - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. You can have fun by just thinking. Careful with pseudoscience. Beautiful takes on things. - From Third World to First. "Study the life of Lee Kuan Yew, you'll be flabbergasted" - Munger - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance. This book gives you a better understanding of deep human emotions, archetypes of people, what an obsession over knowledge can do to you, and you get a better grasp of things that you sense but can't fingerpoint. - The Wealth of Nations OR the Origin of Species. From any of these two, you'll get what it feels like to read an intellectually honest and curious individual. Someone who really writes to get to truth and advance civilization. + in both you get a great understanding of economics or evolutionary biology. - The Prince. I read this over 2 years ago but it's still top of mind. Deep insights into politics, trends in society, and how a 'wise prince should act'. It's fascinating because, for each insight, Machiavelli provides a historical example. - Leonardo Da Vinci. You don't realize how far extremely talented people can get if they also put time to it. The other idea is that, while some might write or just think, Da Vinci drew. - The Brothers Karamazov. No other author speaks to your soul as Dostoevsky does. What rationality can do to you, what goodness is about (or not?), and what does everything mean. - Built from Scratch. "How a couple of regular guys built a $380bn company." What business is about (customer satisfaction). You're only in business as long as you serve your customers well.

40. If your personality is prone to addictions, redirect the addiction. I was addicted to videogames as a teenager. College was a wake up call. One day I just said, That's it, I don't play videogames anymore. Fascinating fast forward, it worked. And it worked because I realized what I was addicted to wasn't videogames themselves. It was the mental stimulation they provided. A good videogame fully absorbs you. You have to do dozens of calculations every single second and there's a great feedback loop embedded into the system. Once recognized, I was able to change the object of my 'addiction''. My logic was simple, if this is what my mind wants, let's find a healthier and more productive way to supply it. That's how I stumbled into reading. I despised reading in school; thought it was boring. But a few books in college helped me better understand why they were so powerful. I got a glimpse of how much a book can stimulate the mind and, wanting to redirect my attention, I started reading. Reading worked in much smaller doses than videogames did. When that's the case, a bit of discipline is required. I knew I wouldn't find a perfect substitute, so I settled for something that was good enough. You have to be honest with yourself upfront. You can fool yourself in many ways, but not in this one. You can't tell yourself something will be an absolute joy, because then you have to go do the thing. And the moment you realize it's not as fun as your earlier self promised, you'll drop it. Somewhere in this process I started thinking about addictions as obsessions instead. This was a very useful reframe. To some extent, there's some truth in the idea of your inner speech. What you tell yourself defines how you see things. If you think you're addicted, that's that. If you think you're obsessed, you know it's temporary and you can redirect it toward something else. A subtle change in wording works wonders psychologically. I'm not sure personality traits such as this can be changed, so you might as well use them to your advantage. Over 5-6 years, I read 200-250 books, letters, essays, watched many interviews and listened to podcasts. My new obsession became knowledge acquisition. Left at that, it means nothing, but it's way better than the alternative and has had some positive side effects: - Started writing (thousands of pages in 3-4 years) - Improved thinking - Understood a couple of things, which is fun - Led to an obsession over investing - More interesting conversations and higher quality people - Landed jobs out of writing and thinking, essentially - Failed a couple of times at entrepreneurship If you think you can't do something, you're right. If you think you can, you're also right.