Topics I’m interested in: organizational development, facilitation, learning, innovation, Theory U and the communities of change-makers around the world, philosophy, anthropology, technology – the Internet, the economy, the FUTURE and the past – human & non-human connection, spirituality, psychology, sexuality, leadership Effective Altruism and its related communities. I’ve recently got a bit obsessed with Ribbonfarm, and I do aspire to write like that…

I’m a big podcast fan, especially interviews. On Being, This Anthro Life,  Long Now Foundation, Conversation with Tyler TED Radio Hour, The Tim Ferriss Show are currently my favorites.

This is a partial list of the books I read & notes I took. I think of reading as dancing with the author. Sometimes it could be a light dance. Sometimes it’s passionate. Sometimes I get bored and quit. There is no point, except that we keep dancing well. I’m looking to find new dance partners, physically, intellectually, emotionally etc.. (and BEST IS ALL!!!) so plz recommend.

A partial list of books I’ve re-read the most, aka the Foundations.

• Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse
  • Beautiful novella. First read at 18, reread every year. It speaks most to the importance of living whole, of embracing shadows, of welcoming. Famous line “I can think. I can wait. I can fast”.
• How will you measure your life – James Allworth, Clayton Christensen, Karen Dillon
  • It teaches me how to think, not what to think. And just good business examples.
• Finite and Infinite Games – James Carse
  • This book was first seen at a camp I went to Touch & Play 2017 and then recommended on Ribbonfarm blog.  I’ve never given up annotating a book before this… it’s way too dense, but guaranteed to change you substantially.
• Metaphor We Live by – Ackoff & Johnson. Also Philosophy in the Flesh
  • Thought-morphing. Main thesis: our thoughts is made up in terms of metaphors (even this line contains a big one already: Thought-as-Object (therefore morph-able and composable). We need a to be aware of their effects and always find new ones to communicate with each other.
  • It’s one of the main reasons why I dance: the body is my question, my intellectual inquiry. See the metaphor there?
• Happiness Hypothesis,- Johnathan Haidt (also, the Righteous Mind)
  • First read when I was 19, a deliberate treatment of Happiness as a concept.
• Crash Early, Crash Often – Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm
  • Venkat is a cult writer, well deserving the title of a 21st century insight porn pioneer. I foresee coming back to this book more often…
• Nature & The Human Soul– Bill Plotkin
  • A tour-de-force, ambitious map of human development. As ambitious as Ken Wilbur in my opinion. I’ll come back to it soon. Wild Mind is also a great book.
• Essential Drucker – Peter Drucker
  • A must read for any sensible modern business thinking from the legendary. He is more of a social commentator rather than a business writer. On books about Peter, I found Bruce Rosenstein’s Living in More than One World a great one.
• Ackoff’s Best – Russell Ackoff
  • One of the early system thinking evangelist in management, Russell Ackoff is also an extremely clear thinker and writer. He is surprisingly not too well known in my opinion. I ❤ his definition of creativity: “Creativity is identify self-imposed constraints, remove them and explore the consequences”

Periphery:

• Meanings of Life – Roy Baumeister
  • Wide-ranging survey of how the Western world thinks about meanings in life. Highly recommend you read when you are NOT in an existential crises so that you can enjoy (and dare I say engineer your next crisis)

Interesting fiction

• Fear of Flying– Erica Jong
  • A dear friend recommended to me when I asked her for a novel that helped me understand the woman’s condition. Interesting recommendation 🙂 Erotica by Anais Nin are also good stuff to explore realms of reading.