An inspiring reading list

I'm no billionaire or hedge-fund manager. My bank account doesn't have millions. Ray Dalio's love of reading motivates me to think differently.

Here are some books recommended by Ray Dalio. Each influenced me. Hope they'll help you.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Page Count: 512
Rating on Goodreads: 4.39

My favorite nonfiction book.

Sapiens explores human evolution. It explains how Homo Sapiens developed from hunter-gatherers to a dominant species. Amazing!

Sapiens will teach you about human history. Yuval Noah Harari has a follow-up book on human evolution.

My favorite book quotes are:

• The tendency for luxuries to turn into necessities and give rise to new obligations is one of history's few unbreakable laws.

• Happiness is not dependent on material wealth, physical health, or even community. Instead, it depends on how closely subjective expectations and objective circumstances align.

• The romantic comparison between today's industry, which obliterates the environment, and our forefathers, who coexisted well with nature, is unfounded. Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for eradicating the most plant and animal species even before the Industrial Revolution. The unfortunate distinction of being the most lethal species in the history of life belongs to us.

The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Page Count: 375
Rating on Goodreads: 4.13

Great book: The Power Of Habit. It illustrates why habits are everything. The book explains how healthier habits can improve your life, career, and society.

The Power of Habit rocks. It's a great book on productivity. Its suggestions helped me build healthier behaviors (and drop bad ones).

Read ASAP!

My favorite book quotes are:

• Change may not occur quickly or without difficulty. However, almost any behavior may be changed with enough time and effort.

• People who exercise begin to eat better and produce more at work. They are less smokers and are more patient with friends and family. They claim to feel less anxious and use their credit cards less frequently. A fundamental habit that sparks broad change is exercise.

• Habits are strong but also delicate. They may develop independently of our awareness or may be purposefully created. They frequently happen without our consent, but they can be altered by changing their constituent pieces. They have a much greater influence on how we live than we realize; in fact, they are so powerful that they cause our brains to adhere to them above all else, including common sense.

Tribe Of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

Page Count: 561
Rating on Goodreads: 4.06

Unusual book structure. It's worth reading if you want to learn from successful people.

The book is Q&A-style. Tim questions everyone. Each chapter features a different person's life-changing advice. In the book, Pressfield, Willink, Grylls, and Ravikant are interviewed.

Amazing!

My favorite book quotes are:

• According to one's courage, life can either get smaller or bigger.

• Don't engage in actions that you are aware are immoral. The reputation you have with yourself is all that constitutes self-esteem. Always be aware.

• People mistakenly believe that focusing means accepting the task at hand. However, that is in no way what it represents. It entails rejecting the numerous other worthwhile suggestions that exist. You must choose wisely. Actually, I'm just as proud of the things we haven't accomplished as I am of what I have. Saying no to 1,000 things is what innovation is.

Here’s why that’s baloney

Mark Cuban popularized entrepreneurship.

Shark Tank (which made Mark famous) made starting a business glamorous to attract more entrepreneurs. First off

This isn't an anti-billionaire rant.

Mark Cuban has done excellent. He's a smart, principled businessman. I enjoy his Web3 work. But Mark's work and productivity theories are absurd.

You don't need to outwork everyone in this recession to live well.

You won't be able to outwork me.

Yuck! Mark's words made me gag.

Why do boys think working is a football game where the winner wins a Super Bowl trophy? To outwork you.

Hard work doesn't equal intelligence.

Highly clever professionals spend 4 hours a day in a flow state, then go home to relax with family.

If you don't put forth the effort, someone else will.

- Mark.

He'll burn out. He's delusional and doesn't understand productivity. Boredom or disconnection spark our best thoughts.

TikTok outlaws boredom.

In a spare minute, we check our phones because we can't stand stillness.

All this work p*rn makes things worse. When is it okay to feel again? Because I can’t feel anything when I’m drowning in work and haven’t had a holiday in 2 years.

Your rivals are actively attempting to undermine you.

Ohhh please Mark…seriously.

This isn't a Tom Hanks war film. Relax. Not everyone is a rival. Only yourself is your competitor. To survive the recession, be better than a year ago.

If you get rich, great. If not, there's more to life than Lambos and angel investments.

Some want to relax and enjoy life. No competition. We witness people with lives trying to endure the recession and record-high prices.

This fictitious rival worsens life and work.

If you are truly talented, you will motivate others to work more diligently and effectively.

No Mark. Soz.

If you're a good leader, you won't brag about working hard and treating others like cogs. Treat them like humans. You'll have EQ.

Silly statements like this are caused by an out-of-control ego. No longer watch Shark Tank.

Ego over humanity.

Good leaders will urge people to keep together during the recession. Good leaders support those who are laid off and need a reference.

Not harder, quicker, better. That created my mental health problems 10 years ago.

Truth: we want to work less.

The promotion of entrepreneurship is ludicrous.

Marvel superheroes. Seriously, relax Max.

I used to write about entrepreneurship, then I quit. Many WeWork Adam Neumanns. Carelessness.

I now utilize the side hustle title when writing about online company or entrepreneurship. Humanizes.

Stop glorifying. Thinking we'll all be Elon Musks who send rockets to Mars is delusional. Most of us won't create companies employing hundreds.

OK.

The true epidemic is glorification. fewer selfies Little birdy needs less bank account screenshots. Less Uber talk.

We're exhausted.

Fun, ego-free business can transform the world. Take a relax pill.

Work as if someone were attempting to take everything from you.

I've seen people lose everything.

Myself included. My 20s startup failed. I was almost bankrupt. I thought I'd never recover. Nope.

Best thing ever.

Losing everything reveals your true self. Unintelligent entrepreneur egos perish instantly. Regaining humility revitalizes relationships.

Money's significance shifts. Stop chasing it like a puppy with a bone.

Fearing loss is unfounded.

Here is a more effective approach than outworking nobody.

(You'll thrive in the recession and become wealthy.)

Smarter work

Overworking is donkey work.

You don't want to be a career-long overworker. Instead than wasting time, write down what you do. List tasks and processes.

Keep doing/outsource the list. Step-by-step each task. Continuously systematize.

Then recruit a digital employee like Zapier or a virtual assistant in the same country.

Intelligent, not difficult.

If your big break could burn in hell, diversify like it will.

People err by focusing on one chance.

Chances can vanish. All-in risky. Instead of working like a Mark Cuban groupie, diversify your income.

If you're employed, your customer is your employer.

Sell the same abilities twice and add 2-3 contract clients. Reduce your hours at your main job and take on more clients.

Leave brand loyalty behind

Mark desires his employees' worship.

That's stupid. When times are bad, layoffs multiply. The problem is the false belief that companies care. No. A business maximizes profit and pays you the least.

To care or overpay is anti-capitalist (that run the world). Be honest.

I was a banker. Then the bat virus hit and jobs disappeared faster than I urinate after a night of drinking.

Start being disloyal now since your company will cheerfully replace you with a better applicant. Meet recruiters and hiring managers on LinkedIn. Whenever something goes wrong at work, act.

Loyalty to self and family. Nobody.

Outwork this instead

Mark doesn't suggest outworking inflation instead of people.

Inflation erodes your time on earth. If you ignore inflation, you'll work harder for less pay every minute.

Financial literacy beats inflation.

Get a side job and earn money online

So you can stop outworking everyone.

Internet leverages time. Same effort today yields exponential results later. There are still whole places not online.

Instead of working forever, generate money online.

Final Words

Overworking is stupid. Don't listen to wealthy football jocks.

Work isn't everything. Prioritize diversification, internet income streams, boredom, and financial knowledge throughout the recession.

That’s how to get wealthy rather than burnout-rich.

His regular regimen teaches stress management.

In 1995, an Indian graduate visited the US. He obtained a scholarship to Stanford after graduating from IIT with a silver medal. First flight. His ticket cost a year's income. His head was full.

Pichai Sundararajan is his full name. He became Google's CEO and a world leader. Mr. Pichai transformed technology and inspired millions to dream big.

This article reveals his daily schedule.

Mornings

While many of us dread Mondays, Mr. Pichai uses the day to contemplate.

A typical Indian morning. He awakens between 6:30 and 7 a.m. He avoids working out in the mornings.

Mr. Pichai oversees the internet, but he reads a real newspaper every morning.

Pichai mentioned that he usually enjoys a quiet breakfast during which he reads the news to get a good sense of what’s happening in the world. Pichai often has an omelet for breakfast and reads while doing so. The native of Chennai, India, continues to enjoy his daily cup of tea, which he describes as being “very English.”

Pichai starts his day. BuzzFeed's Mat Honan called the CEO Banana Republic dad.

Overthinking in the morning is a bad idea. It's crucial to clear our brains and give ourselves time in the morning before we hit traffic.

Mr. Pichai's morning ritual shows how to stay calm. Wharton Business School found that those who start the day calmly tend to stay that way. It's worth doing regularly.

And he didn't forget his roots.

Afternoons

He has a busy work schedule, as you can imagine. Running one of the world's largest firm takes time, energy, and effort. He prioritizes his work. Monitoring corporate performance and guaranteeing worker efficiency.

Sundar Pichai spends 7-8 hours a day to improve Google. He's noted for changing the company's culture. He wants to boost employee job satisfaction and performance.

His work won him recognition within the company.

Pichai received a 96% approval rating from Glassdoor users in 2017.

Mr. Pichai stresses work satisfaction. Each day is a new canvas for him to find ways to enrich people's job and personal lives.

His work offers countless lessons. According to several profiles and press sources, the Google CEO is a savvy negotiator. Mr. Pichai's success came from his strong personality, work ethic, discipline, simplicity, and hard labor.

Evenings

His evenings are spent with family after a busy day. Sundar Pichai's professional and personal lives are balanced. Sundar Pichai is a night owl who re-energizes about 9 p.m.

However, he claims to be most productive after 10 p.m., and he thinks doing a lot of work at that time is really useful. But he ensures he sleeps for around 7–8 hours every day. He enjoys long walks with his dog and enjoys watching NSDR on YouTube. It helps him in relaxing and sleep better.

His regular routine teaches us what? Work wisely, not hard, discipline, vision, etc. His stress management is key. Leading one of the world's largest firm with 85,000 employees is scary.

The pressure to achieve may ruin a day. Overworked employees are more likely to make mistakes or be angry with coworkers, according to the Family Work Institute. They can't handle daily problems, making the house more stressful than the office.

Walking your dog, having fun with friends, and having hobbies are as vital as your office.

Are MVPs outdated and have no place in modern product culture?

Frank Robinson coined "MVP" in 2001. In the same year as the Agile Manifesto, the first Scrum experiment began. MVPs are old.

The concept was created to solve the waterfall problem at the time.

The market was still sour from the .com bubble. The tech industry needed a new approach. Product and Agile gained popularity because they weren't waterfall.

More than 20 years later, waterfall is dead as dead can be, but we are still talking about MVPs. Does that make sense?

What is an MVP?

Minimum viable product. You probably know that, so I'll be brief:

[…] The MVP fits your company and customer. It's big enough to cause adoption, satisfaction, and sales, but not bloated and risky. It's the product with the highest ROI/risk. […] — Frank Robinson, SyncDev

MVP is a complete product. It's not a prototype. It's your product's first iteration, which you'll improve. It must drive sales and be user-friendly.

At the MVP stage, you should know your product's core value, audience, and price. We are way deep into early adoption territory.

What about all the things that come before?

Modern product discovery

Eric Ries popularized the term with The Lean Startup in 2011. (Ries would work with the concept since 2008, but wide adoption came after the book was released).

Ries' definition of MVP was similar to Robinson's: "Test the market" before releasing anything. Ries never mentioned money, unlike Jobs. His MVP's goal was learning.

“Remove any feature, process, or effort that doesn't directly contribute to learning” — Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

Product has since become more about "what" to build than building it. What started as a learning tool is now a discovery discipline: fake doors, prototyping, lean inception, value proposition canvas, continuous interview, opportunity tree... These are cheap, effective learning tools.

Over time, companies realized that "maximum ROI divided by risk" started with discovery, not the MVP. MVPs are still considered discovery tools. What is the problem with that?

Time to Market vs Product Market Fit

Waterfall's Time to Market is its biggest flaw. Since projects are sliced horizontally rather than vertically, when there is nothing else to be done, it’s not because the product is ready, it’s because no one cares to buy it anymore.

MVPs were originally conceived as a way to cut corners and speed Time to Market by delivering more customer requests after they paid.

Original product development was waterfall-like.

Time to Market defines an optimal, specific window in which value should be delivered. It's impossible to predict how long or how often this window will be open.

Product Market Fit makes this window a "state." You don’t achieve Product Market Fit, you have it… and you may lose it.

Take, for example, Snapchat. They had a great time to market, but lost product-market fit later. They regained product-market fit in 2018 and have grown since.

An MVP couldn't handle this. What should Snapchat do? Launch Snapchat 2 and see what the market was expecting differently from the last time? MVPs are a snapshot in time that may be wrong in two weeks.

MVPs are mini-projects. Instead of spending a lot of time and money on waterfall, you spend less but are still unsure of the results.

MVPs aren't always wrong. When releasing your first product version, consider an MVP.

Minimum viable product became less of a thing on its own and more interchangeable with Alpha Release or V.1 release over time.

Modern discovery technics are more assertive and predictable than the MVP, but clarity comes only when you reach the market.

MVPs aren't the starting point, but they're the best way to validate your product concept.

America should avoid BRICS

Vladimir Putin has watched videos of Muammar Gaddafi's CIA-backed demise.

Gaddafi...

Thief.

Did you know Gaddafi wanted a gold-backed dinar for Africa? Because he considered our global financial system was a Ponzi scheme, he wanted to discontinue trading oil in US dollars.

Or, Gaddafi's Libya enjoyed Africa's highest quality of living before becoming freed. Pictured:

Vladimir Putin is a nasty guy, but he had his reasons for not mentioning NATO assisting Ukraine in resisting US imperialism. Nobody tells you. Sure.

The US dollar's corruption post-2008, debasement by quantitative easing, and lack of value are key factors. BRICS will replace the dollar.

BRICS aren't bricks.

Economy-related.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have cooperated for 14 years to fight U.S. hegemony with a new international currency: BRICS.

BRICS is mostly comical. Now. Saudi Arabia, the second-largest oil hegemon, wants to join.

So what?

The New World Currency is BRICS

Russia was kicked out of G8 for its aggressiveness in Crimea in 2014.

It's now G7.

No biggie, said Putin, he said, and I quote, “Bon appetite.”

He was prepared. China, India, and Brazil lead the New World Order.

Together, they constitute 40% of the world's population and, according to the IMF, 50% of the world's GDP by 2030.

Here’s what the BRICS president Marcos Prado Troyjo had to say earlier this year about no longer needing the US dollar: “We have implemented the mechanism of mutual settlements in rubles and rupees, and there is no need for our countries to use the dollar in mutual settlements. And today a similar mechanism of mutual settlements in rubles and yuan is being developed by China.”

Ick. That's D.C. and NYC warmongers licking their chops for WW3 nasty.

Here's a lovely picture of BRICS to relax you:

If Saudi Arabia joins BRICS, as President Mohammed Bin Salman has expressed interest, a majority of the Middle East will have joined forces to construct a new world order not based on the US currency.

I'm not sure of the new acronym.

SBRICSS? CIRBSS? CRIBSS?

The Reason America Is Harvesting What It Sowed

BRICS began 14 years ago.

14 years ago, what occurred? Concentrate. It involved CDOs, bad subprime mortgages, and Wall Street quants crunching numbers.

2008 recession

When two nations trade, they do so in US dollars, not Euros or gold.

What happened when 2008, an avoidable crisis caused by US banks' cupidity and ignorance, what happened?

Everyone WORLDWIDE felt the pain.

Mostly due to corporate America's avarice.

This should have been a warning that China and Russia had enough of our bs. Like when France sent a battleship to America after Nixon scrapped the gold standard. The US was warned to shape up or be dethroned (or at least try).

Nixon improved in 1971. Kinda. Invented PetroDollar.

Another BS system that unfairly favors America and possibly pushed Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia into BRICS.

The PetroDollar forces oil-exporting nations to trade in US dollars and invest in US Treasury bonds. Brilliant. Genius evil.

Our misdeeds are:

• In conflicts that are not its concern, the USA uses the global reserve currency as a weapon.

• Targeted nations abandon the dollar, and rightfully so, as do nations that depend on them for trade in vital resources.

• The dollar's position as the world's reserve currency is in jeopardy, which could have disastrous economic effects.

• Although we have actually sown our own doom, we appear astonished. According to the Bible, whomever sows to appease his sinful nature will reap destruction from that nature whereas whoever sows to appease the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.

Americans, even our leaders, lack caution and delayed pleasure. When our unsustainable systems fail, we double down. Bailouts of the banks in 2008 were myopic, puerile, and another nail in America's hegemony.

America has screwed everyone.

We're unpopular.

The BRICS's future

It's happened before.

Saddam Hussein sold oil in Euros in 2000, and the US invaded Iraq a month later. The media has devalued the word conspiracy. The Iraq conspiracy.

There were no WMDs, but NYT journalists like Judy Miller drove Americans into a warmongering frenzy because Saddam would ruin the PetroDollar. Does anyone recall that this war spawned ISIS?

I think America has done good for the world. You can make a convincing case that we're many people's villain.

Learn more in Confessions of an Economic Hitman, The Devil's Chessboard, or Tyranny of the Federal Reserve. Or ignore it. That's easier.

We, America, should extend an olive branch, ask for forgiveness, and learn from our faults, as the Tao Te Ching advises. Unlikely. Our population is apathetic and stupid, and our government is corrupt.

Argentina, Iran, Egypt, and Turkey have also indicated interest in joining BRICS. They're also considering making it gold-backed, making it a new world reserve currency.

You should pay attention.

Thanks for reading!