This is the Monday Medley, a newsletter that goes out, you guessed it, every Monday. I republish it here for sharing and referencing, but if you'd like to sign up you can do so right here:
Happy Monday!
I published a new set of book notes from last week on "The Revolt of the Elites." The first third was really good, it kinda dragged after that. Worth reading the early chapters though.
Alright, on to the Medley.
One of my more popular Medleys recently was about "working in seasons." That idea seemed to resonate with many of you, and it was interesting to hear about the different ways peoples seasons vary throughout the year. Or life!
With my reflection in that piece on my past years of work, it's been pretty clear that winter is typically low productivity and leads into a highly productive spring. So I'm trying to intentionally lean into that this year by dubbing winter "reading season."
I don't have any strict rules for reading seasons, besides, well, reading. I haven't read much this year, so it's nice to get back into it.
I'm still working, but only on what I feel like working on. I'm not setting too many deadlines or tasks, just putting time into areas I'm pulled towards.
But then there's the question of "what to read?" One thing I want to do this season is re-read some of my old favorites. It's always interesting to me how important timing is with books. The right book at the wrong time isn't very useful. Sometimes books that don't speak to you much at one point in your life are much more impactful later. Or books that are really impactful at one point mean less later, or you find different things in them.
So I'm going to try to revisit some of my favorites, especially from the Made You Think days.
I'm also going to try to explore a specific topic area more, starting with some of the history of finance and money. It feels like we're at a really special point in time with everything going on in crypto, but that doesn't mean old patterns of history won't repeat. I'm particularly interested in all the mania around the dotcom boom in the early 2000s. There are likely some parallels there.
Aside from being fun and relaxing, the other reason I rather like the idea of "reading season" is it removes some of the guilt of being heads down and working the rest of the year. You can probably get through a lot more books with intentional reading for a month or two than piecemeal reading over a year. It's kinda like one of the issues I had with the digital nomad life. When you're trying to travel and work, you're usually doing a bad job of both.
So I'm going to enjoy reading season, and thank you all for all the book recommendations! This is an aggregated list of recommendations, assuming a like on Twitter meant a vote for that book.
Enjoy reading!
Nat