What should I read in 2018?

Re-discovering a love of learning

I just finished 3.5 years at Northwestern. It’s incredible how being at a University — even a school as intellectually rigorous as NU — can stifle learning.

Why?

Because the things I was learning were prescribed by my syllabi. Not by me. And, as it turns out, I wasn’t that interested in the subjects I was learning about in the first place.

I was pretty good at affective neuroscience. I was OK at cellular biology. I even did pretty decent in organic chemistry.

But I didn’t care about them. I wasn’t intrinsically motivated to learn more about those subjects. I didn’t get excited about attending class, and I definitely was not excited by the idea of dense, technical readings on those subjects.

For me, one of my biggest revelations was picking up books on my own for personal enjoyment. Even writing that seems obvious. Duh! Of course you are going to enjoy reading about books you have picked up yourself, because they are about subjects you are already interested in. Even if those books are other dense, mundane topics — at least they’re your choices!

Some of the books I’ve read in the last few years have totally re-shaped my world view. I have learned more about myself and others in the last 2 years via personal reading than virtually any textbook I studied at Northwestern.

So far, here is my reading list for 2018:

The books below were completed in the last 2 years. I assign a semi-arbitrary score to the book, which roughly corresponds to “how much did I enjoy reading this?” The score comes from a mix of informative and fun — some books, while less informative, are more fun; others are more informative and less fun. There’s no science behind it, just my subjective opinion:

Notice a trend? As a result of my transition from pre-med to the “real world,” I have been playing catch-up and reading as much as I can about the subjects I naturally gravitate towards — organizations, leadership, culture, and their intersection with strategy and operations. In other words — how do we build the machine, and how does the way we build the machine affect the things the machine actually produces?

My average rating is 8.1, which is noticeably high. I think this is probably because of several factors:

If you have any suggestions about books I should add to my list or focus on for 2018, please let me know! I am looking to read more fiction (as long as it’s not too heavy or dense) and more books on diversity & inclusion in both organizations and broader in society.

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