These are my recently read books and some comments and notes from when I read them.

As I love books and recommendations by others, I want to share them in a collective format so others can read gems of books, as I think books are still the best way to read new information these days. Even more with the fast pace we are going at, as books are well structured and made for the long term.

Book Recommendations I’ve Read

Over the years, I have made recommendations in Writer’s Room, my newsletter, on my now page or in person. Here I have collected and curated them over the years including some comments. I hope you enjoy.

2026

• Poems & Prayers (Matthew McConaughey): Another one read by Matthew himself. It’s about life and its rhymes. He said life is like rhymes as he likes them, sounds good, and prayer because of the meaning. Together applied to life, it’s like a dace to the day. He also says he has a rhythm in his head when he wakes up, and then he dances to it somehow during the day, and life fits into the song, making his day like a dance. Also, people say he is so laid back, but it’s because he has a plan, he does not rush, he takes time. So that’s on purpose. Something I also actively try to do in my life. Not yet finished.
• Maintenance of Everything (Stewart Brand): This is just so good, it tells the story of how maintenance is everything if you rely on a boat on the sea, for example. Making the product easy to repair so you can fix it even in a rough sea with limited tools. It’s an analogy you can apply to every part of life, and the way the story is told is so great. I couldn’t stop listening to the audiobook. I really recommend it to everyone; I’m sure it will give you lots of insights into your current work.
• Big Time (Laura Vanderkam): Started with the goal of getting more out of my time. So far, I’ve learned that time management is essentially about controlling time, but it’s not the only way. And that “Shifting Left” is not only used in data engineering, Laura describes doing tasks long before they are due as shifting left too. Good reminder of how to use time better, nothing revolutionary, but lots of real-life examples from her and her clients.
• The Writing Life (Annie Dillard): A poetic way of what it means to be a writer. Great storytelling. Learning how to write with a family as part of her stories.

2025

• Novelist as a Vocation (Haruki Murakami): Such an amazing book on writing. It really reminded me of my writing style, as he translates words and tries to write beautifully for the sake of beauty, not to impress the reader. No timeline. It takes as long as it takes until the quality is good. And he likes a good challenge to keep him engaged, e.g., when he goes abroad to start from scratch. His style is so unique and amazing. It’s a joy to listen to.
• Greenlights (Matthew McConaughey): This book was so real. Matthew reads and shares from his 35 years of journaling and life. So inspiring and [[Writing from The heart|straight from the heart]]. It was interesting and motivating to hear from a Hollywood actor and celebrity what truly matters: family and keep livin. Alright, aaaalright, alriiight. → I listened to the audiobook, and his Texan accent was the best. He was rhyming, slowing down, calming down, getting loud, all of it. It was like sitting next to him and listening to your dad or uncle.
• Consider This (Chuck Palahniuk): The author of Fight Club shares how to write if you were his student. A masterclass if you want to enhance your writing.
• You Can Negotiate Anything (Herb Cohen): Interesting perspective that you can negotiate even at places you’d never thought of, even at a shopping mall. Always keep in mind what the other’s objective is. There are always three elements that are part of a negotiation: information, time, and power.
• The Bible: I also started to read the Bible, the most sold book on earth. I wanted to understand what’s in there. Obviously, it’s so massive, and it’s actually not one book, but a collection of many. I get a similar sensation to one of my favorite books The Daily Stoic (366 Meditations). It’s like a daily meditation. While Ryan Holiday’s book helps me feel calmer, the Bible nourishes my love and care for others.
• Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention (Johann Hari): This book inspired me to write an article about flow myself: Finding Flow. Super insightful and probably will make you want to ban social media by the government.
• Useful Not True (Derek Sivers): Derek is the master of stripping away. This book has so much wisdom in short one-page stories from Derek’s life. It’s a gem. Perfect to re-read, over and over. It’s next to my sleeping place to just grab.
• Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu): Dao and Daoism: Men - earth - universe - dao. If you don’t want to read the bible, this is a none religious way of getting solitude and compassion.

2024

• The Good Work (Paul Millerd): A continuation of the famous Pathless Path, not as good, but OK. Please read it if you haven’t yet.
• The Extended Mind (Annie Murphy Paul): A powerful book. I started reading it again.
• Do The Work (Steven Pressfield): It’s not the best book, maybe also because I’ve heard or read lots of the content already elsewhere, but I appreciated that it was short and that he didn’t try to extend it to 300 pages.

2023

• Slow Productivity (Cal Newport): This is a fantastic book. It showcases why we should quit the race of everyday life and slow down for a compounding effect instead of overnight success. The same is true for money: investing long term instead of gambling in a casino. He describes that instead of pseudo productivity, which is the norm these days, where we try to be as busy as possible to showcase we are doing something, we should try to be as productive as possible.
• Elon Musk (Walter Isaacson): It’s very long, but I loved every page (or word as I listened to it on Audible). It is inspiring. It shows how an exceptional, hard-working Musk is doing everything for humanity in an unhealthy way. He is also, to an extent, sick. He has his dark sides that just come out sometimes, which are also a sign of his mental state that he got from his dad, and also from his hard work and pressure. He is thriving in chaos. Whenever there is a calm time, he will do something new as he can’t stand the status quo.
• How Will You Measure Your Life? (Clayton M. Christensen): A good book if you want to know more than just work and how you’ll measure it. This book was reassuring and strengthened many things I already knew. It reminded me that finding your principles is the key. Follow them and align your life so you have a happy life. It was also helpful for me as a dad and family member to pass on the same principles and values to my kids. Be intentional about your values. It’s hard to find them. They won’t be sent to you. You need to make them. But be aware that it is a process, not an event.
• The Good Enough Job (Simone Stolzoff): A compelling book that challenges our conventional thinking about work. Instead of idolizing our jobs or incessantly chasing a better one, Stolzoff advocates for finding satisfaction in a “good enough” job. His ideas offer a refreshing contrast to the pervasive Instagram-era narrative that equates career success with personal fulfillment. A highly recommended read for anyone feeling pressured by the modern-day cult of work.
• The Daily Dad (Ryan Holiday): This book is a sequel to one of my all-time favorite reads, The Daily Stoic. In the same tradition of offering daily philosophical advice, this book focuses on the challenges and rewards of parenthood. TODO
• The Extended Mind (Annie Murphy Paul): An exploration of the intriguing ways our environment influences our thinking processes. Discover the surprising ways in which experts think beyond their brains, how harder thinking often leads to fewer results and the controversy over brain-training games and smart pills. Explore how we can use tools beyond the brain, such as the Body Scan technique and meditation, to tap into our intuition and sensations, and learn about the significance of the amygdala in our responses to stress.
• All the Wrong Moves (Sasha Chapin): A captivating narrative where the world of chess serves as a backdrop for introspection and self-discovery. A story that shows how the love of chess can fully dominate one’s life, as it’s the most beautiful and worst thing in life at the same time.

2022

• Atomic Habits (James Clear): The main argument: If you want to add a new habit, chain it to an existing one to make it stick.
• Building a Second Brain (Tiago Forte): I knew most of it from his articles, podcasts, etc., but now it’s also available as a book.
• Getting Things Done (David Allen): This book is life-changing if you apply its principles correctly to your life.
• How to Take Smart Notes (Sönke Ahrens): The base for a Second Brain and where Sönke reveals how our brain is wired and how we can implement a note-taking style that supports our brain, mainly with the method called Zettelkasten.
• The Pragmatic Programmer (David Thomas & Andrew Hunt): Although a lot was clear, summarizing it and putting it together as one piece, plus hearing it from two professionals, was very helpful and suitable for applying to my work.
• On Writing (Stephen King): He gives deep insights into the life of a successful writer.

2021

• The 5 Love Languages (Gary Chapman): Really eye opening, as sometimes we want to show love to our spouse, but becausewe give attention, or buy a gift, but if it doesn’t match the “love language” of the reciever, it won’t arrive properly. So knowing each others love language, and communicate in that, is huge for any relationship.

2020

• The Courage to Be Disliked (Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga): Great book to learn new psychology, especially the Alfred Adler theories of individual psychology and Adlerian therapy. And learn about Interpersonal Relationship. This books makes you stronger.
• Your Music and People (Derek Sivers): Fantastic. It tells the story about how to sell your music, which is an analogy to every business.
• Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want (Nicholas Epley): Approaching our mind from an angle you probably haven’t thought of. Very insightful.

2019

• Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World (Scott Harrison): This book is truly heart-touching and lets you rethink today’s world and donations. Very well-written book.
• It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson): Talks about the crazy work hours usually suggested or heard at places like Google, Amazon, etc. to be able to achieve something. They tell you how you can tackle it otherwise.

2018

• Principles: Life and Work (Ray Dalio): I recommend this to everyone out there. The first chapters where he talks about himself you can skip, but the rest is worth reading or listening to. TODO
• Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook (Tony Robbins): If you want to save some money in the long run, please read it. It is outstanding and straight to the point!
• The Tao of Seneca: Practical Letters from a Stoic Master (Seneca): Puts me back to the essentials of life whenever I feel all over the place.
• Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World (Tim Ferriss): Entirely recommendable.

General Recommended Books

These are some of my all-time favorite books that I recommend to everyone.

Top Books

• The Daily Stoic (366 Meditations) (Ryan Holiday): One of my all-time favorite books. Daily meditations that help me feel calmer and more grounded.
• Hell Yeah or No (Derek Sivers): Anything by Derek Sivers is worth reading. His writing is stripped to the essentials and packed with wisdom.
• How to Live (Derek Sivers): The second book by Derek on top list. He writes 27 conflicting, and short chapters on how to live life. He has done so much, that he writes almost each from experience. As it’s short, each chapter can give you a nudge and insight into your own life, and what we should strive, and more importantly, what not. Be aware, every unnecessary word is removed and stripped to the bare essentials. This means you can’t read more than two chapters in one go as it’s that condensed and makes you think a lot.

Business

• It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson): Challenges the norm of crazy work hours and shows you can achieve more with less chaos.
• Deep Work (Cal Newport): Essential reading on focused work in a distracted world.

Self-Help & Life Philosophy

• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman): A deep dive into how our minds work, exploring System 1 and System 2 thinking.
• The Pathless Path (Paul Millerd): Challenges the “default path” (going to school, work, mary, and have a family) and following your instict. Unconventional way. The new 4 hour work week book. One that I recommend the most lately. I wrote about Finding my Pathless Path.
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman): A refreshing take on time management that embraces our mortality rather than fighting it.
• Principles (Ray Dalio): Life and work principles from one of the world’s most successful investors.
• Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman): Understanding and managing emotions for better relationships and decisions.

⭐ 5-Star Picks (GoodReads)

• On Writing Well (William Zinsser): The classic guide to writing nonfiction. Essential for clear writing.
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Cal Newport): Why skills trump passion in the quest for work you love.
• Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, & Keep Going (Austin Kleon): Probably the best book on creativity and if you are a creative yourself. It’s really helped me sharing more of the process and how creative works. It’s a trilogy, I listened the audiobook, which you get three for one, fully recommend it.
• Still Writing (Dani Shapiro): Honest reflections on the creative life.
• The Psychology of Money (Morgan Housel): Best book on understanding money and behavior.
• Moonwalking with Einstein (Joshua Foer): Fascinating journey into memory and how it works.
• Open (Andre Agassi): Raw, honest autobiography. Surprisingly insightful about life and finding yourself.
• Anything You Want (Derek Sivers): 40 lessons for entrepreneurs. Short, punchy, full of wisdom.
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson): Counterintuitive approach to living a good life.
• The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho): Beautiful fable about following your dreams.
• Hooked (Nir Eyal): How to build habit-forming products. Essential for product designers.
• The Startup Way (Eric Ries): How modern companies use entrepreneurial management.
• The 4-Hour Work Week (Tim Ferriss): A game changer that questions conventional work structures.

Further Reads

• Reading Books for a Happy Life: My thoughts on why reading books matters.
• Audiobooks: I listen to most of my books as audiobooks. It works better for me and my brain, as I read all day long already. Books read by the authors on Audible are just another level. It feels like listening to them in person. Although a physical book has advantages, audiobooks are just something different. No wonder they are ever-growing.
• Writer’s Room: Where I write and update on latest insight in my design process.

Other Recommendations

• Derek Sivers book notes

Last updated: December 30, 2025

In a bold move toward ultimate minimalism, developer Geir Isene has created Frame — the first X11 server for Linux written entirely in assembly language. The X server is one of those foundational pieces that most of us take for granted. It’s big, complex, and full of decades of legacy code. But what if someone...

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Creation is the ultimate form of pursuing ourselves, giving to the world when shared, and using the power of our subconscious. It gives us joy, and to every artist, it is the ultimate (flow) state of happiness.

The Act of Creation

The act of creation is an outlet. It gives joy to us when we create something out of nothing, we block out anxiety or boredom.

Creating should be done like:

• a kid in mind: effortless, exploring your thoughts, and seeing where it leaves you, as Picasso said: He wouldn’t have bothered to start a painting if he knew the outcome.
• a play¹: flawless and free.
• calm like the water: flowing wherever your mind is going.
• to fulfill yourself: by portraying your never-resting thoughts. Share it with the world. Create with joy and love in mind.
• follow your train of thought: see where it leads you. You start somewhere, on an unfinished emotion, a task, or anything to ponder on.

Creation, and especially writing, can help resolve the unresolved.

Creation to Make a Difference: Joy and Laughter

Creating is also about making a difference. If nothing changes in you, the people, not enough value was added to your creation. Any creation should trigger something. But foremost, the process of creation should change something in you, some release, a good feeling, it must feel right. If it does nothing, an empty feeling, the creation might not be there yet.

Create with love and empathy in mind. Liking someone is one thing, but giving love, caring for someone, and integrating that into your work is the ultimate way to create.

Create joy and laughter. Speak the language of people, make them happy by creating enjoyment.

Following Our Emotions without Boundaries

When we follow our emotions without any boundaries, following our instincts, we get into a state of deep focus and deep concentration where all thoughts can be resolved.

Creation is our inner [[Gut Feeling|Instinct]]. If we follow and nourish it, great things can arise from it. Treat it as an outlet for your body and mind. Go with the flow, follow along. Create for the sake of creation.

Learn for Life, Follow Your Own Uniqueness

The act of creation is following your own life rhythm, for example, the [[Pathless Path]]. It is the ultimate form of connecting with yourself.

All creation is unique, unique specifically to you as the creator, but also (hopefully) to the reader, viewer, or consumer of your work. Your creations live long after your death; others will connect and create new works from them. It’s giving joy after you’re gone.

Learn for Life, as I like to say, has been my earliest mantra when starting any of my creations shared online. The common definition of success is reaching a desired outcome. The Scientist’s definition of success is: if you learn something new, you haven’t failed, as Anne-Laure Le Cunff says on How to Design Tiny Experiments Like a Scientist.

For example, a scientist defines it like this: if you say you want to write more, instead of just writing, you define ‘I will write for at least one month, or at least 10 articles. And then you don’t stop before that. Success is the experience, not the outcome.

The Outcome of Creation

The act of creation is a slow process that needs time and experience. A slow life, an [[The Ordinary (Boring) Life|ordinary, boring life]] even, to focus on the details, using the craftsmanship refined over the years, and retrieving joy from the process of creation.

What matters is the quality and outcome we are proud to release to the world.

Gifts Shared with the World

You create for yourself with no return in mind, you just share it as a gift for the world, for anyone to consume.

Creation thought of as a gift is an easy way for you to create without the burden of pleasing people, as it’s take-it-or-leave-it, like a gift. No strings attached, just making gifts.

A Curious Mind is Mostly a Subconscious Mind

When we create, most of our subconscious is driving the thought. Just let it cruise and see what the outcome is. Use the conscious mind for fixing errors and making sure the sentences make sense later, but don’t start with it.

The Spark of Joy Philosophy

Different flairs for designs to add ease or user delight to your creation. Similar to the “Spark Joy Philosophy”, which is very fitting when creating for the enjoyment of the reader.

To me, creation sparks joy for myself, it’s the outlet for me to release and organize my thoughts. It avoids the [[shallow happiness]] that I get from social media, binge-watching Netflix, or other brainless activities on the phone or TV. Sure, there’s time for that too, to calm down, but if we are not careful, the algorithms will take over and we default to always choosing the easy choice.

The Reward is Long-term

Creating is hard, there’s friction, it does not directly work, but the reward is long-term, with [[deep happiness]] and a deep flow state: “It’s magical that they just tried to be there”, which is the highest form of happiness artists get (see The Artist’s Way) as we discovered in Finding Flow, with escaping digital distractions through deep work and slow living.

I hope you find your outlet for creation, an act you can partake in to develop happiness and joy for yourself, getting into that deep flow and having a slow process where many small gifts of creation can be shared with the world.

This article was created with the inspiration of reading How to Live by Derek Sivers in Cavallino, Italy.

Weston 16.0 released with major advances in HDR, color management, and Wayland protocol support. After about five months of development, the Weston project has officially released Weston 16.0, the reference Wayland compositor. This version brings important improvements that will help desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment achieve better and more complete Wayland support. It’s...

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GNOME OS is getting a dedicated “Test Center” that finally makes testing experimental apps and system components safe, simple, and reversible on image-based distributions. GNOME OS has always been that cool, slightly wild playground for people who live and breathe GNOME. It’s image-based, atomically updated, super secure… and until now, a bit of a pain...

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Debian released important point updates for both its current stable and previous stable versions on July 11, with Debian 12 officially entering its Long Term Support phase. The Debian project released updated point versions for both its current stable release and the previous one on July 11, 2026. Debian 13.6 delivers 124 stability fixes and...

The post Debian 12.15 and 13.6 Released: Bookworm Enters LTS with Support Until 2028 appeared first on DebugPoint.com. Do not reproduce this post without permission.

KDE Frameworks 6.28.0 Released with Android Calendar Plugin, New Barcode Support, and KIO Improvements. KDE has released Frameworks 6.28.0, the latest monthly update to its set of over 80 libraries that form the foundation of Plasma and most KDE applications. This release brings several useful new features along with the usual round of bug fixes...

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