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Tech, Strategy, and other interesting things by Roberto Zoiaby Roberto Zoia

Lives of the Stoics, by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

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Lives of the Stoics is a collection of short biographies. Like other books about Stoicism written by the authors, Lives of the Stoics does not pretend to dive deeply into the philosophy of the Stoics nor be an historical treaty, but to provide inspiration for life through its insights and stories.

From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, the authors give a good introduction to the lives and context of each stoic, distilling the essentials of their character, their historical background, their struggles with the powers that be, and other highlights of their lives. Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom. Self-rule is the greatest empire, character is fate.

How to Choose What Books to Read

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Picking what books to read is always challenging. Time is limited, and even the fastest reader can only read a handful of books in her lifetime. Through the years I’ve collected some criteria for choosing what I read, either by experience or by stealing from greater minds, which can help you in the process of choosing the right books.

  • Long-term value: will what you learn from this book be relevant in the long-term, say, in 10 years or more1?

    If you apply this rule, you’ll soon discover that most of what “everybody is reading” won’t make the cut.

    For books, time is like a test of quality. Trust book recommendations, but not too much. Most new books follow the “book-marketing manual”, paying the media to get attention, having their authors interviewed in popular podcasts, etc. Suddenly it seems that everybody is reading that new, shiny book. Meanwhile, Marcus Aurelius cannot rely on paid advertising to promote his outstanding Meditations, written almost 2,000 years ago.

  • Leverage: “Leverage is achieving results significantly greater than the force you put in2.” Will reading this book give you leverage? If yes, what kind of leverage? Where can you apply it? How can you keep it?

    The Great Mental Models, Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish is one of the best books I’ve read in the last years. This is a book that will stand the test of time, and will provide great leverage, because “the skill of finding the right solution for the right problem is one form of wisdom3“.

  • Thinking and decision making: will this book help my thinking process? Will it help me make better decisions?

    How to Take Smart Notes by Sónke Ahrens, explains Luhmann’s Zettelkasten could help you improve not only your note-taking but also your thinking process. Expressing what we’ve read about by writing our insights confronts us with our lack of understanding.

  • Step out of your domain of expertise. Will reading this book give a different perspective on a particular topic, or are you falling in some kind of confirmation bias? Will it require effort on my part to understand what the author is proposing? (For non-fiction, books that don’t challenge you or that don’t require any effort to read are usually not worth your time.)

    Some people don’t read books like Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning because they fear to confront their long-term purpose and motivation. Or because reading about Nazi’s concentration camps make them feel uncomfortable. Other people can’t stand Nassim Taleb’s attitude, even if some of his books are of indispensable reading. Some people criticize James P. Carse for writing Finite and Infinite Games as it were a theological treatise from centuries ago, but the book it’s definitely worth your time.

  • What questions do I expect this book to answer? Sometime you read a book because you trust the author. In those cases, even if there is an emotional component involved, you implicitly know the topics the author writes about, and how the book can help you. Most of the time, however, you should have in mind what questions do you expect the author to anwser in the book.

Book Reading 2020 (non-fiction)

In 2020, I read 17 non-fiction books:

If you are looking for non-fiction book recommendations for 2021, you can’t go wrong with The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish, How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens, and The Practice by Seth Godin.

Even if in 2020 I read more non-fiction books than in previous years, I didn’t accomplish my goal of two books per month. I broke my reading routine several times for days and sometimes even weeks. So, borrowing from one the Knights Radiant ideals4, this year I’ll focus on journey before destination. I’ll focus on reading at least 25 five pages every day.

Book Reading 2020 (fiction and fantasy)

I also read 6 novels, some of them very long:

I love both fiction, hard science-fiction, and fantasy books. But if I had to pick one book from the list above, I recommend Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. The plot happens in two parallel timelines, alternating between code-breakers and tactical-deception operatives in World War II, and their part-decendants building a data haven and anonymous cyber-banking in the late 1990’s.

Happy reading!

  1. There are exceptions to this rule, for example, when you want to learn something specific and tactical. But those exceptions should be few. ↩
  2. The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Chemestry and Biology, by Shane Parrish, p. 110. ↩
  3. cfr The Great Mental Models, Volume 1, by Shane Parrish, Kindle Edition, loc. 98 ↩
  4. Taken from Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, from the Stormlight Archive series. ↩

Facebook, the Advertising Company

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Facebook makes money from collecting data about its users and selling it as precisely targeted advertising. In 2019, Facebook reported a total revenue of 55,838 Million Dollars, 98% of which came from advertising (55,013 Million Dollars). If Facebook is free to use, it’s not because they are generous. It’s because you are the product.

The ‘Identifier for advertisers’ is a feature in iOS that, when enabled, allows apps to track users cross apps and websites. It’s a key feature used by Facebook and its advertising partners to collect data about you and sell segmented advertising. In June 2020, Apple announced that in a future iOS 14 upgrade, it would change the default setting in iOS from opt-in to opt-out, forcing Facebook and anyone using this identifier to track users, to explicitly ask the user permission to do so.

Defaults options matter1. Only a small percentage of users dive into their iPhone settings to opt-out of ad targeting. Facebook knows that if the new default in iOS is no ad targeting, most users won’t opt-in even when asked. Google pays Apple billions each year to be the default search engine in iOS because, again, defaults matter.

Do you believe that Facebook cares about freedom? Will you opt-in when confronted with a message in your iPhone asking if you want to allow Facebook and its partners to track you?

  1. cfr Johnson and Goldstein (2004), Default and Donation Decisions. ↩

Leadership and Intellectual Humility

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We need to remind ourselves often that we don’t know everything. The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that states that when you lack knowledge or expertise, you’re not in a position to realize that you lack knowledge and expertise. It’s not that we are in denial of our errors. It’s that they are simply invisible to us.

We must learn to listen and consider other people’s opinions, specially if it differs from ours. From a stand of empathy and tolerance, we need to be intellectually humble to listen and try to understand others and their opinions.

From a leadership point of view, a great leader doesn’t try to be the smartest person in the room. She seeks for the best people she can get for her team, specially in fields that are outside of her own circle of competence. The great leader knows that she has blind spots, and that she may not be aware of them when she must make a decision. So she hears what her team has to say and makes the best decision with the available information.

The BBC has this great reel about intellectual humility.

Short-term Effectiveness vs Long-term Resilience

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Seth Godin, writing about Self, Community and Motivation, explains that in the short term, you can get people to do what’s needed by replacing a “rational, generous, community mindset” with “an immediate and self-focused desire to be safe.”

In the current pandemic, public health officials didn’t appeal to you should wear masks to protect strangers from getting sick, but by implying “if you touch someone, you will die almost instantly and quite horribly. And people, already frightened, embraced the feeling.”

(…) short-term market needs are often efficiently filled by short-term selfish behavior. Resilience comes from a longer-term and more community-focused outlook.

The question is: Once people catch the virus and get through it (as most people will) and recover (as more than 9 out of 10 will), what will replace the selfish panic?

Resorting to short-term motivation can be, in some circumstances, an effective hack. If you resort to it too often, it teaches people to be selfish in the long-term.