New Year’s resolution or a new habit for life
Three years back I made a new year’s resolution to read one book a month. Reading became so much fun that it has become a habit since then. It is that time of the year again and maybe you are looking for a new year’s resolution. If you haven’t picked a resolution yet I highly recommend picking up reading. Start with books you may have at home or borrow from friends and slowly build a habit that you will enjoy for life. My reading bug inspired me to write about the books I have been reading and looks like slowly I am catching a writing bug.
I started 2019 by reading “A Children’s History of India” to my kids. The book is a journey of Ancient India from 2600 BCE to the different foreign rulers the country went through from 1200 CE to 1947 CE followed by Independent India from 1947 CE to 1977 CE. The night time reading for kids soon turned into a great read for myself and gave me an insight in to the country I grew up in. The book is a great lesson of history on how a nation can go from greatness to ruins and rise up back again. It is also a reminder that building a nation needs great leaders as well as commitment from all it’s citizens and takes decades of hard work.
2019 was an year of transition for me as I moved back to a software developer role after being in management for 10+ years. My wife’s excellent support made my transition much easier. I also read an excellent book from her collection “mindset: The New Psychology Of Success” by Carol S. Dweck. Dweck explains in the book why it’s not just our talents and abilities that bring us success — but whether we approach our goals with a fixed or growth mindset. This book has kept me motivated throughout the year. It was great to see the emphasis of growth mindset being placed in my kids’ school, their soccer class as well as a few more books I read through the year.
During my summer vacation in India I read “Hit Refresh” by Satya Nadella. The book provides an excellent insight in to Microsoft, the future of technology as well as Satya Nadella’s personal story. Reading this book and a couple of books from other CEOs I have come to truly appreciate what it takes to build and run a successful business as well as pivot a company at technology inflection points. There are lot of sacrifices a CEOs families have to make for him or her to drive a company. As Satya navigated Microsoft in to being one of the leaders in cloud with Azure, it was good to see a growth mindset at play in this transition.
2019 was an year of me transitioning back in to a software developer role and it meant I was reading a lot of technical books and not just management books. As I have been actively coding, the principles in “Clean Code” by Robert C. Martin have helped me write better code. When I get stuck on an issue I am debugging or a design decision, it is also an opportunity for me to remind myself of always going back to the basics. The support of my colleagues and stepping back from the problem has always helped. After a long time I was working with a lot of data and different type of databases. An excellent source on this topic is “Designing Data-Intensive Applications”.
Later half of the year got me in to reading a few more books on diverse topics. My wife’s move to a company in sleep space introduced me to sleep science. I read “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker. One key takeaway from this book is that you never really catch up on the lost sleep so make it a habit to have a regular sleep cycle. In 4 parts of the book Matthew Walker goes in detail about the science behind sleep, why it is critical to have 7–8 hours of sleep and effects of technology on our sleep cycle. If you go to sleep while reading this book, like I did a couple of times it is actually a good thing :).
I finished the year by reading “Prepared: What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life” by Diane Tavenner CEO of Summit Learning. I got introduced to Summit Learning when my boys’ elementary school in Milpitas introduced project based learning in fifth grade. The principal and teachers had great things to say about the program. Before reading this book, my only yardstick on the program was how my kids are doing at school. I see a great transition in them as they have become independent in doing their work and finding online resources for finishing their assignments. The book gave me a good background on how the school came about and has excellent parenting tips from Diane with her experience as a teacher, principal, CEO and a parent.
Reading 30+ books over the last 3 years have helped me learn a lot of new things and at time help affirm what I believe in. I sincerely hope you build reading as a habit this year or if you are already in to reading you will find some great books on my reading list from 2019.
Happy New Year and happy reading folks.
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