5 Lessons from 5 Great Reads in 2020

It’s 2021! While 2020 was no joy ride for any of us, I find myself being increasingly grateful for a lot of things the year blessed me with. One of the top things on that list would be the return of my reading habit. Like a lot of the avid readers of Gen Z, I too lost my reading habits growing up. A kid who once used to read with a torch under her blanket, wouldn’t pick up a book with all the light in the world and no lights-out. I went from finishing an entire rack of books at my favourite library to hardly finishing 3 books in a year.

As more and more weekends were spent at home, lazing out in the Grandpa Chair in my parents’ lawn, I gave up my phone as my favourite accompaniment and picked up a book instead. Many books, in fact. And as is the nature of books, it taught me some of the most valuable lessons of 2020. So, here’s a summary of my favourite reads from 2020 and what they taught me.

1. “We are all creative” – Creative Confidence, Tom Kelley & David Kelley

This book changed me. I was a believer in the myth that there are “creative types” and creative professions. And I was part of neither. This book made me believe that I was both and so are all of us.

Creative Confidence is an absolute gem of a book that busts many such myths about creativity and shares effective ways to unleash the creative potential within ALL of us. Yes, all of us. The fundamental thought behind the book is that all of us are creative and creativity is not a rare gift, but a natural part of human thinking and behaviour.

I have adopted a huge chunk of the tips & tricks shared into my professional and personal life. Inspired by David Kelley’s whiteboard marker in the shower to jot down passing ideas, I have a journal which I fondly call my “Book of Ideas” to jot down any passing idea my brain lights up with. You see, my bathroom doesn’t have effective whiteboarding capabilities yet.

2. “Life is a game” – Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

Nike was a brand for me. It became an emotion after reading this book. While there’s plenty that this book taught me, the first thing it made me realize is how the personification of a brand in the shape of its founder, can impact the brand’s sentiment. Among the more important things, it taught me a lot about starting something of your own and I deeply resonated with the author’s feelings on why. “I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.” This echoes in my head every day and it’ll continue to till I have something to point to and say, hey I made that.

3. “Epiphanies are rare” – That will never work, Marc Randolph

That will never work: The birth of Netflix and the amazing life of an idea. My biggest takeaway from this book was that your brilliant startup idea isn’t just going to come to you. You need to actively pursue it. The book takes you through the life of an idea – how Netflix was identified from a host of bad ideas and how it evolved to be a game-changer in the world of entertainment. Personally, for me, this gave me hope that not all founders have to start at 19 and at first, all ideas would elicit the same response – “That will never work”.

4. “Things are better than you think” – Factfulness, Hans Rosling

I finished this book right before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, I was dumbfounded by the accuracy with which Hans Rosling had cautioned us against this and 4 other global risks that we should be worrying about. Factfulness is a book about the world and how it really is. While Hans uses data to highlight how things are not as bad as we think they are, he also brings our attention to the global risks which may be worse than we think. Case in point, a global pandemic. This book has been much raved about in the past and is an essential read, now more than ever.

5. “Best paths are new and untried” – Zero to One, Peter Thiel

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, this may be exactly the book that can be your guiding light. Zero to one advocates that entrepreneurs build something unique, something that completely changes the market, a solution that does not yet exist (going from 0 to 1), rather than building something that is incrementally better than an existing solution (going from 1 to n). The book really made me sit down and rethink my own understanding of how businesses run and what really makes them succeed.

I am excited to carry forward this reading tradition into 2021. Looking for your recommendations to add to my bookbag for 2021. What have you been reading?