Welcome to my seventh annual best of the year list. You can check out the prior lists here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
This year has been a real challenge. I felt stretched across all four corners of my life: family, friends, health, and work. In turn, many of the habits that I love were traded in for hours spent sitting in a lecture or sitting at my computer (or both at the same time). That means less time to read longer and valuable books/articles and more time to engage with quicker (and sometimes valuable) videos and tweets.
Here's a few of my favorites from another wild year on the planet.
- Tuesdays with Morrie — Thank you Guillermo Echarte for giving me this book for my birthday earlier this year. I read it in two sittings and was crying by the time I finished. Can't believe I'd never read it yet.
- Casey Newton's deep dive of what happened at Basecamp (part 1, part 2) — Incredible reporting from my favorite tech reporter on how Basecamp's internal company culture exploded... leading to a third of the company quitting.
- The Kool-Aid Factory — Brie Wolfson wrote a fantastic guide for all things operations, company culture, and working. There’s a lot here, so be ready to spend several hours with her amazing content.
- Hot Streaks in Your Career Don’t Happen by Accident — The article in a nutshell: “This precise sequence—exploration, followed by exploitation—was the single best predictor of the onset of a hot streak.”
- One Big Idea — In 2021, David Perrell cemented himself as one of my favorite writers on the Internet. If you don’t follow him on Twitter or receive his Monday/Friday newsletters you are absolutely missing out.
- The Paradoxes of Modern Life — More David Perrell. Simple paradoxes to help carry you through achieving your goals.
- The Never-Ending Now — Final David Perrell. When I read this 1-minute essay, I couldn't help nodding along.
- The Most Important Question of Your Life — “A question that perhaps you’ve never considered before—is what pain do you want in your life?” What do you really want, that you are eager to endure the struggle?
- The Manual — If you are working at a startup, this is an awesome collection of wealth planning tools, especially as it relates to equity.
- The Shocking Meltdown of Ample Hills, Brooklyn's Hottest Ice Cream Company — A completely wild story around a beloved NYC ice cream company. Absolutely worth the 22 minutes.
- 100 Couples Share Their Secrets to a Successful Relationship — Polina Pompliano of The Profile compiled these 20 fantastic tips for being a fantastic partner. After a few amazing days in nature with Casey, I can especially vouch for #19—go on walks. Lots of them.
- Spider-Man: No Way Home — Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man came out when I was 9-years-old. This movie put the kid back into me—wonderful plot, writing, acting, and special effects.
- Amanda Gorman's Inauguration Poem — Hopefully, we've all seen this by now, but if you haven't it's a wonderful 6-minute watch.
- The Other Two — This is an HBO series that hasn’t received a ton of attention even though it should. I hadn’t laughed this hard watching television since I binged all of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2019.
- Luca — Pixar does it again with another coming-of-age story with a boy from the sea. I’m due for a trip to Italy after this one.
- Shopify: The E-commerce On-Ramp — Fantastic podcast about all things Shopify.
- Formula 1 — A brutal ending for Lewis Hamilton, but my first season as an F1 fan ended with me standing 8 inches away from my television shouting. Sports haven’t made me do that in a while. The 2022 season starts March 20 in Bahrain.
- Maid — An absolutely incredible story of a mother struggling to care for her child after enduring physical and emotional abuse from her partner. Margaret Qualley puts on an acting clinic. Be prepared to see more of her in 2022 and beyond.
- Annihilation — This movie rocked me. Incredible effects. Natalie Portman acting clinic. Thought provoking ending that makes you scroll through Reddit for an hour. Watch it alone after 10pm on a Friday night for maximum impact.
- The White Lotus — Mind-boggling, highly entertaining greatness from the ex-Survivor himself, Mike White.
- Devin Finzer - An Everything Store for Digital Assets — Learn more about OpenSea. Patrick O'Shaugnessy sits down with the co-founder and CEO of the world's largest NFT marketplace.
- Fauda — Doron is Jack Bauer in Israel. I watched three seasons in one week. True story.
- WandaVision — “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Just absolutely wonderful writing and acting. This is a Marvel show anyone can watch and enjoy.
- Succession, S3 — The HBO hit show is making a serious run at my all-time television rankings. Succession is in rare air. The show actually improves each season. Can it beat Breaking Bad when it is all said and done? If you haven’t started this series, start watching.
- Inside — A work of pure genius from Bo Burnham. We all wish we could make content this accurate and viral.
- Lupin — I had so much fun watching Lupin… just make sure you watch in French with subtitles.
- Bob Odenkirk?(on Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend) — I'm a huge fan of Bob's from his work on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and this podcast with Conan shared some awesome behind-the-scenes details from their early friendship at SNL.
- Playbook — Weight-lift like you have a celebrity trainer for a fraction of the price. I’ve really enjoyed Don Saladino’s workouts, and I am feeling the strongest I’ve ever felt.
- Brave — A privacy-first browser to replace Google Chrome.
- Culture — My favorite frozen yogurt place in the country (thankfully it happens to be a 10-minute walk from my apartment).
- Aura — I just received this digital picture frame and it does not disappoint. It holds tons of photos and can even show two portrait photos side by side.
- Ten Thousand — My new go-to workout shorts.
- AllTrails — Fantastic app for hiking. Find a new hike, track your progress, and receive stats about your trek.
- Ethereum — A powerful technology for a more open, decentralized, and rewarding digital future.
The embed feature isn't working on LinkedIn posts... So, alas, here's a list of tweets as hyperlinks (sorry).
Ubuntu in everything.
3 年I cherish this every year (still have last year's bookmarked!). Appreciate all you and I have shared with one another, pumped to dig into this epic list!
Empowering organizations to win with LinkedIn data and insights
3 年This is awesome. Thanks for sharing Ross!