My 2022 in Books

I'm going to start off by paraphrasing a quote I read a long time ago. It went something like this:

"Social media is the informational equivalent of junk food. It tastes good in the moment, but as soon as you finish a two-hour binge, you never feel good about yourself. A book, on the other hand, is like a well-balanced meal, providing nourishment for the mind and leaving you with a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction."

I’ve always enjoyed reading, and this year I've been able to read six phenomenal books on the topics of design and self-development. I generally gravitate towards non-fiction books and I have really picked up speed towards the end of the year. Here’s the full list in the order of reading:

1. Atomic Design (Brad Frost)

2. Building Design Systems (Sarrah Vesselov & Taurie Davis)

3. Design Systems Handbook (Marco Suarez et al.)

4.?Atomic Habits (James Clear)

5.?Deep Work (Cal Newport)

6.?Can’t Hurt Me (David Goggins)

I read the first three books whilst researching for my master’s thesis on the topic of designing design systems and I highly recommend reading them for anyone interested in learning how to approach and maintain design decisions at scale. This is something I am personally passionate about and believe is wildly important, but unfortunately it was completely neglected in my formal education. I'd urge all designers to familiarize with the topic as I'm starting to see an increasing amount of job descriptions listing it as a desirable competence.

To summarize, a design system is a collection of design guidelines, components, and tools that help teams to create consistent and coherent user experiences. They provide a shared vocabulary and set of standards for discussing, designing and building products across an organization. This helps to streamline the development process, improve the usability of the products, and ensure that the products are visually consistent and on-brand. Typically, a design system encompasses typography, colors, iconography, and layout guidelines, as well as reusable components such as buttons, forms, and navigation menus. Finally, design systems often include documentation and code that facilitate the hand-off between designers and developers.

Thanks to these books, I've learned how to approach building design systems based on best practices combined with user needs and organizational context. Through reading papers and practicing the craft during my thesis, I've also learned how to utilize different tools and methods for prototyping, hosting and managing systems to enable efficient contribution and balancing coherence with flexibility. I've come to realize that a design system can be seen as an interface between different disciplines of an organization. Hence, like any interface, the user experience of a design system can be thoughtfully designed to maximize utility, efficiency and satisfaction for its users.

Atomic Habits

Atomic Habits is a cult classic in the self-development world and I've been wanting to read it for a long time. The author essentially describes how small changes in your daily habits can lead to exponential improvements long term. The book explains the science behind habit formation and provides tips for building good habits and breaking bad ones.?In essence, we get more out of small repeated actions than going all-in on something for a short time. This is true for work, exercise, learning a new skill etc. One of my favorite insights from the book is the fact that people often think they lack motivation to do something, when in reality they lack clarity. Planning ahead and deciding where, when and how you are going to perform a certain action helps bring clarity and makes motivation much less of a factor.

Moreover, habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop. Dopamine is released not only when we experience pleasure, but also when we anticipate it. Ultimately, it is the idea of pleasure that we chase and the anticipation of a reward that gets us to take action. Following the successful completion of a habit with a reward, hence, makes the habit itself more attractive.

Lastly, one of the things that hit home for me personally, as a maximizer and, to an extent, perfectionist was this quote:

Motion makes you feel like you’re getting things done. But really, you’re just preparing to get something done. When preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to be merely planning. You want to be practicing.

I often find myself doing extensive preparation and research in search for the optimal product, service or best practice before I take any action. This is also known as analysis paralysis, and it sadly tends to inhibit my ability to execute in many parts of my personal life. The key takeaway here is that I have to embrace mistakes and focus more on getting things done rather than trying to make them perfect - scary but absolutely crucial.

Deep Work

This book was simply phenomenal. The basic idea is that the ability to focus intensely on demanding tasks is becoming a rarity but also increasingly important in today’s society. As the average attention span drops and productivity deteriorates, the ability to perform deep work for extended periods of time will become an invaluable skill that distinguishes you from the masses. However, modern businesses are seldom set up in a way that promotes deep work: open offices, serendipitous collaboration, rapid communication, and an active presence on social media. There is a false conception where, in the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in a job, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner - business as a proxy for productivity.

The author goes on to describe strategies for blocking out distractions and achieving true depth. For instance, quitting social media and decoupling distraction impulses from action with a 5 min delay gets you far.

One of my main takeaways from the book is the fact that it is easier to find meaning and pleasure in work than in free time.

Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed. - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow)

Newport shares a few rules to help spend more time in a state of depth (or flow): Taking breaks from focus instead of taking breaks from distraction, dividing the work-day and free time into online and offline blocks, and scheduling every minute of the day to encourage mindfulness towards how you spend your time. It is not a matter of restricting oneself to adhere to the plan perfectly, it's about asking oneself "What makes sense for me to do with the time that remains?".

Can't Hurt Me

Can’t Hurt Me is a highly captivating and inspirational memoir told by Goggins about his journey from a troubled childhood and detrimental lifestyle to becoming a high achieving athlete with a successful military career. He describes ways of finding the inner strength and resilience to achieve remarkable goals and unlocking your maximum potential.?

My main takeaway is that we are capable of so much more than we think. Sadly, many of us get comfortable and satisfied, settling for mediocracy, and sticking to our safe-zones. We listen to the doubts of our inner voices, our governors, who tells us what we are and what we are not capable of. We pacify ourselves with excuses; that we weren’t born to do it etc. but in order to really excel and, as Goggins puts it, ”callous our minds”, we have to seek out discomfort. Optimally, we should challenge ourselves mentally and physically on a daily basis. That is the only way to grow and become a better version of yourself. You have to choose the path of most resistance and defy comfort. I think the following quote sums it up quite well:

"Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”

This book completely changed my perspective of the word "impossible" and I immediately had to put it into practice. For a long time, I had told myself that I did not have it in me to run a 10K. After reading the book, I replaced the idea of "Why would I even subject myself to the pain and exhaustion of distance running?" with a far more alluring question: "What am I capable of?". I proceeded to break through all my previous mindset barriers and ran my first ever 12K at a surprisingly acceptable pace of 4:58 min/km. What am I capable of?

And what are you capable of?