What I read in 2022, what I got from it and some recommendations

What I read in 2022 and what I got from it

Every year there are some people that ask me if I can recommend some books, which I do, but that gave me the idea to share what I read in 2022 and see if you can use some of my learnings to read more as well.

I really like to read, it is very important for me to find new ways of doing things, learn from other people and find interesting stories that inspire me to change, lead change or just keep up with the new trends.

I always try to read at least 12 books every year, this year I just managed to read 10, but I'm not too hard on me because some of those were really really long books :).

Sometimes read a book its challenging because of the busy agenda and also the time for other personal things like training and other important stuff I do to connect with family and friends. But if you like or want something really hard you can find ways to do it, so here's how I do it, hopefully you can find it useful:

• I always have one physical book that I'm currently reading, I take it with me if I'm on vacations, read at home, before going to sleep or on weekends.
• The other book is an audio book, I hear it when I'm commuting to work, generally an audio book is around 6 to 10 hours, so depending on the book you can do easily one a month.
• And third I have one on my kindle to read when I'm traveling. It's easier to get it on my backpack, read on the plane, the lounge or when waiting for a delayed flight.

So, I'm always reading (or listening) three books at the same time, of course if I get excited with one I might take it to an environment I use for a different format, for example, I took my physical book to a recent travel because I enjoyed it very much and wanted to binge read it.

I also read articles all the time, sometimes more than 3 or 4 in a week, but that's not counted here.

These were the books of 2022 for me, some notes of what I got from it, sometimes the value of a book for me is its message, sometimes the ideas I create in my head from it, that are not necessary related to the book itself or sometimes a good reference to another book.

• The Code Breaker (Walter Isaacson): An amazing book about Jennifer Doudna, a Noble Prize winner because of the co-discovery of a tool to edit genes. But most important made me realize what's coming in our future as humanity with genetic engineering, which it will be the next revolution after the Digital revolution.
• Becoming Supernatural (Joe Dispenza): After reading a lot of books about how to improve your performance (both professionally or athletic), I have found three common subjects that will help you on this, Sleep, Nutrition (for the athletic)/Physical Activity (for the professional) and meditation. Meditation is something that is not easy to do, even when is something very simply, with this book I discovered the power of meditation and also the power of visualization. It reinforced my understanding and helped me to keep trying to make it part of my day-to-day life.
• Essentialism (Joshua Becker): I read this book to help me find ways to focus myself on the less things, on the essential, and somehow it helped, but the real message that I got from it was to read one book that was written before the times of hyper-connectivity, to understand how the world use to work and how the people used to act then. And that's why I decided to read the following book.
• Meditations (Marcus Aurelius): This is an amazing book written more than thousand years ago, being strict it is not really a book, but a compilation of thoughts that Marcus Aurelius used to write about the important things in his life. It was amazing to read what he learnt from important people in his environment, the set of values he lived by, his approach to things like leadership, religion, relationships and philosophy. I really enjoyed it, learning about somebody that lived so long ago but some of his ideas and approach is still relevant these days is amazing.
• The richest man who ever lived (Greg Steinmetz): A really interesting book about Jacob Fugger, the first banker of the world, how banking has changed the history of the world and how it helped to transform civilizations, the power of it as a tool for good, managing risks and how impactful it is for humanity. A side of history I did not know about.
• Animal Farm (George Orwell): This political novel is a great book that resonated with what I've seen happening on some countries, people going into power to move rulers out, just to become the same thing than the ones they overthrown. Also how a few can manipulate many to achieve their own ego-driven goals.
• The Social Animal (David Brook): An interesting anthropological book of how we act as human beings in terms of love, character and how every person deals with it, but also with achievement and what it means to different people, the impact on how they were raised and the environmental influence in us as humans.
• Metaverse Investing (The Metaverse): Speaking about new trends, behold the Metaverse, this is a great book, that will explain the most basic stuff about it, like NFTs, Crypto currencies, Virtual Land and also how to invest in it, or on the technology that supports it, like chipset, hosting, video card companies. It also gives a glimpse of what is coming in terms of the user technology that is out there and the improvements that are in the works.
• Unfuck Yourself (Gary John Bishop): To be honest this was my least favorite book, I did not find it engaging and that I could took a lot of value out of it. But of course it doesn't need to be the case for you, sometimes a good book is not perceived as a good book depending on your mood or how you feel at that moment in time.
• Simplify (Joshua Becker): Last but not least, this book it is a very simple read that shows you how to make your day-to-day very simple, a balanced view to minimalism, but more kind of a practical guide to it. Living with less is always better, at least for me.

It was an interesting year in terms of reads, I will continue with my approach, if you have a different way to read more, please share it with me, I would really like to read more that 10-12 books a year :)