What non-dev books do you read to stay motivated/on your path? Otherwise what else gives you focus?

1

Reading has been an escape for me (am fine nowđŸ€«-was a self-help junkie, not too bad but I missed out on video games as a kid because of it😄) but I do still read a lot. When I am not practising coding or blogging, I am reading something.

Now that I am learning to code (2 HeadFirst books and 80% through FCC JS Projects later) I have much less time to read a lot but I find myself coming back to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, the Bible and Seneca’s Letters.

I want to know what non-development books, if any, do you read to stay centred and on your path.

(No. “ELOQUENT JAVASCRIPT” doesn’t count haha)

If you dont read, what is it that you do, that you think puts you in a healthy and focused headspace?

WARNING: I might steal everything from you.

2 Likes
2

good to see that here
I ordered some books of philosophy by nitzsche like

thus spoke zarathustra
beyond good and evil

and I read a beautiful book by Albert camus ‘the stranger’

I recommend you to read ‘plague’ by albert camus it tells about how humans responded to plague when people started dying ,it matches our current corona situation .
I only read the summary and its amazing

I’m thinking to read philosophers who worked on existentialism thats why I started with Nitzsche , I’m further going to read kafka, satre etc

hope you got some value from it !

1 Like
3

Is this a threat? :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t read as much as I used to, as I found I’d get somewhat “obsessive” with any good books I read. I used to read hard sci-fi novels, and not much else. Here are the series/authors I listen to:

I’m missing some other books, and series I haven’t read yet such as Dune which I’m saving for later when I want to jump back into reading hard sci-fi.

As I mentioned before I don’t read novels as much. Rather I’ve been reading more “short” stuff that can fill my time rather than end up spending hours reading fantastic novels and page turners.

Lately I’ve been reading about philosophical and scientific topics that I find interesting. I don’t have any sources because they are just google searches away. Great to “change things up” than just pure development related topics, and I think learning about that kind of stuff helps put everything in life into perspective.

Finally I want to mention a realization I’ve had if you are as much as you are what you eat, you are also as much as what you read. So read different topics, see different viewpoints, and get multiple perspectives. Knowledge and wisdom is out there, but like Isaac Asimov said: “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”

Good luck, keep learning, and keep reading ;D

3 Likes
4

I don’t read/watch stuff to stay centered or on my path.

I think it’s much more valuable to understand how we work and to learn tools, so that I don’t need stuff from the outside to give me guidance.

I mostly read Wikipedia:

1 Like
5

This is amazing stuff and a great perspective

6

Deep Work, by Cal Newport
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman
Quiet, Susan Cain
Grit, Angela Duckworth

A lot of science fiction, and other fiction in general, and divulgative books on many subjects

1 Like
7

@Charles_The_Multipod,

Besides reading books, you may watch this series of videos, hope, you would love all of them. Team Fearless

1 Like
8

I have heard a lot about Deep Work and Grit. I am this closeđŸ€ to committing to finally getting them

9


Developers and science fictionđŸ€Ż

10

yeah deep work is amazing , if you are in hurry you can read its summary

1 Like
11

I will definitely check out the summary first

12

Thanks for this list
I will sure go through and pick some that stir my fancy. Met some of the titles in movies though and I loved “I am Legend.” No one told me there is a book!

I feel like that too
always coming back with new insights after changing things up.

Amazing! some of the most profound things seem so obvious

Speaking like a caring big brother on the internets
thanks for taking your time to answer everything

1 Like
13

I think these books are been so helpfull for me:
John Ducket - HTML CSS ( it’s really easy to understand basic HTML and CSS curriculum )
and Next, I’m going to read this one : The Phoenix Project ( really motivational and thoughtful experience ) .

1 Like
14

Like a real James Bond you drop a developer book despite it all! haha
Never came across the Phoenix Project. Off to google!

15

Well, particullary talking about this book- its a novel , and its available in on Google search as well:

1 Like
16

I love The Phoenix Project!

Its a good novel without even considering it will teach you aspects of DevOps.

I didn’t include it because you can consider it “a developer book”, but you don’t need to be a developer to relate to it. Anyone who has worked in IT can relate.

I would also would like to throw out there “sequel”, The Unicorn Project which which follows a developer affected by the Phoenix Project. So its much more developer oriented compared to the previous book which is more IT/Ops related.

Again, both are “dev books”, but are novels first and foremost. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
17

Great 
 intresting choice as well!

18

Thanks Bond. James Bond.

19

Awesome. I came across some talk about The Unicorn Project before
It must be a good one

20

Listening to “I dare you to work on yourself for 6 months” on Team Fearless YT.

Bad choice if you trying to go to sleep. Adrenaline.

1 Like