Must read / must inform – generally health related. “Must” here simply means that I believe to be in a position of qualified, deserved judgement where I think that the chance that you’ll get your health roughly right without the following isn’t particularly awesome.

  1. All of Andrew Huberman’s “Huberman Lab” Podcast.
  2. Watch the whole YouTube Channel The Galen Foundation, especially the four talks Fasting for Survival, The Bittersweet Truth, Addiction: Why We Can’t Fast of Keep a Diet and The Bittersweet Truth with Dr. Pradip Jamnadas. Also watch this https://youtu.be/yaWVflQolmM.
  3. “Lifespan” by David A. Sinclair, also Lifespan podcast
  4. “Breath” by James Nestor
  5. Tim Ferris Podcast + his books, e.g. Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors, 4-hour body…
  6. Wim Hof
  7. Probably: “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
  8. “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand (teaches you attitude)
  9. “Grit” by Angela Duckworth
  10. “Range” by David Epstein
  11. “Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg
  12. “Altered Traits” by Daniel Goleman & Richard J. Davidson
  13. “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker
  14. You need to study mental models, thus you need to read 1) The Almanack of Charles Munger, 2) The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and 3) The Great Mental Models book series by Farnam Street and Shane Parrish’s podcast The Knowledge Project generally. Without studying mental models, you won’t be able to cross compound benefits, build network effects, know how to deal with complex adaptive systems and so on.

Most of the above information is entirely HEALTH related. Please keep in mind that this isn’t necessarily related to wisdom or wealth. Still, you need health as a foundation. Because that’s all inter-related, grant me the opportunity for some general advice:

If you think you’re magically above self-help literature, you’re a damn fool. The key here simply lies in realizing that there’s extreme pay-offs in reading one or two dozen off them, and that the yield will quickly come lower with the 25th self-help book.

The tragedy only lies with people who never stop reading such books, but honestly, I’ve seen worse in people who believed they’re above them. Reasons for that simply is that it’s almost impossible to undervalue the power of compounding, which to me certainly is a top 10 mental models out there. Compounding means for example aggregation of marginal gains.

I’m generally recommending making tons of list. It’s one of the best ways not to fool yourself, keep track of your actions, desires, chosen paths. Writing & lists are very complementary to almost any wonderful, network-compounding benefits. For example, it’s obvious to me that it’s a great idea to figure out the top 2,000 smartest people, living and dead, that you’ve found so far, where you learnt from the most, but only if you actually write such a list, imho, you’re really in the realm of rationality. I think if you don’t have such lists, it means you’re likely going to be an average human being, which is fine, but if there’s ONE takeaway that I’d love to distribute into everyone’s mind it’s that your potential is so, so much great than what you probably believe yourself, and that you can vastly improve almost any aspect of your life (and the lives of others!).