23 things from 2023 - Part 4: Books

This is part of my round up of 23 things from 2023. The index is here.

I read a bunch of non-fiction books in 2023. This is a small selection of them:

16. Four Thousand Weeks

Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

On average, humans are only alive for 4000 weeks. That’s not very long. This book asks questions about what time actually is, and how to manage the limited time we have - with advice about human events like life, death, love, and goes into detail about how other cultures have dealt with challenges through the ages.

I didn’t find it “life changing” as such, but it was a very interesting read that did make me think about some of the existential questions in a bit more depth.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54785515

17. The Effective Engineer

The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact

A great book about how to be more effective as a software engineer – it’s not about the coding specifics, instead more concerned with mindset and the ideas of ‘leverage’, impact and focusing on the things that matter most.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25238425-the-effective-engineer

18. Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

Being more assertive isn’t about being ‘forceful’, it’s about setting fair expectations and boundaries about how you want to be treated – in all areas of your life.

Most of us need to be better at setting clear boundaries. This book has lots of example scenarios and detail needed to have fairer relations with everyone, including yourself.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55782639-set-boundaries-find-peace

19. Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup

I’ve long had an interest in the mechanics of business (I even took a combination of Business Studies, Economics and Accountancy alongside Computing and Physics when I was doing my GCSEs at school).

I’ve also had a few side-hustles over the years and have been mulling ideas again recently – not to replace my day job I should add - just for fun and maybe bring in a bit of extra cash.

Today, the common model from Silicon Valley start-up culture requires lots of investment (pre-seed, seed, series A, series B, series C, ..., IPO), fast growth and hopefully a big sparkly unicorn shaped exit. But in 2023 in particular, the climate changed – many investors are weathering storm in safe stocks rather than higher risk VC funds who were backing risky tech start-ups – and borrowing money became expensive (the redundancies and company closures across the industry are part of this).

There’s nothing wrong with that model, but even before the current financial storm, most companies will never realistically achieve that magic 5x exit investors are looking for to balance their books – but unfortunately many business (and employee) decisions around growth and product are still steered to try.

This book is all about a slower, smaller, perhaps more old-school, and perhaps more sustainable model for building a company (ideal for a side business, but probably not going to make you a millionaire). It’s specific to software development, which is fairly unique compared to a physical product business where raw materials, manufacturing and stock management are big costs.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9167158-start-small-stay-small