I heard about Reboot by Jerry Colonna via Tim Ferriss's and Jason Calacanis's podcasts. It's a book by a very well known startup "coach," but it goes much deeper than that. It exposes how startups bring out many psychological issues in founders that are rooted in childhood experiences. One of its core lessons is that "better humans make better leaders," so working on oneself improves one's company.

It reminded me a bit of Getting The Love You Want, which taught how couples in marriage are dealing with issues from childhood via their relationship. It also reminded me of Esther Perel's new podcast How's Work? that delves into similar issues ("therapy" for the workplace).

I enjoyed the book and learning about the author's "pathless path." The book did stay at a pretty high level, and I found myself craving for a bit more tactical "advice." Regardless, it was interesting to read about the stories of other founders' struggles and how they "processed" their issues.

Below are my main notes/takeaways from the book.

For a long time, I had on my reading list Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman. I finally got around to reading this classic of psychology and learned a lot from it.

I'm afraid I kind of did it backwards though: I think this book has influenced and been the foundation for many other texts that built on top it, and I probably read a lot of those other books first, so many of the ideas in this book were less surprising. What I didn't realize is how much of an emphasis this book had on biology and child development, and I liked a lot of the research it reviewed in that area.

Below are my main notes and takeaways from the book. The biggest lesson I got out of it was that with attention and training, one can improve one's "EQ," which is really important for happiness and effectiveness in various parts of life.

I was debating the pros and cons of various organizational structures with a colleague of mine who's a former Navy SEAL, and he was kind enough to gift me the book One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams written by Chris Fussell, with whom he worked on the Teams before.

Before reading this book, I always thought of "bureaucracy" as a bad word, but now I see why it exists and what important functions it serves. I also got a really good sense as to how to build a hybrid organization that aims to balance between periods of decentralization/agility/bottom-up with periods of stability/centralization/top-down.

I also really enjoyed hearing about how to implement O&I (Operations & Intelligence) Forums to get key stakeholders on the same page quickly using technology, and how to match the operating rhythm of a group with that of its environment/market. I aim to put in practice a lot of the major lessons from this book.

My major notes and takeaways are below.