I recently finished reading The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, and I enjoyed it. It was a quick read and a nice follow-up to the other books of his that I've read.

The main lessons revolve around how to support your child in developing the 4 characteristics of a "yes" brain. The scenarios and stories in this book were very realistic and useful, and I liked the "kid versions" of the main lessons that the parent can share directly with a kid.

Happy New Year!

Last year was super busy with Epirus growing a ton and a lot of happenings at home. While I still read a decent number of books, I failed to reach the goal I had set for myself and also failed to match or exceed how many I read last year. I also sadly didn't finish reading any new magic books (though I made progress on some). I'll try to correct all that this year.

The books I read last year covered psychology, business, parenting, health, and fiction.

Here's to a 2020 filled with more reading!

I heard from Ryan Holiday about the book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. In his final Reading List Email of 2019, he said it was the book he had recommended to the most people this year. (He also said it doubled as a valuable parenting resource.)

The book's focus is all the ways that generalists, or people with skills and knowledge across multiple domains, can often be even more effective in a dynamic, fast-changing, specialized world. It also explains the benefits of tinkering, experimenting, and "active openmindedness" in science, technology, and innovation/creativity in general.

I've often considered myself more of a jack of many trades than a master of any single one, and this book makes me feel a little better about myself. You have to be deep enough in a domain to understand it and be  effective, but it's often at the intersections and interfaces between domains (where generalists often hang out) where innovation and creativity usually occurs.

As a parent, I learned that there is huge value for kids in early experimentation and sampling of many different things (musical instruments, sports, etc.) before later specialization. Early specialization can yield remarkable results, but later specialization is usually much better overall for many reasons the book discusses.

My main notes and takeaways on the book are below.