Hello Everyone,
As you can guessed from the title, this post is not about any Algorithm technique or Interview experience etc. This post is about things which can shape your personality, although these books can help anyone but it is mainly intended to college passouts and grads.
Along with LC one can also learn some practical lession from some of best seller books, which will be helpful all along your life. Some of the book which I read recently, I wished I would have read long back, hence this post to help others.
Feel feel to let me know in comments if I have missed any great book.
One more point, Self help/guidance is effective depending on where you are in life, sometime you would be immensly benefitted and sometime you will think what is this I am reading.
Thats perfectly fine. You can drop it and may be re-read at different point in life.
| Atomic Habits | Description |
|---|---|
| We Humans wanted to develop Good Habits (like Leetcoding everyday :) ) and break some bad ones. This book is essentials in that, it formulates a 4 rule based approach on how to approach about habits. A must read to get the house in order. |
| Ikigai | Description |
|---|---|
| Once you have developed habits, we need a purpose in life, like become a competitive programmer or a happy person. This books explore those topics What you love to do (Leetcode), What you get paid for ( our job), what you are good at and what world needs. The common intersection of all these is 'Ikagai'. So do read it to find your true purpose. |
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| Thinking Fast & Slow | Description |
|---|---|
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So now you have good habits and also some purpose, and on this platform to achieve them, you need to have good brain.
Read this book to open secrets of working of brain.
System 1, which is fast, automatic, and intuitive, and System 2, which is slow, deliberate, and analytical.
Kahneman explains how these systems interact to shape our judgments and decisions.
A word of caution: this is a very dense book, if you know any other book on critical thinking, you can read that instead. |
| Fooled by Randomness | Description |
|---|---|
| Often life will not pan out what you have planned, their is a role of luck, chance, probability in life. This book highlights how randomness and unpredictability can lead to false conclusions, emphasizing the importance of understanding the limits of knowledge. It discusses the cognitive biases that lead people to underestimate the impact of random events. |
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| The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck | Description |
|---|---|
| Embracing the life with some imperfection and remain happy is what this book talks about. It argues that prioritizing what truly matters and accepting one's flaws leads to a more meaningful and fulfilling life. He emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, taking responsibility for one's choices, and understanding that pain and failure are essential for growth. |
| The Psychology of Money | Description |
|---|---|
| Assuming everything goes as per plan, you followed all above steps and some suprises goes your way, you will end up having a good job and possibly great sum of money every pay-check. What to do with all that money, today's generation is spending on eat-out, travel etc etc. While all that is good and we must enjoy our lives, we must also save and invest smartly. This book talks about various aspects of money. I chose this over other great finance book because it talks about pyscholgical concepts of Money. Later on you can read 'The Warren Buffet Way' , 'The Intelligent Investor' and many more. |
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| Good Energy | Description |
|---|---|
| Health is utmost important.To accomplish anything in life and to do all the above steps you need to be in good health first. You can picky any book of your choice on this topic but I found this a new entrants a NY Times best seller promising. I am yet to read this but the reviews looks promising. |
I want to keep this list short & crisp so that it appeal to more users.
You can agree with me that if the list is too long, we become lazy and avoid taking any actions so I stick to basic stuff like Habits, Passion, Luck, Money, Health.
After you read all the above book, more avenues will open up and you will smart enough to figure out yourself what you should read next depend on what path you wanna choose.
Topics like Entrepreneurship , Management, Sprituality, Stock Market are some of topics you can choose next to read.
How to Start reading : Reading is not a very easy task , especially in today worlds where we have so many distractions like social media, OTT, Internet, Video games to name a few.
I would recommend the method suggested by 'Atomic Habits' read for '2 minutes' every day and better start reading 'Atomic Habits' as first book itself so that it will inculcate the habits
of reading further books.
Next tip is write some important point while reading the book in a diary. Keep a diary near to you while you read. After 6 months you will forgot most of the what you read but if you note down some important point which hit your brain, write it and keep that diary with you and occasionally read the diary while sipping morning tea, chances are you will carry the learning for a longer run.
You can take a print and hang on walls. Books like 'Atomic Habits' are already providing those charts.
You can read these books either Paperback or e-book, even audiobook platform like Audible and KukuFM (Indian languages) are great (but I prefer paperback and sometime kindle).
What ever you read above, dont make a firm opinion about any concept, be fliexible for change.
For example author of 'Thinking Fast & Slow' and Noble Prize Winner Dan Kuhneman admits some of the ideas in books no longer valid. Same with 'The Intelligent Investor' the author suggest that rules of investing does change after a decasde a so, so you go and re-write those rules. Hence be flexible to the opinions you form after reading above books.
Please do let me know if any good books are missed, we will add to the list.
NY Times Best Seller : https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/