The OffBeat #16: My Fourteen Favorite Books of 2022
And their offbeat takeaways
My three core values are connection, growth mindset, and creativity, and all three are embodied in no more complete way than in my love of reading.
Since a young age I’ve read at least 100 books a year (recent parenthood has shaved that down to more like 80) and catalogued them faithfully in a Google Doc and on GoodReads.
Like my taste in music, my taste in books is eclectic. After all, curiosity — the engine of creativity — is linked to exploration of the unknown. Almost every book I read, whether overtly business- or psychology-related or not, leaves me with takeaways that impact how I think about working and living better. It could be a poignant quote, a plot twist, a fact. I think the best inspiration, no matter your line of work or the shape of your personal life, comes from surprising sources.
That’s the whole premise of The OffBeat. Changing up the usual is the key to progress towards real work-life balance — the definition of which, to me, is when working and living well are mutually inclusive.
Below, my 14 favorite books of 2022 and their offbeat takeaways.
FICTION
Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson: Learning how to surf is not about conquering the ocean, it’s about conquering yourself. Any big, bold undertaking has everything to do with you — your fears, your goals — and nothing to do with the medium.
Cult Classic, Sloane Crosley: The most productive conversations tend to be at conclusion points: exit interviews, breakups. Honesty feels more comfortable with a way out in sight. Imagine if you challenged that convention.
Olga Dies Dreaming, Xochitl Gonzalez: Benevolent colonialism is still colonialism.
A Short Stay in Hell, Steven L. Peck: Meaninglessness is the ultimate torture.
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead: “We are confined to the present, but this moment we're living now has, for all of history, been the future. And now, forever more, it will be past. Everything we do sets off unforeseeable, irreversible chain reactions.”
MEMOIR
Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind, Andy Dunn: Acceptance and accountability are two different things.
My Life In Full: Work, Family, and Our Future, Indra Nooyi: Take it from the former CEO of PepsiCo: there’s no such thing as “having it all” and we shouldn’t be striving for that anyway.
The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life, Lauren Martin: See delays and lines as windows of opportunity, experiments of chance — open yourself up to the possibilities of what can happen in those spaces.
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, Mira Jacob: “Sometimes, you don’t know how confused you are about something important until you try explaining it to someone else.”
PSYCHOLOGY
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman: "Stop trying to clear the decks and instead just get on with doing stuff that matters, while tolerating the fact that the decks aren’t clear."
Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, Scott Barry Kaufman: We’ve interpreted Maslow’s hierarchy of needs all wrong.
BUSINESS
Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, Brad Stone: Vision and relentless focus lead to dominance — but at what cost?
R.E.D. Marketing: The Three Ingredients of Leading Brands, Greg Creed and Ken Muench: Relevance, Ease, Distinctiveness.
Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni: Streamline your team’s calendars into four meeting types: Daily Check-In, Weekly Tactical, Monthly Strategic, Quarterly Off-Site Review.
Happy holidays! Have a great week,
Allison