I read a lot this year. Not as much as I used to, mind you. Before we started having children, I read 125–150 books per year. Now that we have 3 children—who are 4, 5, and 6 years old—and I oversee a half-dozen projects and companies, I’ve had to take it down a notch (50–75 books per year).

As 2018 comes to a close, I’d like to share my very favorite books from 2018. I read some terrible books, I read some good books, and I read some great books. In no particular order, these are the great ones:

Becoming by Michelle Obama

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Wisdom @ Work by Chip Conley

Principles by Ray Dalio

Them by Ben Sasse

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink

Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

How To Grow Old by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Sisters First by Barbara Bush & Jenna Bush Hager

Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday

It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansen

Against Empathy by Paul Bloom

I’d love to hear about some of the great books you read in 2018! Share in the comments below or tell me on Twitter.

Here’s to learning more, exploring more, and dreaming more through books in 2019! 🍻

1. Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
2. Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.
3. Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
4. You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity — a piece of a business — to gain your financial freedom.
5. You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
6. Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.
7. The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.
8. Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
9. Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.
10. Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling.
11. Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
12. Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
13. Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you.
14. Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
15. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.
16. When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.
17. Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
18. Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
19. The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon.
20. “Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” — Archimedes
21. Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
22. Capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge, with accountability, and show resulting good judgment.
23. Labor means people working for you. It’s the oldest and most fought-over form of leverage. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it.
24. Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you.
25. Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.
26. An army of robots is freely available — it’s just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it.
27. If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.
28. Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgement.
29. Judgement requires experience, but can be built faster by learning foundational skills.
30. There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes.
31. Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
32. Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.
33. You should be too busy to “do coffee,” while still keeping an uncluttered calendar.
34. Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
35. Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.
36. Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
37. There are no get rich quick schemes. That’s just someone else getting rich off you.
38. Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve.
39. When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize that it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place. But that’s for another day.

The late John Barlow, Co-Founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and lyricist for The Grateful Dead, wrote a set of rules he would live by right before his 30th birthday. He shared them a few years ago on Reddit.

Here are his 25 Principles of Adult Behavior:

• Be patient. No matter what.
• Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.
• Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
• Expand your sense of the possible.
• Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
• Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.
• Tolerate ambiguity.
• Laugh at yourself frequently.
• Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
• Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
• Give up blood sports.
• Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.
• Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
• Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
• Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
• Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
• Praise at least as often as you disparage.
• Admit your errors freely and soon.
• Become less suspicious of joy.
• Understand humility.
• Remember that love forgives everything.
• Foster dignity.
• Live memorably.
• Love yourself.
• Endure.

I resonated deeply with a few of these. “Admit your errors freely and soon” is always a great rule by which we should live. “Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right” also hits home with me.

Which one(s) resonated with you?

My TEDx talk released on their Youtube platform last evening! I’m so excited to get this idea and message out into the world. They had some audio issues (you’ll know what I mean when you click play) but my hope is that the viewers / listeners will overlook the audio issues in light of what I aim to communicate.

Listen, watch, share, and let me know if you have any thoughts! I’d love to hear your feedback. Leave a comment below or hit me up on Twitter. Let’s chat about it!

The Power of Less TEDx Talk was originally published in TEDx Experience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Truthfully, 99% of y’all don’t any more stuff. There are things you want but you probably don’t need anything. Am I right or am I right? In my humble opinion, inviting outsiders to join you at your table for feasts and friendship is a much better use of our resources than buying more sh*t we don’t need.

This holiday season, I’d like for you to consider giving food, water, health, and work to many amazing people around the world. Yup, you can do that! If I may, I’d like to point you in the direction of some of my favorite organizations that need your money in order for them to continue doing the work they’re doing.

• Picture Change — I’m on the board of this great organization. Essentially, Kate and her small team create curriculum and then go teach photography as a career to students in countries such as Nicaragua and Uganda. They do amazing work and have helped dozens of young people create a meaningful and sustainable career for themselves!
• Preemptive Love—Jeremy and the PL team tirelessly work to take love, food, water, and other types of help into the places most governments and aid groups stay far away from. They put themselves in harm’s way in order to #LoveAnyway.
• Charity:Water—This team has taken clean water to 7+ million people around the world through 24,000+ water projects. Best part? They’ve built a team of a few dozen generous donors that cover all operational costs of the organization which means100% of your donation goes to the work of taking clean water to more people.
• LIDÈ Haiti—Rainn Wilson and his wife, Holiday Reinhorn, built LIDÈ for the purpose of using “the arts and literacy to build resiliency and empower at-risk adolescent girls in rural Haiti, helping them to transition into academic or vocational education.” Amazing, right?

OK, those are some of my favorite organizations right now. If you can, GIVE! I also recognize that you may still want to give some gifts to your loved ones. If this is you, consider purchasing gifts from these organizations my friends have started. They’re giving work to so many people around the world and who are also making products in an ethical and sustainable way.

• Preemptive Love
• Ruby Cup
• Deux Mains
• Trades of Hope
• Purse & Clutch
• The Giving Keys
• Able
• Thistle Farms

There you go! I hope this list will help you focus and make an impact with your dollars this holiday season. Part of giving a damn is putting our money into people, places, and things that will maximize our impact as love, serve, and care for people well.

What are your favorite organizations doing incredible work here in U.S. and around the world? Where do you buy sustainable and ethical gifts? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Much love to you and yours!

A couple of weeks ago, when my family and I moved into our Nashville rental after spending twenty months living as nomads — spending time with my in-laws, my family, and traveling a lot — I asked my wife if we should bypass buying a washer and dryer to go to the laundromat once a week. Without hesitating, she agreed that we should forego purchasing a washer and dryer for now.

We have three children — Solace is five, Belle is four, and Roman is three. Having the ability to wash our clothes, towels, and bed sheets immediately is a convenient and wonderful thing. But you see, it’s hard to advocate for others if you can’t feel a little bit of what they’re feeling. And it’s hard to feel what they’re feeling if you can’t identify, in some way, with what they’re going through.

Sometimes we’re too comfortable to care.

I purposefully aim to make myself uncomfortable from time to time. Like a set of keys in my back pocket when I sit down in a hard chair, I always want a few things in my life poking me as reminders of how incredibly blessed and lucky I am to have the life I have. There are so many who don’t have access to the people, money, and resources I do — things like a washer and a dryer.

Spending two hours at a laundromat every Monday evening reminds me that there are as many people in need around me as there are drops of a quarter into the washing machine slot. Fascinating people of all kinds — single moms, immigrants, minority families — spend two hours a week at the laundromat. And I might not hear their stories, shake their hands, or see how they deal with a coke stuck in the soda machine if I wasn’t sitting on a pair of life’s keys.

The laundromat is my latest experiment, but there have been many others.

I’m currently in my twentieth month of living out of two bags — a backpack and a duffel bag. In the winter of 2016, I got rid of most of my clothes. What fits in two bags? Two pairs of black pants, six black tees, a pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt, one jacket, and two pairs of shoes. Every morning, I reach into my duffel and grab a pair of pants, a tee, and some undergarments, and I’m ready to go. A grab-and-go wardrobe makes life pretty simple in a lot of ways.

There’s another experiment that always gets mixed reactions. I take one shower per week.

For real. Everyone says it’s gross but it’s not as bad as it sounds. I have very little natural body odor. I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess. I engaged in this experiment primarily to see how much time I could gain back from not taking daily showers and how I could use the extra time with the people I care about.

We have to decide to give a damn.

I realize how countercultural and counter-intuitive these experiments and decisions are. We live in a society of extravagance and indulgence. We’re constantly being encouraged to get what we want and ensured we should have it when we want it.

We’re praised and put on a pedestal for having the most stuff. Comfortable is table stakes for the “good life.”

Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” I believe this and try to embody it. I want to go one step further with my life. Not only will the whole world belong to you, you now have so much more to share with the world.

More than likely you have a washer and dryer in your apartment or home. And that’s fine! And you probably don’t live out of two bags. Again, completely fine.

But take a moment to ask yourself what you give a damn about. Who do you give a damn about? What are the things standing in the way of you showing that you give a damn about them?

We have a limited amount of time to advocate for the helpless, to love the unloved, and to give so many damns about the people, places, and things around us and around the world. But advocating for those in need requires a large amount of empathy.

Growing in empathy requires some amount of sacrifice and discomfort. We gain empathy when we remain in uncomfortable places for longer than we’d prefer to be there. I’m on a lifelong quest to help people see how important giving a damn is. I want to see more people determined to give more damns than ever before.

Originally written for Fathom Mag

Turn on your phone, open up your Twitter or Facebook apps, and scroll through your timeline for a few minutes. The vast majority of people are “Ready, Fire, Aim” when it comes to spewing facts and sharing their vast knowledge on any number of subjects. It’s very difficult for me to get on social media these days without getting immediately pissed off at people I’ve never met or engaged with properly. This seems to happen more often these days given our volatile societal and political climate. Now, I have been guilty of waving the “spew-a-bunch-of-facts-while-being-annoying-as-hell-on-social-media” flag so I’m not pointing fingers at anyone here. We have an abundance of knowledge but we are desperately lacking in understanding. Agreed?

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
 — Albert Einstein

I mean, what’s the point of knowing anything at all if we aren’t willing to engage and try to understand people who don’t hold the same beliefs and opinions as we do? Knowing the difference between knowledge and understanding has always been critical. But it seems especially critical now with so much knowledge available to us and so many ways to publish and share this knowledge.

Understanding is a vital key to success. It is not enough to simply know facts. It is not enough to be intelligent and book smart. It is definitely not enough to have a wall full of degrees at home. These are good for something but they will only take you so far.

“Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.” — John Steinbeck

How can we grow in understanding? Here are a few ways I’ve found to be helpful.

1. Listen.
2. Listen some more.
3. Think deeply about what we’ve heard while listening.
4. Ask good questions.
5. Keep listening.
6. Maybe we are ready to speak at this point. We’ll know we are ready to speak when our words are bathed in humility and empathy, not arrogance and disdain for the person or people we are addressing.

Additionally, a very effective way to begin understanding other people is to take things offline. Novel idea, right? Now, we can’t do that with everyone. On social media, we’re mostly chatting with people in other cities, states, and countries. But that isn’t always the case. There are so many opportunities for us to put our phones down and meet someone at a local bar or coffee shop to chat about differing opinions and beliefs. Every time I do this, I’m amazed at how common ground we share. Or maybe we still leave the conversation with vastly different beliefs but, in most cases, our level of respect for each other increases.

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” — Aristotle

So, pursue knowledge. Knowledge is good for something. It is good for a lot of things, in fact. But pursue understanding more. This is a much rarer trait and will set you apart as a leader and a changemaker, not simply a broadcaster of facts.

Originally appeared on Thrive Global

2016 was not a great year for certain things but it was —indeed—a great year for music! There are so many phenomenal albums to choose from but I narrowed it down to nine. Why not ten like a normal *top ten* list? Because, that’s why.

In no particular order, here they are:

1. Hamilton: An American Musical | Lin-Manuel Miranda*
2. Coloring Book | Chance The Rapper
3. Just This | Birdtalker
4. The Spring | Sleeping At Last
5. The Hamilton Mixtape | Lin-Manuel Miranda
6. The Wild Swan | Foy Vance
7. Odna Zhizn—Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4—Prospero’s | Christopher Rouse
8. 22, A Million | Bon Iver
9. A Seat At The Table | Solange

What are some of yours? Leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter with your favorite albums of 2016.

*I’m aware this album didn’t come out in 2016. It’s my favorite thing in the world so I can decide which list to put it on and I’ve decided it belongs on this list.

Do you want to know what is more important than starting strong? Finishing strong, that’s what.

Robin Sharma said, “Starting strong is good. Finishing strong is epic.”

As we wrap up another year, there is a ton of chatter about goals and aspirations for 2017. Don’t get me wrong, I’m right there with the best of them planning and strategizing for an amazing year. This is a good thing. My point is this — a runner who starts a race super well but ends poorly will lose the race every single time. It’s as simple as that.

I believe our lack of finishing strong is the primary reason all gyms are full for the first 3 weeks of January but are fairly empty by Groundhog Day. It is why so many don a positive attitude for the first month or two of the year but begin to live in shame (again) by the beginning of Spring. It is also why our to-do lists are a mile long and full of action steps on January 1 and are still a mile long with those same action steps on April 1.

Let’s not do this all over again, OK? Instead, let’s take a long, hard look at this past year.

Have you looked at the goals you set for this year that weren’t completed and determined why you didn’t complete them?

Are there any fractured relationships you need to focus on mending before the year is over?

Are there people that helped you get through this year (e.g. a mentor, a coach, a friend, a spouse, etc) that you need to thank?

There are a hundred questions just like this that we must ask of ourselves. I won’t rehearse them all right now but you get the picture.

If you finish strong, you’ll have more energy and momentum for the beginning of next year. If you do not finish strong, you’ll end up taking baggage (e.g. thoughts, fears, insecurities, etc) into next year that will weigh you down and hold you back from fulfilling your purposes.

What’s your vision for your life? What is your purpose? Why do you do what you do? If you don’t have clear answers to these questions, you’ll find it hard to finish strong and to finish well. You won’t have a desire to wrap things up and plan for the coming year if you don’t have mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual clarity as to who you are, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. Ralph Marston said, “Start strong, stay strong, and finish strong by remembering why you’re doing it in the first place.”

My friends, there are people to love, businesses to start, work to do, & beautiful things to create in this next year. So, let’s finish strong. Let’s finish well. If you do, you’ll find it much easier to crush it in this next year.

Just a week shy of his 65th birthday, Clive Staples Lewis died on November 22, 1963. Lewis has impacted me more than most, without a doubt. His writings have profoundly changed and shaped my life, my thoughts, and my beliefs. I am incredibly thankful for this man. In honor of this important anniversary, I’d like to share my top five books with you. I’ve read several dozen Lewis books but I have some favorites. Here they are (in no particular order):

1. Screwtape Letters (I’ve read it 6 times)
2. Mere Christianity (I’ve read it more than any other book)
3. Til We Have Faces
4. Letters to Children
5. The Great Divorce

BONUS:
Did you know that Lewis wrote his first book when he was 8? It’s called Boxen and it’s an incredibly fun book to read.

EXTRA BONUS:
Here are my top five Lewis quotes. I have hundreds of quotes I could share that are underlined in the books I’ve read, but I’ll keep it to five. These quotes have truly impacted my life in more ways than I can count. Here they are (again, in no particular order):

1. I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
2. To love at all is to be vulnerable.
3. The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal.
4. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
5. It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Well, Happy Birthday Clive Staples Lewis! I love you. I think I’ll smoke a cigarette or two in your honor today.