Mike's Book Shelf
A collection of notes and highlights from books I've read over the years.

Pre-Suasion
Robert Cialdini

The Way to Love
Anthony de Mello

What Life Should Mean To You
Alfred Adler

Ogilvy on Advertising
David Ogilvy
A candid and indispensable primer on all things advertising from one of the greats.

The Unpublished David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy
Some fantastic nuggets of wisdom from one of the pioneers of modern advertising.

Magic Words
Jonah Berger
Plenty of useful pointers to help us speak more confidently and persuasively. Like a lot of business books, most of the good stuff is in the first couple of chapters.

Ultralearning
Scott Young
Thoroughly researched strategies and tactics to ramp up skill acquisition.

Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Timeless advic on reading great books, building true friendships, and why we should avoid attention seeking.

Anything You Want
Derek Sivers
A memoir about Sivers' experience building and selling CD Baby for $22m. Plenty of against-the-grain startup advice.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson
A nice counterbalance to the "stay positive" self-help nonsense that's all too common in our culture.

Awaken the Giant Within
Tony Robbins
This book is all about pushing you to raise your standards and question limiting beliefs.

Laws of UX
Jon Yablonski
This book helps you unleash the power of psychology to design engaging and delightful user experiences.

The Millionaire Fastlane
MJ DeMarco
Overall this is a pretty solid book about entrepreneurship. I especially liked the ideas around building money systems and leveraging your time to create passive income.

Refactoring UI
Steve Schoger, Adam Wathan
A practical guide to UX design for non-designers. Zero fluff and full of actionable tips to instantly elevate your design skills and craft pixel-perfect experiences.

Working Backwards
Colin Bryar & Bill Carr
A solid breakdown of Amazon's core operating principles. Very high signal.

Made to Stick
Chip Heath, Dan Heath
A great read for anyone who wants to become a more persuasive communicator.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Eric Jorgenson
A collection of valuable insights gleaned from Naval's tweets, blog posts, and podcasts. Love his principles of wealth creation.

Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger
by Charles T. Munger, Peter D. Kaufman, Ed Wexler, Warren E. Buffett

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer J. Adler
This 1940s classic is the ultimate guide to becoming a more demanding reader.

Atomic Habits
James Clear
If you're looking for a book to help you develop better habits, look no further. Very well written, with no filler content.

Noise
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein
This book is not exactly a page turner. After all, how exciting can a book about a statistical concept be? But reading it did give me a better understanding of decision making errors, and how to reduce them.

Influence by Robert Cialdini
Robert Cialdini

Nudge
Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein
You know how the preset restaurant tip set to 20%? That's because higher defaults reliably lead to higher average tips. This book will teach you more than you ever wanted to know about using such "nudges" to influence human behavior (hopefully for the better).