My writing over the past few months has been a bit sporadic. I’ve been less inspired than usual to write, and fewer connections have come to mind. I’ve been thinking about the causes of this for a while – not wanting to put it down to the situation with Covid-19. I believe I’ve figured out what’s wrong – I’m missing two usually familiar sources of inspiration.
Category: Reading
My First Book – Even Tougher Than Herding Cats

After roughly a year of work I’ve completed the book I was writing titled “Even Tougher Than Herding Cats”.
The book is focussed on management advice for newly-minted managers, and those taking on broader management and leadership roles.
I know people say “It’s been a labour of love!” and it really has. Not just because I enjoy writing, but because my family love me enough to allow me to pursue this kind of time-consuming project when I’m already away from them a lot because of my day job.
The book is available for pre-order through Amazon Kindle Publishing services, with a due date of January 16th, 2020.
If you enjoy reading the blog, and you would like to support the book, I would really appreciate you picking up a copy (or five!).
While I enjoy writing, it is challenging. The response to this book will determine whether I invest the time, borrowed from my family, to write another.
Thanks for your support, and please let me know what you think.
What I’m reading
Books I’m currently reading or re-reading, books I recommend and those on my backlog in Kindle. I’m always on the lookout for new books, and welcome recommendations. I recently found a potential goldmine on Patrick Collison’s site – hundreds of books with no categorisation, which makes it challenging, but interesting to explore.
Currently Reading
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- Leadership, Strategy and Tactics – Jocko Willink
- Noise – Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibry, et. al.
- Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek
- The Strategy Book – Max McKeown
- Practical Cloud Security – Chris Dotson
- Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit – Mary & Tom Poppendieck
- The Dream Machine – M. Mitchell Waldrop
- Strong Recommendations (YMMV)
- Power Failure – The Rise and Fall of General Electric – William D. Cohan
- Talking to Strangers – Malcolm Gladwell
- The Wisdom of the Bullfrog – Admiral William McRaven
- Atomic Habits – James Clear
- David and Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell
- Courage is Calling – Ryan Holiday
- Discipline is Destiny – Ryan Holiday
- And the Next Question Is… – Rachel Alexander, Julia Russell
- Why We Sleep – Matthew Walker
- Stillness is the Key – Ryan Holiday
- How Women Rise – Sally Helgesen & Marshall Goldsmith
- Behave – Robert Sapolsky
- Quiet Leadership – Dr. David Rock
- The Happiness Advantage – Shawn Achor
- Bad Blood -John Carreyou
- Shine: Using Brain Science to get the Best from your People – Ned Hallowell
- Your Brain at Work – David Rock
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Noah Yuval Harari
- Talent Wins – Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, et. al.
- That Will Never Work – Marc Randolph
- Zero to One – Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
- Life 3.0 – Max Tegmark
- Principles – Ray Dalio
- The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
- The Undoing Project – Michael Lewis
- Measure what Matters – John Doerr
- The Obstacle Is The Way – Ryan Holiday
- Team of Teams – Stanley McChrystal
- Turn the Ship Around – David Marquet
- Make your Bed – William H. McRaven
- Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion– Robert Cialdini
- Tribe of Mentors – Tim Ferriss
- Tools of Titans – Tim Ferriss
- The Phoenix Project – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr
- Anything You Want – Derek Sivers
- The Effective Executive – Peter Drucker
- Choose Yourself – James Altucher – needs patience but has some really good points in it
- Trust me, I’m Lying – Ryan Holiday
- Superfreakonomics – Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner
- Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
- Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
- Work Rules! – Laszlo Bock
- Nudge – Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein
- Bounce -Matthew Syed
- Storyworthy – Matthew Dicks
- The Culture Code – Daniel Coyle
- The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis
- The Fourth Age – Byron Reese
- Outlaw Platoon – Sean Parnell
- Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari
- Invisible Women – Caroline Criado Perez
- The Wisdom of Psychopaths – Kevin Dutton
- Black Box Thinking – Matthew Syed
- The Hard Thing about Hard Things – Ben Horowitz
- Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher, William Ury
- The Ride of a Lifetime – Bob Iger
- The 4 Disciplines of Execution – Sean Covey, Chris Chesney, et. al.
- Money – Yuval Noah Harari
- Rebel Ideas– Matthew Syed
- Wilful Blindness – Margaret Heffernan
- The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg
- Deep Survival – Laurence Gonzales
- The Future Leader – Jacob Morgan
- Reinventing Organizations – Frederic Laloux
- Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
- The Dichotomy of Leadership – Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
- Gates of Fire – Steven Pressfield
- AI Superpowers – Kai Fu Lee
- The Bomber Mafia – Malcolm Gladwell
- Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
- Mindset – Carol Dweck (again)
- The Pathfinders – Will Iredale
- Indistractable – Nir Eyal
- Time to Think – Nancy Kline
- Good Strategy, Bad Strategy – Richard Rumelt
- Site Reliability Engineering – Betsy Beyer, Niall Richard Murphy, et. al.
- Misbehaving – Richard Thaler
- Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
- And the Next Question Is… – Rachel Alexander, Julia Russell
Waiting to read (Kindle or print to-read list)
- Administrative Behavior – Herbert A Simon
- Peak – Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool
- Everything – ok, not quite everything, but there’s a lot out there 🙂
Recently finished
- AI Superpowers – Kai Fu Lee
- The Unicorn Project – Gene Kim
- Principles – Ray Dalio
- The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
- Freakonomics – Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner
- Gravitas – Caroline Goyder
- Discipline Equals Freedom – Jocko Willink – this is a really interesting book – it’s like listening to the Jocko podcast in written form 🙂
- Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
- Start with Why – Simon Sinek
- Radical Focus – Christina Wodtke
- Ego is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday
- CyberWars – Charles Arthur
- Trust me, I’m Lying – Ryan Holiday
- Superfreakonomics – Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner
- Fooled by Randomness – Nassim Taleb
- Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
- Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
- Work Rules! – Laszlo Bock
- Nudge – Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein
- Bounce -Matthew Syed
- Tribal Leadership – Dave Logan, et. al.
- Storyworthy – Matthew Dicks
- Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
- The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis
- The Innovators Dilemma – Clayton Christensen
- Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins
- The Fourth Age – Byron Reese
- Leaders: Myth and Reality – Gen. Stanley McChrystal
- Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari
- Invisible Women – Caroline Criado Perez
- Machines like me (fiction) – Ian McEwan
- The Wisdom of Psychopaths – Kevin Dutton
- Black Box Thinking – Matthew Syed
- The Hard Thing about Hard Things – Ben Horowitz
- Zero to One – Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
- That Will Never Work – Marc Randolph
- Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher, William Ury
- The Ride of a Lifetime – Bob Iger
- Call Sign Chaos – Jim Mattis
- How The Mind Works – Steven Pinker
- Why I’m no longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in World That Can’t Stop Talking – Susan Cain
- Option B – Adam Grant, Sheryl Sandberg
- Ahead in the Cloud – Stephen Orban
- Discipline Equals Freedom (updated) – Jocko Willink
- No Time Like the Future – Michael J. Fox
- Barbarians at the Gate – Bryan Burrough, John Helya
- Deep Survival – Laurence Gonzales
- Think Again – Adam Grant
- How to be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
- Mindset – Carol Dweck (again)
- Competing in the Age of AI – Marco Iansiti, Karim Lakhani
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
- Misbehaving – Richard Thaler
- Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office – Lois P. Frankel
- Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
- Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit – Mary & Tom Poppendieck