📚 Olli's Reading List

Your full library — all 56 books — stack-ranked to your goals: focus · life goal-setting · longevity & lipids · decision quality · mental wellness · discipline · wealth · present-dad. Updated 21 Jul 2026.

Top priority Just added (Jul 2026) Already read ✓
Focus & the life goal-setting system — today's active build
1

Essentialism · Greg McKeown

Your #1 foundation for beating over-commitment — do less, but better. Nothing in the goal system works if everything is a priority.

2

Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements · Tom Rath & Jim Harternew

The dimensions map for your goal-setting system — Physical, Social, Career, Financial, Community. Set one objective per element.

3

The 4 Disciplines of Execution · McChesney, Covey & Hulingnew

Your own instinct formalized — lead measures (inputs you control) vs lag measures (the goal). The execution engine for the dimensions.

4

Measure What Matters · John Doerrnew

OKRs proper — turns each dimension's objective into measurable key results with weekly targets. The scorecard for the goal system.

5

Designing Your Life · Bill Burnett & Dave Evansnew

The Health/Work/Play/Love dashboard — prototype-and-test approach to designing the life, feeding straight into the Oct–Dec career call.

Longevity & lipids — active health plan, Sept retest
6

Outlive · Peter Attia

Longevity + lipids, evidence-based — directly ties to your health plan and the September ApoB/LDL retest. Your "Physical" objective in book form.

7

The 5 Resets · Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

Stress-and-resilience protocol that pairs with the lipid plan — chronic stress moves the same markers you're retesting in September.

Decision quality & the career call — Oct–Dec + MELI
8

How to Decide · Annie Duke

Simple tools for structured choices under uncertainty — the toolkit for the career weighing and the MELI business calls.

9

Quit · Annie Duke

The science of knowing when to walk away — sharp for the Oct–Dec career decision. Grit's underrated other half.

10

Transitions · William & Susan Bridges

Making sense of life's changes — the emotional mechanics of a career change, so the Oct–Dec move is navigated, not just decided.

11

Thinking for a Change · John C. Maxwell

Deliberate, structured thinking as a habit — reinforces decision quality across the career and MELI threads.

Mental wellness, stress & happiness
12

Solve for Happy · Mo Gawdatnew

The happiness equation you were after — happiness ≥ perception minus expectations. An engineer's framework for joy.

13

Unstressable · Mo Gawdat & Alice Lawnew

Practical stress management — the operational companion to Solve for Happy. Protects the mental-wellness dimension.

14

The Courage to Be Disliked · Kishimi & Koganew

Adlerian take on freeing yourself from others' expectations — a clean counter to over-commitment and the source of a lot of stress.

15

Calm Your Chaotic Mind · Uday Joshi

Practical anxiety-grounding — a fast, tactical read for the mental-wellness dimension when the noise gets loud.

16

Hope for Cynics · Jamil Zaki

The science of human goodness — an antidote to cynicism that supports the "Social/Community" side of wellbeing.

17

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem · Nathaniel Branden

The classic on self-worth as a practice — underpins the confidence the career move and mental-wellness goals both lean on.

Discipline, grit & mental toughness — the Goggins thread
18

Grit · Angela Duckworth

Passion + perseverance, the research behind your Goggins thread — the trait that carries goals from set to done.

19

The War of Art · Steven Pressfield

Beating Resistance — short, hard, Goggins-adjacent. The discipline lever; read it on a low-motivation day.

20

Master Your Code · Darren J. Gold

The art and science of leading an extraordinary life — a self-leadership frame that binds discipline to the goal system.

21

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously · Osho

Reframing fear as fuel — a reflective complement to the grit reads before a big career leap.

Investing & wealth — MELI + FIRE
22

Poor Charlie's Almanack · Charlie Mungerread

Worldly wisdom + investing — the Munger source text behind your mental-models and MELI thinking. Worth a re-dip.

23

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant · Eric Jorgenson

Wealth + happiness, aphoristic and dip-in-able — bridges the investing and mental-wellness dimensions.

24

The Joys of Compounding · Gautam Baidread

Lifelong learning as an investing edge — reinforces the long-horizon FIRE mindset. A good re-read alongside MELI.

25

What I Learned About Investing from Darwin · Pulak Prasad

Evolution-as-investing-lens, high-quality-compounder thinking — directly useful for how you hold MELI.

26

Investing Between the Lines · L.J. Rittenhouse

Decoding CEO communications for candour — a practical skill for reading the companies in your portfolio.

27

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing · John C. Bogleread

The index-fund case — the low-cost baseline your FIRE plan is measured against. Quick refresher.

28

The Way to Wealth · Benjamin Franklin

Franklin's compact money-and-industry maxims — timeless frugality principles that sit under the FIRE math.

29

Poor Richard's Almanac · Benjamin Franklinread

The aphorisms behind The Way to Wealth — dip-in wisdom on thrift and habit. Light re-read.

Leadership, influence & career craft
30

Influence · Robert Cialdiniread

The psychology of persuasion — foundational for the MELI negotiations and any leadership move. Worth revisiting the expanded edition.

31

The 48 Laws of Power · Robert Greene

The unsentimental map of power dynamics — read it to recognise the game, useful context for the career and business fronts.

32

The Infinite Game · Simon Sinek

Playing for the long game over quarterly wins — frames the career decision as durability, not a single move.

33

The Friction Project · Robert Sutton & Huggy Rao

Making the right things easier and the wrong things harder — a leadership lens that doubles as a personal-productivity tool.

34

Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager · Ken Blanchard et al.read

Situational self-leadership — a quick model for managing your own motivation across the goal dimensions.

35

Career Superpowers · James Whittaker

Succeeding on purpose — practical career-direction thinking that feeds the Oct–Dec weighing.

36

Cracking the PM Interview · McDowell & Bavaro

The PM-role playbook — directly relevant if the career move points back toward a product leadership seat.

37

The Product Manager's Survival Guide · Steven Haines

The end-to-end PM operating manual — reference material for the product side of any career option.

Present-dad
38

When You Wonder, You're Learning · Behr & Rydzewski (Mister Rogers)

The present-dad dimension — patience and curiosity with Noah. A gentler counterweight to the drive.

Biographies & learning from the greats
39

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller · Ron Chernow

The definitive capital-and-discipline biography — a masterclass in long-horizon wealth-building and self-control.

40

The Power Broker · Robert A. Caro

How power is actually accumulated and wielded — the great study of ambition and its costs. Long, but formative.

41

Elon Musk · Walter Isaacson

Extreme drive and risk tolerance up close — useful contrast for calibrating your own ambition and trade-offs.

42

Lincoln: The Unknown · Dale Carnegie

Resilience and character under sustained hardship — a quiet study in perseverance for the grit thread.

43

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! · Richard Feynman

Curiosity and first-principles play — a light, joyful read that models learning for its own sake.

Lower priority — older, misc & fiction
44

The 4-Hour Workweek · Tim Ferriss

Lifestyle-design and leverage ideas — dated in parts, but a few useful automation prompts for the FIRE angle.

45

Make Time · Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky

Tactics for defending attention day to day — a lightweight complement to Essentialism.

46

Payoff · Dan Ariely

The hidden logic of motivation — a short TED-length read on what actually drives effort.

47

Istanbul: City of Majesty · Thomas F. Madden

History for pleasure — broadens the aperture; a change of pace from the goal-setting stack.

48

How to Read a Book · Adler & Van Dorenread

The method for reading actively — already read; keep as reference for getting more out of this whole list.

49

Happy Sexy Millionaire · Steven Bartlettread

Redefining success beyond the clichés — already read; overlaps with the happiness thread above.

50

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue · V. E. Schwab

Fiction — the palate-cleanser on the shelf. Read purely for the pleasure of a good story.

51

Between the World and Me · Ta-Nehisi Coates

A short, powerful essay on identity and America — perspective-broadening, outside the goal stack.

52

The Book on Rental Property Investing · Brandon Turner

Buy-and-hold real-estate mechanics — niche relative to your current MELI/equities focus; keep for if property re-enters the FIRE plan.

53

What Causes Cancer? · Anthony B. Miller

Reference-grade risk overview — tangential to the active lipid plan; dip in only if a specific question comes up.

54

The Game · Neil Strauss

Old 2016 acquisition, well outside your current goals — deprioritized. Cultural curiosity at best.

55

The Truth · Neil Strauss

Old 2016 acquisition on relationships — deprioritized; not aligned with the current stack.

56

Rules of the Game · Neil Strauss

Old 2016 acquisition — deprioritized; bottom of the shelf.

This is your complete Kindle library — 56 books, ranked top-to-bottom against your current goals rather than by when you bought them. The four new arrivals plus Essentialism form the life goal-setting system you're building right now; the read ✓ tags mark the eight you've already finished (worth-a-re-dip ones kept high). Say the word and I'll reorder around any goal you want to push.