Influential Reads – December 2021

Reading Time: 2 minutes

“The roads not seen almost always matter more than the potholes we hit along the way.” – Seth’s Blog

Another relatively low volume reading month. I did try to clean out my article “Read Me” folder a bit and you see that reflected in my article count.  Book reading was a different matter.  I need to figure something else out there.

Focusing on a few positives (possibly a New Year’s goal).  I had a goal of increasing my writing & posting and posted 45 new updates to the site in 2021.  For those of you who know how many weeks are in a year, you will notice that it was not quite weekly but much better than my prior cadence.  Ignoring the fact that I am pretty sure 98% of my site traffic is North Korean bots, overall site traffic was up 76% over 2020.  Thank you, dear North Korean bot, for reading…

And by the way, Happy New Year!

Here are my most influential reads – in no particular order:

  1. Nervous Breakdowns Can Be Good – “This got me thinking that maybe we need to bring back the nervous breakdown, to protect the nation’s collective reserve of nerve force at a time when it’s stretched so thin. What would the modern version of a culturally accepted, nervous-breakdown-precipitated time-out look like?”
  2. Credit-Driven Asset Price Inflation – “Consumers simply have more borrowing power now when it comes to homes than they have on record in this data series”
  3. The 43rd Lesson – ” The law of karma puts a person at the centre of responsibility for everything he or she does and everything that is done to him or her.”
  4. Where Are Workers Going? Long Covid Prevents Millions From Returning to Work“Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, that’s 4.6 million people. “
  5. You Have Not Missed It – “Thus, I think we are out of the 2-percent-as-the-center-of-the-distribution era, and into an era where the middle is more like 3%.”
  6. Slow Holidays – “If we want space, we have to create it intentionally.”
  7. Why Small Habits Make a Big Difference – “Habits and mental disciplines are controllable, offer enormous opportunity for returns, have extremely low risk, and you can use them for the rest of your life.”
  8. Dave Barry’s 2021 Year in Review – “Because nobody knows what 2022 will bring. Will it suck as much as this year? Will it suck more? Or will it suck a LOT more? These appear to be our choices.”
  9. Getting ahead vs. having enough – “You don’t have to participate in a game that will constantly pit you against the competition (i.e., everyone else in the world). You can opt for simple satisfaction instead. “
  10. How Writing Daily Wins Can Help Rewire Your Brain for Confidence and Energy – “Our brain has a negative bent, often referred to as negativity bias.” SMS: I thought it was just me.

Note: This is based on when I read the article, not necessarily when it was first published.  Unfortunately, my backlog of things I would like to read always seems to dwarf the amount of time I can devote to reading.

Top clicks across the site last month:

  1. Financial Model vs. Operating Model
  2. Influential Reads – November 2021
  3. Three Key Take Aways: That Wild Country
  4. Excel Template: Football Field Chart
  5. EBITDA Is Not A Good Proxy For Cash Flow

Updated stats:

Read ArticlesBooks
January654
February491
March643
April532
May970
June542
July1061
August1032
September1192
October911
November800
December1050
Total98618