Reading Notes: Meditations, Ego Is the Enemy, Quiet, and Breath Work
How my 2023 reading in stoicism, focus, and self-regulation improved engineering execution and leadership discipline.
Alok Choudhary
Austin, TX
1 min read
Some of the most useful books I read in 2023 were not technical books, but they changed the quality of my technical work.
The books that had the biggest effect
- Meditations (3/5)
- Ego Is the Enemy (4/5)
- As a Man Thinketh (4/5)
- Quiet (5/5)
- Daring Greatly (4/5)
- Science of Breath (5/5)
- The Oxygen Advantage (3/5)
What changed in my day-to-day behavior
- Less context switching, more deep work blocks.
- Better emotional control in high-pressure releases.
- Stronger feedback culture during reviews and planning.
- More patience with iteration and less attachment to first drafts.
Engineering impact
- Higher review quality because attention is less fragmented.
- Better API and architecture choices due to calmer decision cycles.
- More resilient delivery because teams recover faster from mistakes.
AI-era product teams move fast, but speed without inner discipline creates instability.
These books reminded me that clarity, humility, and consistency are not soft skills. They are core engineering multipliers.