Reading Notes Q1 2024: Rethinking Risk, Identity, and Better Decisions

Q1 2024 reading gave me a surprisingly coherent theme: better decisions come from clearer thinking about uncertainty, identity, and first principles.

Books I finished in Q1 2024

• The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts (4/5)
• Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin (4/5)
• The Martian by Andy Weir (4/5)
• Think Again by Adam Grant (4/5)
• Love People, Use Things by Joshua Fields Millburn (4/5)

What carried into my engineering work

1. Rethink faster: assumptions expire quickly in AI-era product work.
2. Plan for failure: recovery design matters as much as feature design.
3. Prefer simplicity under pressure: complexity breaks at the worst time.
4. Hold identity lightly: useful for changing your mind without ego fights.

Practical effects on delivery

• I started writing clearer decision memos before implementation.
• I put more focus on rollback and failure paths for AI-assisted features.
• I pushed for tighter feature scope and explicit user outcomes.
• I reviewed architectural choices with more emphasis on resilience.

These books were different in style, but together they reinforced one idea: high-quality software decisions are mostly disciplined thinking repeated over time.