Wisereads Vol. 81 — Hit Reverse by Jash Dholani, Morgan Housel on independence, and more
Last week, we shared an excerpt of Jenny Draper's debut, Mavericks: Life stories and lessons of history's most extraordinary misfits. This week, we're sharing an exclusive three-chapter preview of Hit Reverse: New Ideas from Old Books by Jash Dholani.
Keep reading to add to your Reader account below 👇
Most highlighted Articles of the week
Outliers: Andrew Mellon—America’s Secret Banker
In the latest installment of The Knowledge Project podcast, Shane Parrish of Farnam Street explores the life of the quietly powerful Andrew Mellon—banker, Treasury Secretary, and philanthropist. Parrish highlights Mellon's guiding principles: "Embrace long-term thinking. Mellon’s patience—built on emotional stability and financial strength—enabled the compounding that created his fortune. He never reached for a deal, instead he patiently waited," and "Move in silence. Mellon intentionally stayed out of the headlines, which gave him more flexibility. As my friend Peter D. Kaufmann says, 'The whale that surfaces gets harpooned.'"
Pure Independence
As a parent of a shy child, Morgan Housel has been rethinking independence. He argues that independence of thought, philosophy, and morals is just as essential as financial freedom. "If you’re used to being assisted, supervised, mandated, or dictated, and then suddenly you experience the glory of independence, the feeling is sensational. Doing something on your own terms can feel better than doing the exact same thing when someone else is peering over your shoulder, telling you what to do, guiding you along. And that’s as true for adults as it is for kids getting ice cream."
Write to Escape Your Default Setting
Anonymous writer Kupajo offers a fresh take on an old idea: writing doesn’t just clarify thoughts—it exposes their inconsistencies. "Let’s call your mind’s default setting 'perpetual approximation mode.' A business idea, a scrap of gossip, a trivial fact, a romantic interest, a shower argument to reconcile something long past. We spend more time mentally rehearsing activities than actually doing them... Writing forces you to tidy that mental clutter. To articulate things with a level of context and coherence the mind alone can’t achieve."
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
Forget About Setting Goals. Do THIS Instead (the Somatic Method)
Tiago Forte—the Second Brain guy—sets goals that truly excite him by noticing which topics elicit a physical response. For him, that's books, space tourism, climate change, AI, and more. "The best way to tell if something is truly inherently exciting to you is to look for at least one or two physical signs, like heart palpitations, this feeling of conviction in your gut. Maybe the hair on the back of your neck stands up; maybe you get goosebumps. Maybe your pupils dilate, maybe your skin tingles. Look for a physical sign that this isn’t just a you know, intellectual, abstract, area of research, but something you viscerally feel is important."
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
In last 5 months, I’ve built 16 SaaS products
Using Cursor, Prajwal Tomar follows a structured, hands-on process for building minimum viable products (MVPs) that help clients execute their ideas faster. He gets down and dirty with the details, explaining how he chooses Ask mode for "Quick bug fixes & high-level explanations," Edit to "Refactor & improve existing code," and Agent to "Implement complex logic across files."
Most highlighted PDF of the week
Stripe’s 2024 annual letter
Stripe’s annual letter offers a rare look at its financials and strategy. Transactions on Stripe now account for 1.3% of global GDP, with its services powering businesses of all kinds: "The businesses on Stripe span every chromosome of the economic genome, from top corporate leaders (half of the Fortune 100 uses Stripe) to hyper-growth companies (we count 80% of the Forbes Cloud 100 and 78% of the Forbes AI 50 as customers*) to newly formed upstarts (one in six new Delaware corporations incorporates with Stripe Atlas). At any scale, Stripe customers share one important characteristic: outsized growth. In aggregate, the revenue that businesses process on Stripe is growing seven times faster than that of all companies in the S&P 500."
Hand-picked book of the week
Hit Reverse
Join the conversation with mavericks, architects, and philosopher-kings in Jash Dholani’s Hit Reverse, a collection of 68 short chapters exploring ideas from history’s greatest books. Each chapter offers food for thought—timeless ideas to reflect on, explore, and make your own.
"Don’t wait for spare time to know what you want to know and to chase what you want to chase. C.S. Lewis: 'The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.'"
We’re thrilled that Jash is generously sharing a special three-chapter preview of Hit Reverse with Wisereads readers—including a chapter on the laws of big systems and another on the nerd-jock dichotomy (spoiler: book lovers can also be people of action). If you enjoy the excerpt, you can purchase a full copy here.
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Geoffrey Litt
On his personal blog, senior researcher Geoffrey Litt explores malleable software and reviews his recent reads. From Avoid the nightmare bicycle: "One of the worst misconceptions in product design is that a microwave needs to have a button for every thing you could possibly cook: 'popcorn', 'chicken', 'potato', 'frozen vegetable', bla bla bla... Bad designs paper over the structure with superficial labels that hide the underlying system, inhibiting their users’ ability to actually build a clear model in their heads."