MONTHLY MULLING 💡
2022 Wrap-up!
Hi👋 Tapan here.
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Happy Sunday y’all!
I am back in Mumbai to spend some time with my family for the holiday season.
This will be the last newsletter of the year, and as tradition goes, I wanted to share my reading recommendations and an idea for 2023. Onwards 🚀
📚 Reading Wrapped
I read 47 books this year, making 2022 my most successful year for reading.
I had set an initial target of 60 books. Even though I fell short, in terms of pages read it’s still a 30% increase from last year! 📈
Tbf not all 15,000 pages were read. Some of them were skimmed and a lot of them skipped. But setting a target of 60 books definitely helped me read more and find a couple of long-term perspective changing ideas!
🤩 FAVOURITE READS - 2022
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom:
As Morrie Schwartz is dying of ALS, he imparts his final lessons on how to live to his student, Mitch Albom. I have summarized my favourite lessons from the book here.
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Robert Bregman:
Robert provides a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of our evolution, showing that humans as a species are inherently good. Most people, deep down, are really good people who care about others and want to help everyone and treat each other fairly.
The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier:
This is one of the best investment books out there, in which Guy Spier talks about building the right investing mindset. I have summarised the book here and here’s the Cold Brew Money’s summary video!
🥈 HONOURABLE MENTIONS
We Need to Hang Out by Bill Baker: This book will hit differently depending on where you are in life. Not everyone will enjoy it! The concept of “Velvet Hooks” was my biggest takeaway (summary here).
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari: Again, depending on where you are in life, you might or might not enjoy this book. Aziz investigates modern love and compares it to relationships in the 1950s-60s. The book covers situationships, dating apps, ghosting, modern cheating, and a lot more. It was a fascinating read!
The Ocean of Churn by Sanjeev Sanyal: Sanjeev tells the history of the world by diving deep into the history of the Indian Ocean. Indian history usually covers only the northern conquests and so, it was interesting for me to read the tremendous history of the southern states of India.
Bulls, Bears, and Other Beasts by Santosh Nair: This is a fictional account of real-life events in the Indian stock market from 1988 - 2015. The book has some great long-term investing advice. I have summarised the lessons here.
Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World by Graham Allison: LKY has been commended as one of the greatest statesmen of modern times. Regarded as Singapore’s founding father, he shows a clear thought process through his speeches and writing. He provides some useful insights into the current geopolitical landscape.
🤔 One Big Thing - 2023
I have talked about resolutions, building systems, and lessons in my 2020 and 2021 year-end newsletters.
For 2023, I am using Shaan Puri’s framework of One Big Thing (“OBT”)!
He recommends using this framework to set your daily goals, but I have been thinking about this question to set my 2023 goal:
“What’s the one thing I need to achieve in 2023 to make it successful?”
The answer was very much obvious to me - better health.
To achieve this, I will have to build systems around my diet, exercise, and mental health.
But that’s in 2023…
As always, thank you for all your support and wishing you a very Happy New Year! 🖤