systems thinker – amateur spaceflight historian – ISO8601 date format enthusiast – casual musician – dabbling options trader
What I’m Doing Right Now:
I’m implementing EDI solutions that integrate with the NetSuite ERP system. I’m finding it’s a great way to leverage my ERP experience, while also satisfying my urge to build, debug, and optimize. I have a good amount of customer interaction these days, which was missing from my previous role as a brewery operations manager, and was something I missed from my service desk and IT management days.
Having dabbled in the past with indoor rowing, I’ve recently taken a renewed interest in using it to improve my work capacity. I’m over 300 km this month, having previously never done more than 20 or 30 km in the same time span. I’ve noticed my resting heartrate tick down a few points in the last 6 weeks, as well my heartrate variability going up. Of course, dry January could be a factor in these improvements as well.
I’m also slowly chipping away on a knowledge-dump side project about applying lean principles in administrative functions, though I’m not sure yet what form it’ll take. Maybe a site? Course? Newsletter? who knows. The demand may not be there, but I think there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit out there that can be harvested with efficiency and good SOPs.
In Python, I’ve been working on a flowchart-traversal tool, which is an interesting way to take a decision tree out of the code and instead have a visual XML flowchart that the code can follow, and that I can tweak to modify the logic outside of the code editor. I’m thinking this could be useful for value-stream mapping at some point.
I’m also continuing to dabble with Odoo ERP on the side.
As winter winds down I’m starting to plan out the maintenance projects around the house as well. A number of trees need to come down this spring and become firewood. I’m toying with the idea of building a deck, but I’m trying to avoid scope creep there – I’d really like to build a pergola and outdoor kitchen area. Inside, I’m adding on to the bookshelves I put up last fall, and thinking about adding some lighting.
Book Recommendations:
This is not exhaustive, or in any particular order. These are some of the books that have most influenced the way I think about things.
Building a Digital Nervous System – Bill Gates
I first read this between assignments in 7th grade English class. (I was a little nerdy. The other book I read that year in class was C++ For Dummies). This book laid the foundation for much of my thinking about efficiency. While it could be seen as some thought-leader posturing from a CEO, many of the ideas were quite radical at the time, including the paperless office, web-based tools, and the beginnings of SharePoint.
Can’t Hurt Me – David Goggins
A memoir – I recommend the audiobook due to the extra content. David is a case study on perseverance. I listened to this book while walking 50 miles in under 16 hours (details here, and here). Whenever I think about quitting in the middle of a kettlebell set, I hear David in my head.
Chop Wood, Carry Water – Joshua Medcalf
Details matter. Get your reps in. Don’t get impatient in the journey of self improvement. The process will shape and change you, and you cannot short-circuit that.
Quantitative Trading: How to Build Your Own Algorithmic Trading Business – Ernest P. Chan
Even if you have no interest in the market, this is a good read. It will teach you to build robust systems. It will improve how you think about risk management, identifying regime-dependent assumptions, and rooting out biases like overfitting.
The Checklist Manifesto – Atul Gawande
A must-read for anyone that works with standard operating procedures (SOPs). While the premise sounds simple, it makes the argument that a good checklist is as much about what it excludes as what it includes. Examples from infrastructure projects, medicine, and air travel demonstrate checklist use in high and low speed environments.
Discipline Equals Freedom – Jocko Willink
I re-read this annually. Your ability to execute in life is dependent on how well you’ve developed your internal sense of discipline. Discipline will make you work to be the best version of yourself you can be. It will compel you to do everything the best way you can because that is the only way. Read this and you’ll never half-ass anything again.
Life & Work Principles – Ray Dalio
This book made me think critically about the role of culture and people in information flow through an organization. It’s very yin and yang when paired with Gates’ Digital Nervous System mentioned above. It also made me think a lot about codifying decisions in a practical way.
The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A brutal read. Not only in length, but in content. A first-hand account of Soviet purges and the gulag system. I learned just how terrible humans can be to one another, and how the state can be used as a weapon. This book is much-needed context for 20th century global dynamics.
The Practicing Stoic: Ward Farnsworth
My favorite book on stoic philosophy. It is unique in that it cuts life across the grain into topics like emotion, adversity, judgement, and perspective, then has the stoics chime in on each in their own words. Additional commentary from those influenced by the stoics, like Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Adam Smith provides extra color. I’ve repeated this book many times.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer – Donella Meadows
This is one of those books that can help re-wire your brain. If you’re already familiar with The Goal or the Toyota production system or thinking in terms of inputs and outputs in a manufacturing or logistics setting, you might not get a whole lot of new information from this book – but it could help solidify what you know already but don’t realize you know. If you’re new to these things, this book will give you the mental scaffolding to hang other things on.
The Meaning of It All – Richard Feynman
Frankly, Feynman’s collected works are a treasure, and starting with this book is as good as any other. Feynman’s sheer enthusiasm for finding out how things work is infectious. For many years, he has been my standing answer to the question, “if you could share a meal with any person, alive or dead, who would it be?” I suppose Carl Sagan could come too though, if he wanted. And maybe Thomas Sowell. Table for four, please.
Different Angles:
One thing I like to do is read several books on a topic or event to get an “averaged” idea of how it happened. The things that all accounts agree on and gloss over are probably solid and factual, but the things that one account focuses on over the others can reveal biases. Every account seems to bring some funky little details to the table too that seemed irrelevant to others.
A good example of this is Apollo 13. As I’ve been reading biographies of people involved in the space program, I’ve been able to compare Flight Director Gene Kranz’s take (one chapter of Failure is Not an Option), against Jim Lovell’s account (Lost Moon), against Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton’s perspective (chapters in Moon Shot and Deke!). The things Kranz was worried about varied a lot from what Lovell was concerned with, though there’s some obvious overlap. Both of those perspectives leave out things that were important to Al Shepard and Deke.
Finding the intersection between all of these retellings yields a holistic view of the event, and I try to apply this approach to other ideas where I can.
Fiction:
I’ve heard that non-fiction reading raises your floor, and fiction reading raises your ceiling. I’m trying to work more fiction into my rotation. For zeitgeist reasons, the classics like Robinson Crusoe, The Count of Monte Cristo, the works of Dickens, Jules Verne, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, etc. are all a good idea and on my list. I’ve not made it through all of them yet, and many I haven’t read since childhood. Ayn Rand has been interesting as well, though she’s a bit long-winded and certainly polarizing. Lately, I’ve enjoyed the hard sci-fi works of Andy Weir (The Martian, Artemis, Project Hail Mary) as well as the plausible fiction of Tom Clancy. Michael Crichton is also good, from what I’ve read so far. I’m also dipping my toe into Arthur C. Clarke’s work, and recently finished the Expanse series from James S.A. Corey.