Reading notes: 'What You Do Is Who You Are'
When you find writing from someone who:
- Is an expert about something;
- Has more than the usual motivation to actually impart that expertise;
- Has less than the usual motivation to care about financial outcomes or the median reader reaction;
...read it. Ben Horowitzâs books meet these criteria. Like Ray Dalio, he is rich and powerful enough to state what he thinks plainly, not making excessive qualifications for political reasons (of course there other ways to reach that frame of mind, and I canât know precisely why Horowitz and Dalio write the way they do). But he is more concise and specific than Dalio.
The title of the book is already more insightful and useful than many other whole books about business and/or culture. Whatâs between the covers adds a lot to that, though I wonât bother summarizing it, because you can read that elsewhere, and also because the book is short enough that youâre better off just reading the book if you care enough to read a summary.
Itâs worth thinking about how Dalio uses history. He takes up historical case studies in a way that is neither scholarship nor the sort of shallow âlessons fromâ treatment one sees too often (though Horowitzâs goal is in fact to draw lessons). It is factually dense, intellectually responsible, and⌠something else I canât quite put my finger on. I suspect Iâll remember this material for quite a long time.
Highly recommended.