The Ultimate Reading List to Navigate the Future
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Experts say we have five years until artificial general intelligence replaces humans. I think it’s closer to three.
The future is now. Whether you’re ready for it or not, it’s unfolding right before your eyes.
You may think this is just another transition. Humans have gone through them before. The printing press. The steam engine. Cars. The internet. Why is this time any different?
In the past, technology was used to improve human life. The printing press made it easier to distribute and access knowledge. Cars made it possible to travel long distances, enabling us to spread out and create lives outside of cities.
Technology wasn’t designed to replace humans. That’s why this time is fundamentally different.
Whether it’s artificial intelligence, robotics, or genetic engineering, we are on the cusp of giving birth to an entirely new species that has never existed before. A species that will inevitably replace us.
This isn’t just another iteration of humans playing with science and tinkering with engineering. We’re playing God.
A lot of people, especially those in positions of power, are speculating about what’s happening. Some say we’ll enter into a new utopia, a golden age of human existence. Others argue we are sowing the seeds of our own destruction. The bitter truth is no one really knows. And we probably won’t know until it’s already happened.
What’s certain is that we are entering a massively disruptive period of transition and transformation. We’re departing from the world we knew – one dominated by college degrees, 9to5 jobs, labor-based economics, and nation-states – and entering a world we don’t know. The things you think are supposed to give your life meaning – getting a good job, buying a home, raising a family, and being an overall decent human being – are out the door.
Everything you think you know about your life and your place in the world is about to radically change.
Your natural inclination might be to bury your head in the sand. To pretend as if this is just a fad that will eventually blow over.
That’s certainly one approach, albeit, not the best approach. You can bury your head as deep as you want, it isn’t going to stop change from happening.
Instead, you can learn to adapt. Or in a sense, to move with the transition rather than resisting it. For you to be able to do that you need to prepare yourself now. You need to become as mentally, emotionally, and spiritually malleable as you can to be able to handle whatever comes your way.
This is going to be a full effort – not just retraining for a new job in AI. You need learn new skills, yes, but more importantly, you need to radically change how you think and absorb information.
That starts with not just learning more about what’s happening around you. It starts with learning more about yourself.
Ironically, learning how to tap into your human qualities is your biggest competitive advantage right now. Leaning into soft skills like compassion and empathy while honing your capability to think critically about tasks and communicate with different stakeholders is what will differentiate you from everyone else – including the machines that will one day replace you.
Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself this is incredibly overwhelming, where do I even begin?
The good news is, the power to manage the transition lies with you and you alone. You can’t change what happens in the world around you but you can choose how you respond to it.
Time is your most valuable asset right now. Who you give your time to and how much of it they get will determine how successful you are in navigating the uncertainty that lies ahead.
Instead of spending hours every day doomscrolling through social media, I’m going to ask you to do something else. I want you to read.
Reading is the gateway to learning. Not TikTok. Not Twitter. Reading.
To make yourself as adaptable as possible, you need to learn more about who you are. You need to study the lessons learned by those who have come before you and take the collective wisdom to create a framework for how you will live your life moving forward.
Books are the key to doing just that.
If you’re not an avid reader, establishing this habit might seem like a big ask. That’s why I’ve put together this reading list. Think of it as a syllabus on how to navigate a rapidly changing world. If you can start by committing to a focused reading for just 30 minutes per day, I have no doubt you can finish all of these books in a year.
This might seem like a tall order, but I promise, doing so will help you unlock your human potential.
And THAT is what ultimately matters most right now. Not learning a new skill or getting a better job. You want to learn more about who you are, how you exist in the world, and why.
Artificial intelligence is being created in our image after all. How can you possibly learn to interact with it if you haven’t first taken the time to interact with yourself?
Some scary stuff lies ahead. There’s no doubt about it. But with a little preparation and the right mindset, you’ll come out of it ahead.
Amanda’s Recommended Reading List
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
A World Without Email
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Indistractable by Nir Eyal
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Principles for Dealing With a Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber
Dive Deeper
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