Five Books That Changed My Thinking in 2024

As a kid, I was never far from my children’s encyclopedia; I was a voracious reader and especially loved non-fiction. However, as an adult, I do most of my learning through audiobooks, podcasts, and YouTube. That is until a few years ago when I started rebuilding my reading habit by switching from scrolling social media to reading ebooks.

Even more recently, I have come full circle back to physical books. Mainly because I realized that reading on a phone just looks the same as scrolling social media and doesn’t help me model the reading habit I want my son to build. As a bonus, I got to experience these five books, which have significantly shaped my thinking. Perhaps one will resonate with you too.

Health

I am rapidly approaching 40, and while I don’t feel a midlife crisis coming on, I am trying to make purposeful decisions to help me age gracefully. I want to be able to be independent and healthy for as long as possible, so I read two books that would help me do that.

Outlive

Dr. Peter Attia’s Outlive appeals to me and my experience as a science teacher. His book is thoroughly researched, and he is very clear about when he is sharing research versus his professional opinion. All the while, he weaves a personal narrative about him making the same realization and journey I was. The desire to extend my “healthspan” as well as my lifespan. I also like that his approach is multifaceted, addressing not only physical health but also mental and emotional health.

There is plenty more for me to pull from the book on future revisits; for now, this book got me thinking about my health as an investment in the future. In the same way I wish I had started saving for retirement when I was twenty; I don’t want to be seventy-five and angry that my forty-year-old self sat on his ass.

Now, I am thinking about aging as a competitive sport that I should be training for in the same way I used to for football or track. As such, I am lifting weights again. Not to throw a discus further, but so I can have enough initial muscle mass to handle the loss that comes with aging and still have enough left over to be functional at eighty. I have been dabbling in running for a few years now, but now I am running to get three hours of Zone 2 cardio per week to keep building and maintaining my mitochondria.

I am trying to predict the future here, but this book is first on my list because I think it has the highest likelihood of having the biggest impact on my future. That being said, on the spectrum of books from Dan Brown novel to Medical Textbooks, Outlive is much closer to a textbook and might not be for everyone. If you want an easier starting point for thinking about aging, my next suggestion is for you.

Built to Move

Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett is the first book I read on aging, and I am glad I started here. Built to Move reads much more like an owner’s manual that helps you troubleshoot and fix problems with your body. Things like testing your balance and ability to get up off the floor, but also giving you habits and exercise to help improve those scores. This book focuses more on physical abilities and observable metrics, so it might seem “incomplete” compared to Outlive. Still, I think the practical and observable nature of the book makes it a great starting point and helps build the motivation to address some of the more delayed gratification tasks suggested by Outlive. That being said, they complement each other really well and make a great pairing.

As a result of reading this book, I sit on the floor much more than I did before and have a reminder in Things to “Do a Balance Exercise” every two days.

Even though both of these books look at exercise and wellness as an investment for your future, the result of building these habits and routines is that your fitness improves now. This means I am feeling stronger and healthier than I have in twenty years.

As Maslow and the safety pamphlet on an airplane argue, taking care of yourself first allows you to take care of others. In accordance with that logic, I have listed my books about personal health first, but I am also a dad, so I have been reading about that too.

Parenting

For some reason, I have considered books about parenting to be something you read right before your first baby is born or, later, if your kid is an asshole. This is clearly a backward way of thinking, and I fixed that by reading two awesome parenting books this year.

The Daily Dad

Like The Daily Stoic, and written by the same author, The Daily Dad by Ryan Holliday is a great page-a-day style book that has a short, easy, but thought-provoking entry about parenthood for you to ruminate on over the course of the day. I use The Daily Dad as a source of inspiration and a more nebulous philosophical nudge on my thinking as a parent.

I’ve added reading the day’s entry to my morning routine and find that it fits perfectly into this space in my day. I will admit, this is a book that I’m still reading as an e-book since I want to have access to it every morning for a short period of time, and because I typically do my morning routine before my son is even awake, I don’t feel like the e-book nature goes against my physical book mandate.

Good Inside

For the past 20 years of my life, I’ve had some kind of formal responsibility as an educator/coach/mentor. Everything from being a summer camp counselor to some of the most socioeconomically disadvantaged students in the country to guiding future Ivy League students through publication-worthy independent research projects and a ton of spots in between. This varied and extensive experience has led to me being a pretty prepared and capable father, ready to navigate a lot of tricky situations. In some ways, you could say that I got to practice being a parent thousands of times before I had to do it for real.

Short of spending a career working with kids, reading Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy is the best advice I can give to someone trying to be a better parent.

I had many experiences reading the book where a particular student would pop into my head, and I would often be rewarded by Dr. Kennedy, affirming my observations and actions. Then, she would immediately follow up with two or three insights or better choices that I missed. Far from a congratulatory tour of my parenting choices, this book helped me work on some deficits I have as a parent and also as a partner. While the book is focused on a parent-child dynamic, it is still, at its core, a book about human relationships, so there were several insights in the book that have helped my relationship with my wife too.

The Daily Dad and Good Inside are both books that I will revisit over time, as my son gets older and our relationship changes, I have no doubt that these books will provide new insights.

Similar to how improving my health enabled me to improve my relationships with those closest to me, I feel like improving my family dynamic has enabled me to think more about how I relate to the world at large.

Growth

How to Be Perfec t

The Good Place is an all-time top TV show for me. One that is worthy of a beginning-to-end rewatch at least once every few years. Not only is it hilarious, it’s a show that can make you a better person if you pay attention. As of writing this post, it is available on Netflix, and I suggest you add it to your queue.

If you watch the show and are moved or inspired by the character development demonstrated on screen, then you will want to read How to Be Perfec t by Michael Schur. This is another book that I will admit I did not read, but I listened to. If you come to this book after watching the show, you will also want the audiobook version as several members of the cast lend their voices to parts of the book, almost like footnotes, and it adds a ton to the experience.

I don’t know how philosophy scholars would rate the book, but I loved it. After spending a lot of time thinking about my health/longevity, and my relationships with my family, I was at the perfect point in my life to expand on the philosophic content from the show and start thinking about my relationship with the broader world. Not only did the book help me add depth and context to many of the names and ideas I have heard mention of over the years, but it also walked me through the logical argument of modern philosophy that helped me see my fellow inhabitants of planet Earth in a new light.

While I was never close to having main character syndrome (except as a teenager, but who didn’t), the book lays out several wonderful arguments for thinking about yourself as part of a society and the implications of that. It sounds like I am a sociopath for saying that I needed to read about that, but I promise it makes sense when you read the book.

Outro

These books have changed my view of the world, improved my health, and deepened my relationships with those who mean the most to me. While I started this journey simply trying to model reading for my son, I’ve gained so much more. I don’t promise these books will have the same impact on you as they did on me, but I hope you give them a shot.