The Reading List
A lot of the writing traces back to a handful of books I have read, re-read, and argued with over the years. These are the ones that show up most in how I think about investing, operations, marketing, and decision making. Pulled straight from what I have actually written about over time, not a list I made up to look smart.
Charlie Munger (edited by Peter Kaufman)
Ken returns to Munger more than any other thinker, building entire posts around mental models, the Lollapalooza effect, inversion, and steel manning. He treats Munger's worldly wisdom as the operating system behind how he evaluates deals and people.
If you think your IQ is 160 but it's 150, you're a disaster. It's much better to have a 130 IQ and think it's 120.
Alex Hormozi
Ken cites Hormozi constantly on offers, the value equation, and bias toward action, and has built posts unpacking the Hormozi view that success comes from action over thought rather than mindset alone.
Hormozi challenges the idea that mindset alone changes outcomes, arguing instead that success is built on action rather than thought.
Will and Ariel Durant
Ken quotes Durant often on history, order, and the limits of knowledge, using the Durants' sweep of history to frame how cycles repeat in business and society.
Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance.
Morgan Housel
Ken credits Housel for how he thinks about behavior over intelligence in investing, returning to the idea that doing well with money is mostly about temperament and expectations.
Your happiness depends on your expectations more than anything else.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Ken uses Taleb's ideas about fragility, optionality, and skin in the game to stress test deals, favoring structures that gain from disorder rather than break under it.
STEEL MANNING is Antifragile. You either prove your theory correct or end up with a better idea. Win-Win.
Robert Greene
Ken keeps coming back to Greene on the long apprenticeship and on saying less, quoting his line that the more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
The more you say, Robert Greene has written, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
Claude Hopkins
Ken treats Hopkins as the foundational text on direct response, retelling how David Ogilvy made his people read it seven times and citing Hopkins on testing and comparison advertising.
Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.
James Clear
Ken flatly calls Atomic Habits a great book and quotes Clear on how you fall to the level of your systems rather than rise to the level of your goals.
James Clear’s Atomic Habits is a great book.
Ray Dalio
Ken points to Dalio on radical truth and weighing the facts objectively, using Principles as a model for building decision rules instead of reacting emotionally.
Most people do not look thoughtfully at the facts and draw their conclusions by objectively weighing the evidence.
Morgan Housel
Ken draws on Housel's follow up about what never changes in human behavior, using it to argue that expectations, not circumstances, decide how satisfied we feel.
Your happiness depends on your expectations more than anything else.
Daniel Kahneman
Ken references Kahneman on the two systems of thinking and on mistaking luck for skill, using cognitive bias to explain how buyers shortcut decisions.
We connect cause and effect where there is no connection.
Robert Cialdini
Ken reaches for Cialdini's principles of persuasion to explain pricing psychology and small triggers like reciprocity, pointing to the famous mint study made famous in Cialdini's Influence.
A 2002 reciprocity study, made famous in Cialdini's Influence, average tips moved from 15.06% to 17.84% from a single foil-wrapped chocolate.
Cal Newport
Ken cites Newport on focus and undistracted output, using deep work as the standard he holds himself to against a desk full of screens and notifications.
Cal Newport wrote a book called Deep Work in 2016. His argument is simple. The ability to focus on hard problems is getting rarer while it's getting more valuable.
Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Ken pulls from Holiday's daily Stoic readings on silence, patience, and obstacles, tying ancient discipline to staying calm under business pressure.
You must build up your life action by action, and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible.
Most of these books turn up across the essays and posts. Browse the writing to see the ideas put to work on real deals and operations.