In Q2, I caught up on my book stacks that were to be read.
Therefore, I need more. I’m heading into Q3 and need your recommendations! Submit them through the form below.
In Q2, I caught up on my book stacks that were to be read.
Therefore, I need more. I’m heading into Q3 and need your recommendations! Submit them through the form below.
Are you claiming to have found the BEST book of 2023 already? Really, Aaron? Won’t you give the highly anticipated releases due in November a chance?
Well. No.
I’ve found the most impactful book in 2023…for me.
One of my close friends recommended this book on a whim. He discovered it during one of the many Instagram lives he attended during the pandemic and never got around to purchasing.
He pulled the trigger just before the end of 2022 and was calling in the midnight hours to tell me I needed to get it.
He was right.
Before I get into that, here’s a review from ChatGPT, our favorite newsletter co-author, on the book.
ChatGPT Summary:
Meditations for Men Who Do Too Much by Jonathan Lazear is a powerful and transformative book that provides readers with practical and actionable advice for managing stress, anxiety, and overwhelming workloads. This book is mainly geared toward men who often struggle to balance their personal and professional lives and find time for self-care and reflection.
Lazear uses straightforward language to explore the challenges of modern life and provides a roadmap for finding peace and balance in our increasingly fast-paced world. The book is organized into bite-sized meditations and reflections that can be completed in just a few minutes each day, making it easy to integrate into busy schedules.
One of the standout features of this book is its approach to mindfulness and self-reflection. Rather than simply providing tips and tricks for stress management, Lazear encourages readers to delve into the root causes of their stress and confront the issues holding them back from living a more fulfilling life. He provides practical exercises, techniques for managing anxiety and stress, and strategies for developing greater resilience and self-compassion.
I’ve been a full-time working professional for 16 years, sometimes with multiple jobs and side hustles on top of that. In college, I worked two part-time jobs and was a community service program coordinator as a full-time student. In high school, I worked part-time at my church, part-time doing entry-level IT work with my cousin, and playing in the school band and orchestra while maintaining honors and AP honors in high school.
This isn’t bragging. It affirms one thing: I’m a man who does too much.
I always have been. It’s been the most significant area of improvement in my life. I don’t do too much because I want to but because I feel useless if I’m idle for too long.
My education asked that of me. My jobs asked that of me. Even the internet and all the apps ask that of me. Our work-obsessed culture focuses on productivity and efficiency. It begs us to give more and more, and when nothing is left, we are called “dig deep” and find a superhuman resolve to keep giving.
All I have to show for it is spiritual exhaustion.
Enter 2023.
My life won’t get simpler overnight, but I’m pruning away the areas that don’t serve me and my ultimate goals. I must have EVERYTHING in my life align with my core values moving forward. If they don’t, be gone.
Love: Solve for love
Honor: Strong truth is better than a soft lie
Aeon: Place all your problems in the context of eternity
Courage: Be better than you were yesterday
Perseverance: Passion, creativity, and leadership must be honed
With this wild written installment complete: What’s your favorite book of 2023?
I can't believe it's already the end of the year! Time flies, doesn't it?
As we wrap up another year and look forward to the new one, I wanted to take a moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the festive season.
This time of renewal is a great opportunity to take some time to slow down and relax. As Barack Obama once said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." So take some time to recharge your batteries and get ready to tackle whatever the new year brings.
I hope you're all able to spend some quality time with your loved ones and make some special memories. From me to you, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I can't wait to see what amazing things we'll accomplish together in the new year.
Take care and have a great holiday!
Warmly,
Aaron
Generated by ChatGPT because I couldn’t think of anything funny or witty to say.
June 2022 was jam packed. I returned from a work trip to Southeast Asia, traveled cross country to Philadelphia for a family member’s 75th birthday party, and got engaged. That was all within the first 4 days of this month.
I encountered many bits of wisdom and inspiration as I moved through time and space. My closest friends have experienced the bombarding of an video, article, note, quote, or song that moved me. In an act of service to their inboxes and to share with a wider group, here’s my new monthly piece: The Four Tops.
The Four Tops serves as my dumping ground for the bits and pieces of joy that crossed my path the last month. As a lover of knowledge, a philomath if you will, I want to invite you into my world with 4 bits. I will share a book, an article, a video, a music album, and a thought that have impacted me in a meaningful way.
Here’s my guarantee: none of this is meant to be practical. I will never sell you on information that is meant to make you a better employee. I don’t want you to be inspired to start your own newsletter. I don’t want to start thinking like me. No. None of that. I simply want to share bits of the gumbo that swirls around in my head in an effort to have better conversations. So off we go.
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Revisiting this book in the run up to Juneteenth was important for me. I now live in Phoenix, AZ and encounter passive racism with the same regularity with which I fuel my car. Though we celebrate this day with a cookout and family gatherings, we must recall how recent slavery and Jim Crow were. Barack Obama was in elementary school when Black Americans were fully given the right to vote.
Smith’s book masterfully shares stories about how place, nostalgia, and remembering actively work together to hide the sins of this nation with respectability politics.
I first met one of my best friends, Will Roberts, in high school doing a live case study exercise with our local elementary school. Will was selected mayor of this fictional town and I was a developer working to get my nuclear power plant built. There were a handful of other students in the activity. Some where parents, activists, business owners, etc. and we were charged with deciding if the power plant got built. There’s a great story about how this encouraged he and I both to get involved in local politics, but that’s for a later time.
This acronym NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) has stayed with me since that cold November Day for over 23 years. I’ve thought about it regularly as my community in Philadelphia has morphed into something unrecognizable. How communities have chosen priorities that oppose the things they say they value.
Who is the most Grammy nominated artist of all time? Quincy Jones. 80 nominations
Looking at his life, you wouldn’t expect a man like him to be real. He’s lived enough lives for 4 people, but continues to reinvent himself at critical junctures in his life and the world has benefited from the beauty he creates.
Not only has he arranged music for huge artists and movie productions, but he’s also mentored countless BIPOC creatives to get to the next level of their vocations.
Personally, he produced the soundtrack of my life with Michael Jackson’s albums and one of the most formative shows of my pre-teens years, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Released randomly in mid-June, Drake gave us a very different album than he’s produced in the past. I won’t say to much beyond this: it was a spark of joy in the midst of a very emotionally confusing time in our country. We all know Beyoncé released a track in a similar music style that was also as free and joyous, but “Massive” on this album has a special place on my summer playlist.
Drake - Honestly, Nevermind [Apple Music]
“You are what you eat.”
What you read, who you know, and what you value will inform everything about your life. If you only watch the news, you will only agree with the “facts” presented on that station, never see past the edge of your anger and fear and form a community, and cling to that source as a deity. If you only read books by white men about business, you will come to value only the opinions of white men in business and think that they are the keepers of all good things. If you only spend your time with folks that aren’t going anywhere, you will value staying put and think of their space as one of safety.
As a servant-leader, I believe you are required to go beyond your comfort zone and hear from those you serve and understand what they are carrying. The easiest way to do that is by learning about your privilege and humbling yourself. Next, start learning all that you can about their experience and learn ways to support by picking up a book, listening to stories from them and their community, and after doing tons of listening and processing, having honest conversations about ways to be ally for them.
“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-26
You don’t have to spend a significant amount of time with me to observe that I’m first and foremost a contemplative person. Outwardly, I may share initial excitement over an idea or the dream of a future pregnant with possibility. One that involves some fantastical idea about the nature of the world as it should be. However, by nature, I don’t tend to give myself over to wild fits of fancy and obsession with the next idea.
Why not?
Because as a Black man of recent immigrant roots in this country, I have seen first hand the implications of what it means to be both Black and intelligent; when simply breathing is a perceived threat to the existence of someone else or their property.
My presence on this land isn’t by accident. My mother and father were both deliberate in why they chose to move to America. They came here for opportunity and the promise of an economically prosperous life in which they could experience a life that would be marginally better than Jamaica. They wanted to thrust off the yolk of the familiar and risk it all here. On this soil.
Jamaica’s landscape is stunning. Its people are rich with culture and personality. Home to 3 million citizens it boasts a bountiful and often outsized impact on the world. I’ve experienced the pride of hearing folks reference the most obscure reggae or soca artists while traveling through Europe or Asia.
My mother and father did not leave because it was inferior. Their goals were just different than what they believed they could attain in a recently decolonized Jamaica.
Simply put, but for a few plane tickets and a chance meeting between my parents, I could have been born and raised around people that looked like me. Had a deeper shared connection to my lineage than I have here.
What does this mean?
It means that to the proposition of what needs to be executed tactically around diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, I am not the answer.
I can’t provide the answers because I’m too busy trying to avoid being the problem.
To succeed In business, you have to play chess every day.
To succeed as a Black person in business, you have to play 3D chess while balancing on a high wire knowing that if you fail, no one else like you can come behind you.
You may then ask, who has the answer?
White men.
They started all this. From the triangle trade of a mercantile society to the shores of far-flung countries on the continents of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, their greed and single-minded ambition set in motion a series of events that has me the citizen of the wealthiest nation in the world making a healthy salary but afraid to be fully myself.
Simply put: I am not the answer.
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