It’s been a while since I last published something online, so I figured I’d get back to it with a short post. Here’s the top articles, books, and games I experienced in 2024.

2024 was a year of contrasts for me. I dove deep into articles and books about personal agency, learning to take decisive action and shape the world around me rather than just reacting to it. This pushed me to examine where I might be holding myself back and helped me make some meaningful changes, especially in the latter part of the year.

On the other hand, I found myself drawn to fiction as a way to process and cope with a difficult period. What started as Japanese authors rabbit hole turned into a deliberate pursuit of wholesome stories, particularly from authors who have a unique talent for finding profound meaning in everyday moments. This balance – between actively pushing for change and finding comfort in gentle narratives – ended up being exactly what I needed.

The tech and business books I gravitated toward round out this theme nicely: they’re essentially stories about people who saw opportunities to reshape their corners of the world and actually did it. Whether through AI advancements or building tech giants, these accounts served as practical examples of high agency in action.

Articles

These are the best articles I tagged with `favorite` in Readwise Reader this year. Internalizing their lessons and putting them to practice has been actually improving things in my life.

• Measuring personal growth by Chip Huyen
• What’s Stopping You? by Neel Nanda
• Things you’re allowed to do by Milan Cvitkovic
• Advice That Actually Worked For Me by Nabeel S. Qureshi
• Principles by Nabeel S. Qureshi
• On becoming competitive when joining a new company by @ludwigabap
• Lifehacks by Alexey Guzey
• why I quit status games by Isabel

Books

These are the best non-technical books I’ve read in 2024. This was a difficult year emotionally (dealing with family issues, health issues, and stress at work) and I found myself reading way more fiction than usual, which was a great idea.

I spent a few weeks in Japan in March and, after coming back, got in a rabbit hole of reading Japanese authors. I read too many books to list here, but the overall theme was one of wholesomeness. It was precisely what I needed. Two examples include:

• What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama
• Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (and the entire series of the same name; so far I’ve read the first four)

Continuing with the “cozy” / wholesome theme, I also enjoyed Chronicles of Whetherwhy: The Age of Enchantment by Anna James.

Now for a Japanese author that’s fantastic but whose writing is less wholesome (and in fact, oftentimes a bit disturbing), I read a few books by Haruki Murakami. My favourites this year were:

• Killing Commendatore
• Novelist as a Vocation (not fiction, but very interesting if you’re a Murakami fan)
• The City and Its Uncertain Walls (technically still in progress, but 90% finished)

I watched a couple of very impactful podcasts with Martha Beck, and decided to read The Way of Integrity: it’s amazing book that’s ultimately about not lying to others and (most importantly) to yourself.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card was a great read, with military-ish lessons that can be generalized and applied to many areas of life. Ender is a great example of someone who’s high agency.

I enjoyed Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly quite a bit, and still go through it at random every now and then. Very useful and oddly calming.

My last two recommendations are two books about (essentially) the history of a few of the biggest AI-related incumbents. Very entertaining, and also show good examples of agency in the real world:

• Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz
• The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant by Tae Kim

Games

I scaled back a bit on video games this year but I have a few recommendations:

• Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake: old school, great for fans of the series. Go for DQ 11 if you want a better, more modern experience.
• Diablo 4: I don’t usually play online games but I liked this one very much. It scratches a nice itch of doing something with my hands while thinking or listening to a podcast.
• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Tifa is the best, and if you disagree you are wrong.
• Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster: I played FF4 and FF6, and loved the time savers—you can use multipliers on Gil and Experience Points and turn off random encounters, both of which can be great if you’re busy or bored with a particular part of the game.
• Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance: I didn’t actually finish this because I had played the original SMT V somewhat recently and got a bit fed up, but it’s definitely a great game.