Amit @NextFive

Some stuff I read and thoughts on them.

Last updated: February 2026

Recently read:

1. I Was Told There’d Be Cake and Look alive out there by Sloane Crosley. Hilariously funny collection of essays form her own life. She’s become one my favorite authors and a fun human I’d have wanted to know.
2. A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers. The most soothing / engaging books I have read in a bit. It says Sci-fi. Don’t fall for it. It’s like travelogue interspersed with dialogue with two friends. Essentially, meditative sci-fi - a category I didn’t know existed. Absolutely recommended if you are looking for a break. Breezy, short reads.
3. Interpreter of maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I know. At long last. That too, because I happened upon a passage shared by a friend which I liked. Turned out to be from this book. I’m glad I read it though…quite liked the stories and her writing style - especially how she portrays a scene without deliberately drawing your attention to it.
4. Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us by Manu Joseph: Sharp at times, often sarcastic, almost always deliberately provocative. Every other page I was either nodding or rolling my eyes. He makes good points about Indian inequality but undermines them by trying too hard to be contrarian-cool. Still - made me think differently about class, privilege, and who gets to critique what. Uncomfortable read, which might be the point. I’m definitely not publishing for NYT like he does (and makes it a point of letting us know), but the editing felt lacking.
5. Share your work by Autin Kleon: Overall takeaway - Share influences early, finished work later. Share with full attribution - what the work is, who made it, how they made it, when and where it was made, why you’re sharing it, why people should care about it. That last bit about “why people should care about it” - is also highlighted in the ‘So What?’ test for things that you are planning to share. And in advice to find voids others aren’t filling.
   
   And other set of good reminders. Towards the end, started to get into full-on hustle-inspo-porn style writing. The kind that is parodied in How to Stay Productive When the World Is Ending. But hey, he’s practising what he’s preaching.
6. The great mental models - volume 1 by Shane Parrish: Always have been a fan of mental models. Most of the 9 discussed in this short book were familiar - likely most famous being the Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors. But it was still totally worth it to have a quick review of these all. The reminder to seek help from seasoned experts - what the book calls “lifers” - when operating outside my circle of competence was timely.

Some more notes from the book:

On Learning Efficiency:

• “Learning on your own is costly and slow. Always try to see if learnings are already available, credibly so, before you embark on your journey. Seek out books, conversations.”
• Mental models are compressions of how things work - they reveal key information while ignoring the non-essential
• “All models are wrong. Some are useful.”
• Models are reliable in some situations but flawed in others

On Building Knowledge:

• “If you want to suck up someone’s brain, you should simply read a book. All the great wisdom of humanity is written down somewhere.”
• Process is more important than outcome at the beginning.
• Record and reflect on your process and results when using mental models
• Stay open to feedback loops