What SmartCompany editor-in-chief Simon Crerar will be reading these holidays

If your mind isn’t already moving towards the beach, it really should be.

Today is the last working day of 2022 for us at Private Media, with our office and mastheads moving onto a skeleton operation until January.

The holiday shutdown disconnects us from our hybrid, mostly virtual desks, and releases us from the shackles — the delightful, daily shackles — of the digital news journalist.

Freed from obsessing over who is announcing what on LinkedIn, or exactly how Elon is burning Twitter down today, we suddenly have hours, days, and wonderful weeks to enjoy that most treasured of pleasures: reading, for fun.

Over the past decade, I’ve read 25 books a year on average. One every couple of weeks, though actually, I tend to oscillate between weeks I read two or three a week, and months where I read hardly any.

I’d love to hear what you’ll be catching up on, or diving into, please email me here.

Here’s what I’ll be reading over the break:

The First 90 Days

I started a new job — this new job — in October, and structured my first few months with the help of Harvard Business Review’s “international best-seller” The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins (HBR).

Described as “the onboarding bible” by The Economist, it’s actually my third time reading this book, and I’ve found its structure invaluable once again.

Entering the last week of my first 90 days, I’ll be deploying the book’s self-assessments to mark my own homework, and plan for Q1 2023.

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits

Yep, I read management self-help books for fun! So I’m looking forward to diving into the “Bestseller! Over 250,000 in print” Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harrison (Scaling Up).

Recommended by my badass colleague Ai, our chief operating officer, this book has 10 pages — 10 PAGES! — of small point recommendations at the front, so it must be good right?!

The book distils the leadership and management principles of John D. Rockefeller, widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history (sorry Elon).

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

On the recommendation of Startmate CEO Michael Batko — sign-up for his excellent Substack book summaries here — I’ll be reading Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt (Profile), which calls out bad strategy as a hotch-potch of B.S. motivational slogans and LinkedIn buzz words often masquerading as the real thing.

We have some really exciting plans underway for SmartCo. Media in 2023, so I think this will be an essential read.

Killer Thinking, Farm and Reasons Not To Worry

Rounding out my list are three books by antipodean journalist/writers whose work I rate very highly.

Tim Duggan was co-founder of Junkee Media, one of the century’s most successful local media startups. He has a new book coming in 2023, but shamefully I haven’t read his most recent one, Killer Thinking yet — which deploys insights from founders of businesses such as Canva, Linktree and Zero Co to explain how to turn a good idea into a great one.

Tim’s must-read Cult Status is one of my very favourite business books of recent years, and he has a very accessible, actionable style, so I can’t wait to dive in.

Nicola Harvey is a friend and former colleague at BuzzFeed, who pioneered hybrid work way before it was cool by moving (back) to rural New Zealand to farm cattle in 2018. Farm: the making of a climate activist (Scribe) charts her family’s journey.

According to SBS chef and food activist Matthew Evans — another farmer who swapped Sydney for a remote island (in his case Tasmania) — “Farm is a call to arms for farmers to do better, for people to understand food systems better, and for all of us to join together and help heal the planet.”

I’ve already read Nicola’s first few chapters, and can’t wait to romp through the rest, ideally with a view of some cows. It will certainly be nice to get away from the city, and away from my desk.

The final book I’ll be taking with me — also partially read in this stop-start year — is by the brilliant Brigid Delaney, who somehow finds the time to write reliably excellent Guardian Australia columns, Netflix scripts, and books.

The past three pandemic years turned my occasional interest in the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus into a full-blown obsession.

Brigid has been on a similar journey, as she recounts in her fabulous Reasons Not To Worry: How to be a Stoic in chaotic times (A&U), which explains how we can all deploy the ancients’ wisdom to regain a sense of agency and tranquillity.

As the legendary Stoic thinker (?!) Tim Ferris has pointed out, philosophy is an operating system for life’s difficulties, obstacles and hardships. Life has been a little challenging these past few years. For me anyway. Stoic wisdom really helps.

Wishing you and your family a restful and restorative holiday season. And some idle hours curled up with a good book.

Happy reading.