Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays! Thanks for joining me for part three of my annual review. In case you missed the others…
What follows are my favorite books, YouTube channels and videos, podcasts, products, and music. It’s very link-heavy, so you’ll wanna bookmark this post and come back to it later.
Books
- Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (see video below)
- Wild Problems by Russ Roberts
- Letting Go by David R Hawkins
- Hero on a Mission by Donald Miller
- The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary McBride
- Just a Thought by Amy Johnson
- The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
- The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
YouTube Channels
- Van Neistat — Good Fathers Are Vital
- Creative Minds — Virgil Abloh’s Creative Advice
- Chase Reeves — 22 Notebooks & Journals
- WillyJ123 — My boys and I like watching his silly music videos
Podcasts
- Creative Elements (watch the YouTube channel also) — my friend Jay Clouse interviews top creators, writers, YouTubers, and more.
- I Will Teach You How To Be Rich — real talk about money, with couples. Fascinating and helpful!
- Stratechery — tech, culture, business, news and more. It makes me smarter.
- My First Million — consistently great interview show hosted by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. I met Sam at a conference this year and he’s simply a super-smart guy. If you’re in business and entrepreneurship, it’s a must-listen.
- To be honest, I listen to a ton of sports podcasts. Especially during football season. My favorite is the Ryen Russillo Podcast. Even if you’re not a sports fan, give the life advice segment a listen at the end of each episode.
Products
My favorite gear and purchases. Some are affiliate links (like the books above) but are at no additional cost to you.
- NikeCraft GPS Shoe → designed by artist Tom Sachs, a Nike shoe unlike any other (actually the only Nike shoe I own). Missed four raffles and finally got a ticket to buy this month! Early Christmas present for Daddy, picture below.
- Dedicated Office → after seven years working from home, I dedicated and protected the money for an out-of-house office. If you also have several small kiddos running around, it’s highly recommended. I actually work less, but get more done because every hour there is deep work time.
- All the books → so many books. I haven’t even read all of them. I may never. But I love having books around the house. For an additional list, check out these 12 books for men.
- GORUCK Kit Bag → the toughest damn duffel you can buy, and spacious too. I keep all my workout and jiu-jitsu gear in there with room to spare.
- LandCruiser → ok, a little one. Call it an ornament for the tree, call it an office prop, or call it manifesting destiny. I’m the owner of a vintage LandCruiser (the next one will be bigger).
Music
- Best New (to me) Artist: Bring Me The Horizon — I listened to Can You Feel My Heart and Happy Song nearly 100 times this year. Read The Tail End of Rock Shows for context.
- Runner Up Artist: Shane Smith and the Saints — I heard the band on an episode of Yellowstone and have been hooked ever since. My favorite song is What a Shame.
- Favorite 2022 Album Release: Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? by Tyler Childers. As an aside, this review showed me I don’t listen or pay attention to many album releases. This is my favorite of the bunch, though Purgatory is the best Childers album.
- “Loopers” is my playlist for head-down focused work. A good mix of styles, but almost all of them without lyrics.
- Best of 2022 is my personally curated playlist of favorite songs, since my boys listen to a lot of songs on my Spotify and dilute my Wrapped recap.
This concludes my annual review, thanks for reading! In case you missed them, read part one and two on the archive. I’ll still be writing next week and getting you ready for the new year.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,
Matt