I Read 201 Books in 2021, Here’s What I Learned.

lamdi.co

After reading 201 books, helping to raise $1M for a nonprofit, and launching a company, here are some things I’m learning. Our collective task the last two years is to find our humanity in another year of quarantine, create ways to be together, get the work done, and live our lives fully while under extraordinary circumstances. From volunteering to help evacuate thousands of refugees from the Kabul airport as it was under attack, to launching my business, and supporting non-profits to not only survive but thrive to address the urgent needs and widening equity gaps, I really dug my heels in this year. Here are some lessons and perspectives from the books I read and the experiences we are all living through:

1. Forcing velocity in a time of retreat further exacerbates the great resignation. The most meaningful and measurable progress, transformation, and growth for people, organizations, and companies can only happen at the rate of humility, connection, and reflection during the pandemic. We need to meet our employees, colleagues, partners, funders, clients, community members where they are — not where we want them to be. It is a time of deep grief, change, and reflection — our interactions with each other need to reflect that. Focus on transformation not transaction.
2. Quiet change matters. There is a lot of hope and substantive progress happening esp. in climate change and finance: the people and movements who are already making the shifts exist. We just don’t hear about them because they are making the quiet change, building movements, and focusing on addressing the problem in real-time, not publishing press releases. I learned that one of my greatest strengths is to amplify and support the doers behind the scenes — put them at tables and in conversations where their talents, ideas, and meaningful impact can be heard and supported with the resources they need to make the greatest impact of our time on issues from making financial services more equitable to evacuating refugees from the Kabul airport as it’s actively being attacked with increased violence. Support more doers, not sayers.
3. There are over a billion people living with some form of disability — we need to become better advocates and increase access and awareness. While conversations about race and gender have been highlighted in recent years, an area that needs additional focus, amplification, and attention in both our digital lives and built environments is to redefine and re-emphasize inclusion to highlight the needs of our disability communities. I am on my own learning journey and found a great primer in Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau.

BONUS! My Top 5 Reading Recommendations from 2021:

1. Art’s Principles: 50 years of hard-learned lessons in building a world-class professional services firm by Arthur Gensler
   An essential read in my first year of business from the founder of Gensler.
2. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
   A scholar and an avid writer, this is crucial reading for our time. Also highly recommend subscribing to Ijeoma’s weekly newsletter.
3. Legacy: Generations of Creatives in Dialogue by Lukas Feireiss
   A part of the intersectionality conversation that often goes missing is bridging the chasm between the ages. A gorgeous collection of cross-generation creative collaboration from dimensions of “The Perfect Blackness” to “Digital Archaeology” and how to “Be Remembered as a Failure”. Highly recommend it to anyone inspired by or interested in exploring a creative life.
4. Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau
   A welcome primer on how to learn more about our communities experiencing disability.
5. Residence on Earth by Pablo Neruda
   Honest poetry for the times we are living in. While most well known for his poetry on love, this opus of Neruda’s work from the 1920s-1940s explores a greater range of his political and human lived experiences of this period and are, in his words:
   “A poetry as impure as a suit or a body, a poetry stained by food and shame, a poetry with wrinkles, observations, dreams, waking, prophecies, declarations of love and hatred, beasts, blows, idylls, manifestos, denials, doubts, affirmations, taxes.”

Enjoy! Wishing you the wealth of health, and some great book friends for 2022.