What This Year Asked Me to Unlearn: A Year-End Reflection Through Books

“We read to know we are not alone.” — C.S. Lewis

Many of you have probably noticed how often I have recommended books; some newly read, others revisited with fresh eyes. As the year comes to a close, I wanted to try something different and reflect on the year not through events or milestones, but through the books that quietly shaped how I thought, felt, and led.

This year didn’t arrive quietly. It came with a low hum of disruption, a steady reminder that the ground beneath us is shifting—socially, technologically, emotionally. Reading Epic Disruptions reminded me that the changes we experience as sudden shocks are usually the culmination of slow, compounding forces. Innovations don’t just reshape industries; they reshape how we relate to time, to one another, and to ourselves. The deeper lesson wasn’t about invention, but perception: disruption rewards those who notice what’s changing before it announces itself.

And yet, amid all that motion, I found myself craving something surprisingly simple: Immersion. Paul Zak’s work on immersion reframed happiness not as balance, but as presence—the kind that arrives when we’re fully absorbed, when time loosens its grip. In a year full of urgency, immersion became an act of quiet resistance. I began to notice how rarely we give ourselves permission to be fully committed to anything anymore. Distraction has become the default. Depth, the exception.

That insight landed alongside a gentler provocation from Today Was Fun. Fun, it turns out, isn’t frivolous; it can be diagnostic. Bree Groff helped me see fun as a signal of alignment—between values and action, between effort and meaning. When work loses its sense of play, something essential has drifted. Fun doesn’t trivialize seriousness; it humanizes it.

Which may be why I kept returning to uncertainty—not as a problem to solve, but as a condition to befriend. Uncertain offered a quiet counterpoint to our obsession with confidence. Maggie Jackson writes about not-knowing as a source of wisdom and wonder, not weakness. That framing stayed with me. This year, I was invited to loosen my grip on answers and become more fluent in questions, especially the uncomfortable ones that don’t resolve quickly, but deepen over time.

That posture matters, especially now, when the temptation to outsource our humanity to systems and speed is everywhere. Team Human was a sharp reminder that technology is not neutral—it amplifies what we value. If we prioritize efficiency over empathy, optimization over relationships, that’s what our systems will deliver. The question isn’t whether technology will shape us; it’s whether we remain aware enough to shape it in return.

Beauty became an unexpected throughline in all of this. Not beauty as decoration, but beauty as coherence. In Six Names of Beauty, I was reminded that beauty is a plurality that arises from harmony, clarity, depth, resonance, and care. The Aesthetic Brain took that further, grounding beauty in our biology. We are wired to respond to patterns, proportions, and meaning. Beauty isn’t indulgent; it’s regulating. It calms us, connects us, and helps us make sense of complexity when words fall short.

That insight reshaped how I think about leadership and design. Design for a Radically Changing World made it clear that good design is no longer about stability; it’s about adaptability with soul. Spaces, systems, and organizations must now hold contradictions gracefully. They must support both speed and reflection, efficiency and belonging. Design, at its best, is a form of care at scale.

Care, of course, is relational, which brought me back—again and again—to the social fabric holding all of this together. Tribal challenged simplistic narratives about division. Our instincts to form groups aren’t the problem; they’re the raw material. When well understood and appropriately directed, they become bridges rather than barriers. The work is not to erase difference, but to create a shared meaning spacious enough to hold it.

That idea echoed powerfully in Dialogue. Bill Isaacs’ work reminded me that thinking together is not the same as talking at one another. Dialogue requires patience, humility, and a willingness to suspend certainty. It’s slow. It’s awkward. And it’s one of the few practices capable of generating collective intelligence in times like these. This year reinforced for me that the quality of our future is inseparable from the quality of our conversations.

Personally, I also found myself thinking more about time—not as a resource to optimize, but as a companion. Wisdom at Work reframed aging not as decline, but as ripening. The idea of the “modern elder” offered a counter-narrative to hustle culture, one where experience becomes a gift rather than a liability. It invited me to think about stewardship—of knowledge, relationships, and energy—rather than accumulation.

And then there were the experiments. Tiny Experiments gave me permission to loosen my attachment to fixed goals. Instead of asking, “What should I achieve?” I began asking, “What’s worth trying?” That subtle shift changed how I approached decisions. Small, reversible experiments felt more honest than grand declarations. Curiosity replaced pressure. Learning replaced performance.

Looking back, these books didn’t offer a single thesis. They offered a new perspective, one that prioritizes immersion over distraction, uncertainty over false confidence, beauty over brute force, dialogue over debate, and humanity over optimization.

What I carry forward from this year is not a plan, but a deeper trust in process. A belief that wisdom emerges when we slow down enough to notice patterns, stay present long enough to feel meaning, and remain humble enough to learn together. If this year taught me anything, it’s that the work ahead won’t be solved by smarter answers alone. It will require better questions, richer relationships, and a renewed commitment to what makes us human. And perhaps that’s the real invitation as we step into what’s next: to design lives, teams, and systems that don’t just function but feel right.