Hashim's Tool Kit

My Books Journey, past and future

My first book: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

This was the first book I read. It's written in a very easy to understand way and provides invaluable, practical, and actionable advice on how we should think about money, happiness, and success.

It completely reshaped my thinking in many profound ways. Before reading this, I never realized just how valuable and life changing books can be, It's amazing and at the same time keeps making me think, WHY WERE WE NOT TAUGHT THIS STUFF IN SCHOOL?

Second Book: Zero to One by Peter Thiel

This is one of the best books I’ve read on innovation, marketing, and strategy for finding new solutions. Thiel explores the mindset needed to build a successful company, emphasizing the importance of creating monopolies instead of competing, the role of sales and marketing, and, most importantly, how to go from 0 to 1, building something truly new

Third Book: Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

In this book, you'll learn the mindset to handle your personal finances, how to escape the rat race, and why giving is so important. It made me realize why focusing on learning and adding value to myself is crucial. There’s a lot more in this book that I wish I had known earlier

Fourth Book: How to win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Hands down, one of the best books you'll ever read on people management. This book will save you endless frustration and help you get people to see your viewpoint, not through manipulation, but by truly understanding human nature. It reveals the secrets of human relations, the power of seeing from the other person’s perspective, and why humility can be a superpower.

There’s a piece of wisdom Carnegie shared that I hold very closely:

"The reason why rivers and seas receive homage from hundreds of mountain streams is because they keep themselves below them"

Fifth Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear

This is one of the finest pieces of text for building new habits and breaking bad ones. It provides a proven system that helps you reshape your life and align it with your goals.

James Clear talks about how designing your environment is crucial and why building a system that supports your goals is more important than the goal itself.

What I love about this book is how James explains everything with groundbreaking insights into the human mind and extremely valuable references. I’ve learned so much about how the human mind works, and honestly, every time I think about it, it’s astonishing.

Sixth Book: The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason

A profound book which sheds light on the ancient wealth creation mindset and strategies, this is the book which I've gotten my favorite piece of wisdom from, "Your actions cannot be wiser than your thoughts and your thinking cannot be wiser than your understanding"

George talks about giving yourself 10% of what you earn, what does that mean? Isn't everything you earn basically yours to keep? Yes - but we pay to the electric supplier, we pay to the home owners, to the grocery store owners, to Netflix and more. George argues that we should be keeping 10% of our earnings and expand our knowledge to invest our savings smartly, not speculate, invest

Seventh Book: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss & Tahl Raz

Don't ignore your ignorance. I've learned this the hard way and still struggle to accept that there is so much in life I don’t know, things that are crucial to achieving my goals. This book is a perfect example. At first glance, the title might not seem like it holds much value for your toolkit, but once you start reading, you realize how brilliantly Chris Voss explains one of the most challenging aspects of daily life, negotiation.

He introduces a structured system that begins with tone control, then moves to calibrated questions, mirroring, tactical empathy, labeling, the accusation audit, and summaries. This book is a must-read because negotiation is not just for high stakes deals. It is something we engage in almost every day.

Eighth Book: Thinking Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman

In this book, I think the introduction doesn't clearly tell the amount of value this will add to your life. It's absolutely mesmerizing how Daniel breaks down complex concepts into easy to understand processes. System One and System Two, the fast and intuitive side of our brain and the slow, deliberate and analytical part of our mind.

There's so much value in this book, starting from the introduction of crucial cognitive processes and focuses on cognitive biases, decision making, probability assignments, the neglect of base rates in decision making, one of the most effective technique to normalize your probability assignments. The planning fallacy, conjunction fallacy, over confidence, regression to the mean and so much more!!