Wisereads Vol. 107 — Handbook for Hard Times by Gelong Thubten, Farnam Street on Irrational Dedication, and more

Last week, we shared a preview of Brian Potter’s upcoming debut, The Origins of Efficiency, a historically rich exploration of innovation and progress. This week, we're sharing a preview of Gelong Thubten's Handbook for Hard Times: A monk's guide to fearless living, complete with a meditation prompt.

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Modern life urges us to keep adding. But Abhishek Chakraborty argues that real progress comes from subtraction: "When Michelangelo was asked about how he carved the masterpiece of all masterpieces, the statue of David, his answer was: 'It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.' Focus on obtaining negative knowledge, because perfection is simply the practice of eliminating the unnecessary and the unimportant."

Instead of taking the world’s infrastructure for granted, Shane Parrish invites readers to see each building as a monument to irrational commitment. "Behind every seemingly effortless success lies a landscape of invisible battles: endless meetings, self-doubts, and moments of near-total collapse. What truly separates people isn’t some magical talent, but an almost irrational commitment to pushing through pain that would break most people."

Folk and blues musician Anthony Moser skips the careful case against AI and opts for a plain human response: being a hater. "Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total isolation, warm in the womb of the algorithm, nourished by hungry machines."

Python began as a side project in 1990s Amsterdam, nearly fading before becoming the backbone of AI, data science, and modern tech. Featuring Guido van Rossum and fellow pioneers, this documentary charts the language’s unlikely rise. "Today, I think it’s safe to say that almost anywhere there’s a computer, there’s probably some Python. It’s literally on Mars."

Boom Supersonic’s CEO challenges conventional wisdom on burnout, noting his team had to unlock motivation before breaking the sound barrier. "Burnout is not what it presents: it’s not about working too hard for too long, burnout is about working in the face of a goal that seems too far out, too unattainable, too abstract."

Using data from the largest payroll provider in the United States, Stanford researchers reveal a shift in the job market for entry-level professionals. "Since the widespread adoption of generative AI, early-career workers (ages 22-25) in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment even after controlling for firm-level shocks... employment declines are concentrated in occupations where AI is more likely to automate, rather than augment, human labor."

After his mentor and close friend of 20 years was brutally murdered, Gelong Thubten’s decades of cultivated peace were put to the test. In his Handbook for Hard Times, he shares how happiness, kindness, and resilience can still arise from the darkest chapters, drawing on his life as a Buddhist monk, meditation teacher, and fellow human learning to meet suffering with compassion.

"We humans have built rockets to the moon and are now able to send telescopes beyond our solar system, but we find it hard to deal with what goes on inside our own heads and hearts. We seem to have evolved externally but not internally, looking outwards but not inwards.

We seek happiness but rarely do we understand that to find it, we must transform our minds. We wish to avoid suffering, but seldom do we realise that the solution is to change how we think."

Through the end of September, you can grab the full ebook, complete with meditation prompts, for $1.99 wherever ebooks are sold in the US and Canada.

Lewis O'Brien thinks best by turning ideas and mental models into doodles. His Substack, Doublethink, is a haven for visual learners. From The Great Mental Models: Visual Book Summary: "Constant speed in the wrong direction is counter-productive. It is more important to pay attention to where you are going than how quickly you will get there."