“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”
—
John Bogle

Books are among the best sources of information, in whose pages there is gathered valuable knowledge and advice that would be of great help to us – both in our personal lives and at work. Regardless of which field we want to develop in, it is always a good idea to add books as part of the path of growth, personal self-improvement and the key “weapons” that would launch us to the top of our career.

And if we choose to immerse ourselves in the world of finance, when it comes to understanding it, rest assured that few solutions are easier, cheaper or more impactful than educating ourselves with the help of a great investing book. Money affects everything we do, so learning how to invest properly early on can make a huge difference in your ultimate success.

It’s important to learn investment terminology. You’ll want to understand the difference between a stock and a bond, how cryptocurrency works, how inflation affects investments, the role of risk tolerance, and how tax efficiency can increase portfolio returns.

Equally important is understanding what money does and doesn’t do for a person seeking to maximize their wealth for future life events. This includes how we interact with money, how family experiences can shape our investment outlook, and how significant debt can be a barrier to achieving our life goals.

Today, we’ll look at a list of the TOP 5 books on investing to read right now.

“The Intelligent Investor”
Author: Benjamin Graham

Originally published in 1949, The Intelligent Investor was long considered the only book you should read to learn the principles of investing. Topics in the book include the concepts of long-term investing and Graham’s philosophy of value investing, giving it a place on every serious investor’s bookshelf. Graham is known not only for his status as the father of value investing, but also for his guidance to the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Warren Buffett, who used Graham’s principles to become arguably the best investor of all time.

“Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger”
Author: Charles T. Munger

Charles Munger, better known as Charlie Munger, may not be familiar to most investors, but his longtime friend and business partner Warren Buffett should be. For decades, Munger was Buffett’s right-hand man, running the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate and holding company. Considered one of the sharpest business minds of the 20th and 21st centuries. This book is based on 11 lectures Munger gave between 1986 and 2007.

“The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns”
Author: John C. Bogle

Bogle was the late founder of The Vanguard Group and creator of the first index mutual fund. He is known for his principle of investing with purpose, maintaining a long-term goal and reducing internal fees as much as possible. He was also a proponent of dollar cost averaging, a method of consistent and patient investing. Through his book, the reader will understand the differences between prudent investing and speculation. It should come as no surprise that one of the overarching conclusions is that low-cost index funds – Vanguard’s specialty – are a sensible move for most investors.

“A Beginner’s Guide to the Stock Market: Everything You Need to Start Making Money Today”
Author: Matthew R. Kratter

Released in 2019, this book provides a guide for those embarking on their investment journey. Delve into the process of setting up a brokerage account and making your inaugural investment. Authored by Kratter, a former hedge fund manager with firsthand experience of the 2008 market crash. The book equips readers with insights crucial for navigating contemporary market turbulence. It particularly shines in illuminating common pitfalls encountered by beginners.

“Rich Dad Poor Dad”
Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki

For over 25 years, “Rich Dad Poor Dad” has dominated the bestseller lists, narrating Robert Kiyosaki’s personal journey with his two father figures: his own father, portrayed as the “poor dad,” and his friend’s father, the “rich dad.” Through these contrasting experiences, Kiyosaki elucidates strategies for wealth accumulation. The book emphasizes the notion that wealth isn’t solely about affluence but rather about making your money work effectively for you, regardless of your starting point.

If you found this article interesting, stay tuned on Thursday when we will present PART TWO of the best books on investing.

Read more:
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2. Microsoft Graph Toolkit 4.0 Now Available
3. Top 8 Best C++ Books for Beginners

For technology leaders, this is critical. Knowing how to overcome problems while remaining calm and optimistic, even though the odds often won’t be on your side. Embracing failure as a challenge and experience is key to your successful career. And no matter how difficult the road to success, keep going. In one direction and one direction only – forward.

However, it is important to note that the line between “business leader” and “technology leader” has always been clear. Technology needs to be aligned with business results and vice versa. The most successful technology leaders of the future will be those who are able to bridge this and help their organizations and technology teams come together for the sake of overall successful outcomes.

Today we have chosen to present you some short but important tips on how to improve yourself and become a better tech leader, according to 101 Ways.

5 Tips How to Become a Better Tech Leader

Focus on leadership, not just technology

Technology leaders often fall into the trap of believing that they need to be the best technologist in the room. This shouldn’t actually be surprising given the number of tech leaders with a technologist background. But not only is it not possible to remain in the details of every technology or software development trend, given the wider responsibilities you have as a CTO, CIO, etc., it’s just not your job. As a leader, you aren’t there to write code, you’re there to look at the bigger picture and make sure that your teams are focused on the right problems and have the resources they need to get the job done.

“Leadership”, as elusive as it might sound, is a specialization. It’s critical that you take it seriously as a discipline and work to hone those skills independently of staying on top of the latest technology. Only then will you be able to get the most out of your teams and allow your organization to harness technology to its fullest potential.

What you need to do

Fundamentally, this comes down to letting go of the belief that you need to be absolutely tech-savvy at all times. You don’t need to have all of the answers or understand all of the details. You need trusted advisors who do understand those details. Your job is to put that advice into context and make decisions about what’s important and what’s not. Then, focus on communicating those priorities across your organization and securing the support and resources that your teams need.

 Be purposeful about culture

A sense of community can have a tremendous impact on productivity, efficiency and employee engagement. At the end of the day, culture is about connections and what those connections facilitate. While technology can be binary in nature, culture requires attention to nuance and the purposeful act of outreach and intentional listening. The need for purposeful culture becomes increasingly evident in the context of productivity and remote working, and managing teams that aren’t always (or ever) present in the same room.

What you need to do

One of the best ways to build culture as a leader is to model it consciously. Step into the expectations that you’ve set out for the team and embody them. While leaving your door open and making it clear that anyone who wants to stop by for a chat can, sometimes it takes stepping out yourself and cultivating those positive bridges.

Send the message first to check in. Ask about that issue your team member was worried about last week. Leading acts like these will always matter more than knowing the latest developer language. Little things add up and create the personal connections that you need, and that you want to see across your teams.

Develop respect through differences

Stepping back from the technology coalface, as we discussed in our first tip, can leave tech leaders feeling exposed. One of the many reasons for a continued obsession with the details of the latest technology trends is a fear that the only way to earn the respect of technologists is to be the proverbial “best technologist in the room”. There might be some superficial truth to this, but you still need to find a better answer for how to earn the respect of your teams. You’ll never know as much about the details of any given subject as someone who spends their day, every day in that world.

What you need to do

You might not be able to do the job of your lead developer. But they can’t do your job either — and they probably don’t even want to. You need to win respect by being an effective leader and securing your teams the support and resources they need.

It’s also critical that you develop a sense of comfort in not knowing all of the answers. If you project confidence when asking questions you can actually use those moments as opportunities to allow someone on your team to shine by offering a solution. The doubt you feel is, more often than not, simply in your head.

Again, this comes back to creating a community-orientated culture, and the fact that your job isn’t about knowing everything — it’s about using the information your teams provide to make the right decisions. Fundamentally, you just need to show your curiosity and demonstrate your ability to create outcomes that matter to others. This is how you win respect as a leader.

Always keep business goals in mind 

Organizations with CIOs who are more involved in shaping business strategy have been shown to outperform the average.3 As we’ve already discussed, bridging the gap between business strategy and technology strategy is a core function that technology leaders need to fill.

It’s your job to make sure that business decisions are being made with an eye on technological solutions, and those technology investments are made in line with business goals. Of course, you can’t do this without the support of wider business leadership and your wider technology team. However, that doesn’t mean success isn’t, ultimately, your responsibility. Demonstrating outcomes using technology will have a large impact on making that alignment possible.

What you need to do

Fundamentally, making this work comes down to understanding what your business goals are, and then making alignment with those goals a priority within your teams. On both sides, this comes down to communication.

First, you need to directly seek input from leaders across the business. You need to know what problems they are trying to solve, and what solutions they’ve already tried. Realistically, this needs to be happening on a team/function level, and at the board level. That means having a seat on the board, and making time in your day to discuss issues with individuals at different levels of leadership.

Then, you need to be in regular communication with your teams about what you’ve learned. Remember, you aren’t going to know all the answers. You might not have heard about the new API being able to solve the challenges faced by your finance team — but your API specialist probably has. By keeping a constant dialogue running you can find answers and then focus the right people on developing those solutions. This dialogue is also going to help you create the kind of culture.

Excel at debunking tech-jargon

As we keep coming back to, tech leaders need to be the bridge between technology and the business. That means getting good at explaining technology to non-technologist. More than anything, that means deleting jargon from your vocabulary, and perfecting the ability to communicate complicated technical ideas in ways that make sense on a practical level.

What you need to do

The big thing to understand is that business leaders are most often interested in outcomes. Particularly in board-level conversions, you need to lead with what your new-fangled tech concept is actually going to do — how it impacts both organizational process and the bottom line.

If you do have to explain how something works, use simple, everyday language, avoid acronyms and lean on visual representations where possible. You should also remember that approximations are good enough. For example, simply stating that APIs are software intermediaries that allow two applications to talk to each other is good enough.

Obviously, it’s more complicated than that — there are different kinds, different ways they get integrated, different security considerations — but none of that detail really matters when it comes to board-level approval.

What projects are you currently working on and what programming languages and tools are you using?

At work, I am currently part of the team in charge of building the front-end for a product called Jira. The part of the codebase I am working on uses modern tools such as React.js, CSS in JS, Storybooks, etc…

On my personal time, I build prototypes using different kinds of technologies such as machine learning, hardware, web bluetooth, 3D in the browser, and anything I feel like experimenting with.

How did you start coding and how have you progressed over the years?

I learnt to code by doing a coding bootcamp about 5 years ago. At the time, we learnt HTML, CSS, vanilla JavaScript and Ruby for 12 weeks. Since then, I’ve worked in a few different companies where I got exposed to different technologies and ways of working. I’ve also worked on many side projects over the years to experiment with technologies I didn’t get to use at work.

Forgot to share I FINALLY got the mental commands from the @emotiv to work in JavaScript! 🎉😃 Here’s a quick example of me pushing a #threejs cube just by thinking about it! https://t.co/oE6vxI9uWw #javascript #Nodejs #iot #EEG pic.twitter.com/reiU37owFa

— Charlie Gerard 🏳️‍🌈 (@devdevcharlie) January 29, 2018

What technologies (languages, frameworks, libraries and tools) did you use for the development of the Mind-controlled UI?

To build my mind-controlled interfaces, I bought an Emotiv Epoc brain sensor and built my own JavaScript framework for it, relying on their C++ SDK.

At the time that I bought the sensor, there was no JavaScript tool to use with it so I decided to build one to allow more developers to experiment with this kind of technology without having to learn a new language like C++ or Java. To do this, I used their C++ SDK and built a Node.js addon.

The framework allows you to interact with the sensor (get motion data, facial expressions and mental commands) in JavaScript (Node.js). Once you get this data, you can build any interaction you want, including controlling devices such as a drone, or interfaces like any web page, a webVR game, etc…

For which parts of the projects did you use libraries and for which you did it all from scratch?

To build the JS framework, I used the official Emotiv C++ SDK and then wrote a Node.js addon around it from scratch.

For the different experiments I then built, I used libraries such as Three.js to control a 3D scene with mental commands in the browser, or Johnny-five to control some Arduino components in JavaScript, etc…

What were the main dev challenges that you’ve encountered? 

Personally, the main challenge was that, when I built the framework, I didn’t know any C++. I had to dig into the SDK to try and understand how it worked so that I could write the JS framework around it. It took me quite a long time to get it to work because of that.

How much time for training does the software need in order to “adjust” to a new person?

Before using my framework, a user would have to download some Emotiv software to do the recording of the brain waves and the training of the commands.

This software allows you to select certain “thoughts” commands that you can then train for 8 seconds each. You can do it once or multiple times if you want. Once the training step is done, a user file is saved that you can load into your application so the framework can compare live data against the user’s training data.

Do you use a specific kind of hardware? What kind of sensors do you use?

I have mainly used an Emotiv Epoc sensor but there are a few other brain sensors available. I have also experimented with a Neurosky and recently bought an Open BCI device.

Otherwise, I also know of the Muse headset and soon, a new device called Notion.

For my 1st internal Atlassian hackathon, I spent the last 24h trying to implement my brain sensor framework w/ react-beautiful-dnd:

😉 Select tasks w/ facial expressions
🧠 Move them w/ thoughts

Bonus: If you really want it, they’ll disappear… 🧙‍♀️😂#reactjs #javascript #IoT pic.twitter.com/eoLhS9YmOM

— Charlie Gerard 🏳️‍🌈 (@devdevcharlie) June 28, 2019

What is your “conference talk from hell” story?

I think one of the first times I tried to demo my brain sensor experiments on stage, absolutely nothing worked. Doing this kind of demos live can be quite difficult because your state of mind is not the same as when you train the device in a more quiet and less stressful environment. The audience was still very supportive but I was really disappointed at myself because I was really looking forward to showing people that it is possible to build brain-computer interfaces with web technologies.

Since then, I’ve given the same talk a few times and demos went a bit better!

I gave my talk about machine learning for front-end devs @sydjs tonight and had to open up with this amazing quote from @seldo. I’ve never related to a quote that much in my life 😂 pic.twitter.com/9IyUL1SqkA

— Charlie Gerard 🏳️‍🌈 (@devdevcharlie) July 17, 2019

What are your future dev plans?

Honestly, I have no idea! I have a few other ideas of side projects I started working on but nothing really concrete yet. What matters to me the most is that I’m always looking to learn new things!