My reading list used to be a mirror. Every book was about the discipline I already worked in, written by people who already agreed with how I saw the problem. It felt like learning. Mostly it was confirmation.
Part of this project is a deliberate rule: for every book that’s squarely in my lane, read one that has no obvious reason to be. Distribution logistics. Choir conducting. Whatever’s furthest from the desk I sit at.
The payoff isn’t that these books hand me new tactics. It’s that they hand me new questions, framed by people who never learned to ask them the way my field does. That’s the actual shortage, and it doesn’t show up on a reading list of things I already agree with.
Field notes like this one will keep tracking what’s actually working from that experiment, not just the shelf of good intentions.
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