Books Recommended by Jack Dorsey

There is never a better time to do the hard things when things are going extremely well and that can be as an individual that can be as a team as well. “Number nine, never fall prey to the belief that getting to the top makes everything easy.” It doesn’t, it makes it harder. “Number 10, recognize that mastery is a process, not a destination.” That’s what Bill Walsh had to say. The book is The Score Takes Care of Itself, a fantastic, fantastic tome of lists and everything that he’s learned in managing some very, very hard and ego-driven people, football players through the most losing team in the world to winning four Super Bowls in a row, amazing turnaround that he did by building a team and focusing on those details.

The first book is a book called The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, who was a painter and I know there’s a lot of affinity for painters in these parts. This is about creativity through the lens of an art student. [...] What he means by this is purely you have to be a master of your own tools. That mastership is not a destination, it is a process and it’s constant practice that gets you there.

I love the poets. Poetry is kind of like programming–it’s densifying very abstract concepts into a medium that allows interpretation. People can make the work their own and have better, more creative answers in life. Really anything that helps us reflect a bit more interests me.

Whitman’s also an interesting character, a total entrepreneur. He self-published 35,000 copies of Leaves of Grass. He was publishing it during the time of the Civil War and it’s an edgy, questioning book. It questions racial equality, sexual equality, gender equality, all in one work. And he kept changing it until he died–adding to it, editing it, and republishing it. Most people read the last version but I think the first version is actually the best.

The efficiency of every line in that poem, much like great programming, is stunning.