Books that changed how I think

I read a lot, but I will be honest with you: most business books are awful. They take a single decent idea and stretch it across three hundred pages of filler. You can usually skip to the last chapter, get the gist, and move on. I fell for it plenty of times in my twenties. I bought the hardcovers, highlighted the margins, and forgot everything the moment I closed them. But there are a handful of books that actually lodged in my brain. They did not give me abstract theories. They made me change my mind, and eventually, my decisions.

The commission-only gamble

When I came back to Stockholm in my mid-twenties after university in the United States, I needed a job. Everyone around me advised finding something safe and salaried. Sweden is a culture that values stability. Taking a massive risk right out of the gate is generally frowned upon. Instead, I took a sales role at a PR agency. It was strictly commission only. If I sold nothing, I ate nothing. My friends thought I was an idiot. But a guy I met there, Fredrik Bage, told me I would be good at it. Right around then, I picked up Dale Carnegie’s *How to Win Friends and Influence People*. The title sounds incredibly manipulative, which put me off at first. You expect a manual on how to trick people into buying things they do not need. But the actual book is surprisingly simple and humane. It argues that if you genuinely listen to people, remember what they care about, and treat their problems as valid, they will want to work with you. I took the job because the book helped me realise sales was not about talking people into a corner. It was about paying attention. Fredrik and I eventually co-founded Mediapilot and spent roughly seven years building it, creating over a hundred jobs. None of that happens if I had taken a safe salary.

The spreadsheet for living

It is slightly embarrassing to admit how much a book with a man in a hammock on the cover influenced my thirties.

It is slightly embarrassing to admit how much a book with a man in a hammock on the cover influenced my thirties. But Tim Ferriss’s *The 4-Hour Workweek* hit me exactly when I needed it. Today the book carries a lot of baggage, mostly associated with hustle culture and people selling courses on how to sell courses. If you ignore all that, the core argument is practical: time is your only real currency, and you should measure your life accordingly. After reading it, I did two things. First, I took off to travel around the world for a stretch, largely disconnected from the office. Leaving a business you helped build to travel sounds irresponsible, but it was exactly what I needed. Second, I created a written 'life plan'. I sit down and rate my family and friends, my health, my finances, my work, and my personal time out of ten. I have done this since roughly 2010. It forces me to look at the cold numbers and make changes. It is the reason my family and I eventually moved from Sweden to Marbella in 2018. We meant to stay for two years to get the sun out of our system. We are still here. The plan forces honesty. If I am playing tennis terribly but often, my personal time score is fine. If my health score drops below a seven, I know exactly what I need to fix.

What we owe each other

Right now, my days are split between building and investing. I spent years working on the commercial side of software, most recently with a company called Happeo. Today, I work on Substrat, which provides infrastructure for AI builders, and I manage a small number of angel investments and property. But the project that keeps me awake is Anchor. We are building AI to help alienated fathers navigate the legal and emotional wreckage of losing access to their children. It is heavy, complicated work. The book that shifted how I think about this kind of problem is Viktor Frankl’s *Man's Search for Meaning*. Frankl was a psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps. His conclusion was that humans can endure almost any amount of suffering if they can attach meaning to it. When I talk to fathers who have lost everything, the pain is absolute. Fixing the family court system is a slow, grinding process. But helping these men find a sliver of meaning—a reason to keep fighting, to keep showing up, to rebuild themselves—is immediate. I am not a psychologist, and I certainly have not got this all figured out. I get things wrong constantly. But Frankl’s writing convinced me that if we are going to build new technology, we should apply it to the problems that actually break people. I still do not know if we will succeed, but I know it is the right thing to try.