Early Career Resources
Links to resources that I've found helpful during my time exploring startups and research [Last updated 09/01/24].
I’ve done a lot of exploring, and have had a lot of questions. Here are some of the resources that have answered my questions. I’ll try to update this post every now and then and put a timestamp for when I have most recently updated it. Comment below if you want me to annotate these lists with what I found to be valuable.
General
I highly recommend people spend time learning how to learn effectively1 . This skill transfers into practically all domains.
Books
Deep Work - Cal Newport
The 4 Hour Workweek - Tim Ferriss
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life - Mark Manson
Lying - Sam Harris
Public Speaking for Success - Dale Carnegie
On Writing Well - William Zinsser
Tools
ChatGPT/Claude - Working alongside these models is the future. Find ways to integrate this into your current workflows, there are tons of tutorials online.
Obsidian - My preferred notetaking app. You can connect it with Zotero or other citation managers so that you can refer to papers/books/articles in your notes.
Startups
Most books or podcasts I’ve listened too haven’t been useful in practice (in my minimal startup experience). Most things are best learned by doing, but here were a few resources I found helpful.
Books
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
Zero to One - Peter Thiel
Made to Stick - Chip Heath, Dan Heath
The Founder’s Dilemmas - Noam Wasserman
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - Al Ries, Jack Trout
Blogs/Podcasts (mostly helped me generate ideas)
The Tim Ferris Show - Tim Ferris
The Knowledge Project - Shane Parrish
Tools
Research
Most of these resources are oriented towards PhD students, however their contents are still applicable to undergrads. I also highly recommend starting a journal club with your friends.
General
A Survival Guide to a PhD - Andrej Karpathy blog
Career advice - Terrance Tao blog
Problem choice and decision trees in science and engineering
How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method - George Pólya
Presentation/Writing
Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals that Get Funded - Joshua Schimel
The Scientist’s Guide to Writing - Stephen B Heard
Funding/Fellowships
Both
Graduate
Undergraduate
Tools
Zotero - Citation manager
I have not tried all of these, however this would be a good place to start. I personally have found concept maps (also known as mind maps) to be a game changer.
The survival guide to a PhD is fascinating!