5 Lessons From My 2020 Reading List That Can Benefit Your 2021

Adrian Isaac Jimenez
3 min readJan 1, 2021

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2020, a tumultuous year agreed on by all, proved to be a year of drastic learning for many. Some people had to overcome adversities that they couldn’t have seen months, even days, before the start of the year. As a nation we had to power through a time where social change was happening behind hashtags and filters. Some of us had to learn how to adapt to work from home alongside the distractions provided by our families, friends, and temptations. At one point, over 20 million Americans had to figure out how to live life and support their families without an income. All this difficulty had a profound impact on families around the United States and the world. The political, social, and health climate challenges society faced handed us much needed a sobering spoon of lessons.

I’ll admit in saying that as an individual I had a blessed year, but to say that the game of life I played this year didn’t change from the last would be a total lie. I conformed to the new rules of society by working and traveling through the pandemic with restrictions that were necessary for the time being. I eagerly worked from home, made new friends virtually, and learned by staring at a screen all day. Online learning was the most painstaking change I had to adapt to.

This problem made me realize that I was wasting my time and effort doing busy work that had no learning value to get a degree. I luckily, around the beginning of the pandemic, already had developed the habit of reading occasionally under my belt. With Covid-19 drastically lowering the hours I worked, I fully delved into books as a means of learning things of value that immediately impacted my life.

In reading through the thunderous year, I found five lessons that I have applied to my life that made my year all the better and set me on a good road heading into 2021. Over the next 5 days I’ll be releasing a lesson a day. These lessons range from interesting knowledge that can help you strike up conversations to principles to practice going through 2021 to take the year under your control.

Lesson 1: Success isn’t solely dependent on hard work — Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

Lesson 2: What items in your financial portfolio say about your socioeconomic standing — Rich Dad’s Prophecy by Robert Kiyosaki

Lesson 3: The future of neuropharmacology and mental health seems to be bright — How to Change Your Mind by Micheal Pollan

Lesson 4: Find your mission and do not deviate from it at any cost — The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

Lesson 5: You chose your response to your environment — As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

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Adrian Isaac Jimenez

Incoming Federal Consultant at Microsoft. Host of A Casted Pod. Current Business Student at Baylor University