1: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations. On Fridays or over the weekend, I try to share some wisdom or something I’m thinking about or working on.
May 4th will mark seven years of writing RiseWithDrew every weekday. Haven’t missed a day except for holidays.
For the last several years, I’ve done an overview or retrospective of the books I wrote about in the prior year.
2: In the 52 weeks of 2025, I wrote about 22 different books, plus one week where I shared my annual goal-setting system.
The two books I focused on most in 2025 were The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life by Sahil Bloom (seven weeks) and Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell (six weeks).
I wrote about two books for four weeks: Will Guidara‘s Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect and Ron Shaich‘s Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations.
Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff was a three-week feature.
One change I made this year was writing about most books for two consecutive weeks. Sometimes I returned later to write more, while in other cases I selected the most important parts to share.
Five new books got two weeks each: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, The AI-Driven Leaderby Geoff Woods, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, The Genius Zone by Gay Hendricks, and Uptime by Laura Mae Martin.
There were five books I wrote about one week each: David McCullough’s John Adams, Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning, Rachel Barr’s How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend, and one final week for David Brooks’s How to Know a Person, one of the books I wrote about repeatedly in 2024.
There were several other books from 2024 that I finished up writing about in 2025, including Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia (2 weeks), The Good Life by Dr. Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz (2 weeks), 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy (3 weeks), CEO Excellence by McKinsey consultants Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra (3 weeks), and The Meaning Revolution by Fred Kofman (3 weeks).
3: Friday/weekend posts, I reflected on life through three books: Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (my favorite book of the year), Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, and What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living by Diane Button.
I love books, and all of these books improved my life in a real way in 2025. On to 2026!
More next week!
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Reflection: What were the most meaningful lessons or insights I gained in 2025, and in what specific ways did I apply them in my life or work?
Action: Journal about my answers to the questions above.
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