Chapter 41 Further Reading

On Professional Practice and Expertise Development

"So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport Newport's argument that career capital (rare and valuable skills) is more important than passion in professional development directly applies to AI practice: depth of skill in AI use, combined with domain expertise, is the career capital that creates compounding advantage. His deliberate practice framework applies directly to AI skill development.

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell Gladwell's examination of expertise development (including the 10,000-hour rule, derived from Anders Ericsson's research) is relevant context for understanding the AI skill development arc. The book's deeper point — that expertise is the product of specific types of practice in specific contexts — maps onto the argument that reflective, deliberate AI practice produces expert-level skill faster than equivalent amounts of unreflective use.

"Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise" by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool Ericsson's own account of the expertise research (more rigorous than Gladwell's interpretation) distinguishes "purposeful practice" — structured, feedback-rich, focused on improving specific weaknesses — from naive practice that plateaus. The quarterly review and prompt retrospective practices in this chapter are direct applications of purposeful practice principles to AI skill development.

"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" by David Epstein Epstein's counterpoint to the specialization narrative: broad experience and the ability to transfer concepts across domains produces a different kind of expertise that may be more valuable in rapidly changing environments. Relevant context for practitioners deciding how broadly versus deeply to develop their AI expertise.

On Human-AI Collaboration

"Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane" by Brett King While focused on the broader technological augmentation of human life, King's analysis of how humans and technology co-evolve is relevant to understanding the long-term arc of the human-AI relationship in professional contexts.

"The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society" by Norbert Wiener Wiener's 1950 work on the relationship between humans and machines is startlingly prescient about the questions practitioners face today: what are humans for, in a world where machines can do more and more? The philosophical depth is unusual and worth engaging with.

"Humans + Machines: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI" by Paul Daugherty and H. James Wilson More recent and more practical than Wiener, Daugherty and Wilson examine specific patterns of human-AI collaboration across industries and identify the kinds of human capabilities that consistently matter more as AI capabilities expand. Directly relevant to the portfolio approach and skill maintenance questions in this chapter.

On Professional Identity

"Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans The design thinking approach to career development in this book provides useful frameworks for the professional identity questions AI raises. Particularly valuable: the "workview" concept (how you understand the role of work in your life) and its relationship to "lifeview" (your broader perspective on meaning and purpose). AI forces a re-examination of workview for many practitioners.

"Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown McKeown's argument for focusing on fewer, more important things rather than doing more across the board applies directly to AI practice: resist the urge to AI-assist everything and instead focus AI use on the tasks where it creates the most value. The "less but better" principle is the portfolio approach applied to professional practice broadly.

On Deliberate Practice and Reflection

"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman Kahneman's two-system model of thinking — fast, intuitive System 1 and slow, deliberate System 2 — provides useful context for understanding why reflection matters in AI use. AI can amplify both good and poor System 1 intuitions; developing the System 2 discipline to evaluate AI outputs critically is the practice goal.

"The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action" by Donald Schön Schön's 1983 work on how skilled professionals integrate knowing and doing — the concept of "reflection-in-action" and "reflection-on-action" — is perhaps the deepest theoretical foundation for the quarterly review and prompt retrospective practices in this chapter. For practitioners who want to understand why reflection makes skill development faster, this is the source.

On Long-Term Human Relationship with Technology

"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr A cautionary perspective: Carr's argument that internet use has changed cognitive patterns — shifting from deep reading to skimming, reducing sustained attention — raises the question of what AI use might do to thinking patterns over time. A legitimate concern worth engaging with rather than dismissing.

"The Glass Cage: Automation and Us" by Nicholas Carr Carr's more focused examination of automation's effects on human skill is directly relevant to the skill maintenance question. His analysis of how automation erodes skills over time — the "automation complacency" effect in aviation, the loss of spatial reasoning in GPS-enabled drivers — provides important cautionary context for practitioners thinking about AI dependency and skill atrophy.

"Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life" by Albert Borgmann Borgmann's philosophical examination of how technology changes our relationship with objects, activities, and meaning — his concept of "device paradigm" versus "focal practices" — provides deep context for the professional identity questions in this chapter. The question of which professional activities are worth preserving as "focal practices" even when technology can automate them is Borgmann's question applied to AI.