Today I will share my best finds — books about productivity, time management, self-management, etc. I have collected everything in one material for your convenience.
“Freedom from Illusion: The Book of Ego” — Rajneesh Osho
This book is helpful for everyone. It helps to understand what a person’s ego is, to notice it in yourself, and when you understand this, it becomes easier for you to work and live. You start to respect other people and yourself more
“How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”- Dale Carnegie
There are a lot of examples of different anxiety, different people, from their own experience, how they coped with it, what it led to and what it can lead you to. The book is quite popular, probably everyone knows it, but few read it, because they thought they did not experience such a feeling. But everyone has it. Absolutely.
“Rework”, “Remote”, “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work” — Jason Fried, David Hensson
A very cool series about the approach to work from the guys from Basecamp. “Rework” is about the approach to business. “Remote” is about remote work, a very cool book, it was literally ahead of its time. “Don’t go crazy at work” is about how to find a balance between work and home. In some places, the book, of course, is contradictory, because the guys say: “I got up at 6 o’clock and went home!”, But I can’t do that. At the same time, right now, I realize that I read it almost a year ago, and since then something has changed in my thinking, I began to understand more what they were talking about. If you don’t want to read all three, start with the last one. Very, very, very recommended.
“Freakonomics”, “When to Rob a Bank” — Steven Levitt, Steven Dubner
These are books about non-standard solutions to situations and how people draw the wrong conclusions. Help develop thinking. Levitt and Dubner are cool guys who say really cool things.
“Getting Things Done” — David Allen
This is the story of the inbox. It has changed my life a lot, in terms of comfort, stress and work with tasks.
“How to Win Friends and Influence People”- Dale Carnegie
A book about communication, about the fact that you need to pay attention to people in order to create reliable connections, friendships, etc. I read it at the age of twelve, and it made a strong impression on me that has not gone away to this day.
“The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement” — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
A book about systems constraint theory and productivity. The bottom line is that there are some things that need to be done first, and these are always some major limiting factors.
“Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeon
The book has a second title — “The Conscious Desire to Do Less”. You need to get used to the idea that there is no lack of time. There is a lack of priorities. This is a critical shift that must occur for every person.
“The 4-Hour Workweek”, “Tools Of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers” — Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss has a podcast where he tries to decompose the effectiveness of every person he invites (be it Schwarzenegger or the CrossFit world champion or the founder of Instagram). Then he just took all these things and distilled them into tips in the book “Tools Of Titans”. You open and read it like an encyclopedia. And in The 4-Hour Workweek, he gives a huge number of different tools and tactics for personal effectiveness.
“Ready For Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life” — David Allen
It is very short, written as a set of advice chapters. There is nothing superfluous, no stories, no personal biography, as authors like to write. It’s just a bunch of tips.
“The Subtle Art of Giving a Fuck” — Mark Manson
I really like this book, because there are a huge number of examples from his life, or from the life of some corporal in the Japanese army during World War II.