Top 5 Books For Improving Productivity
I’ve been reading and learning with an insatiable desire to improve my effectiveness. The following books are my top 5 and I highly recommend listening to them!
Why listening instead of reading?
Listening can be done at the same time as other activities like exercise and it takes a lot less effort so you are more likely to actually do it. Keep in mind just listening is not going to benefit you much (i.e. listening how to play a piano will do nothing for you if you don’t practice). You have to practice what you learn by doing.
#5 Leadership and Self Deception : Getting Out of The Box
This book was part of an executive education session and it changed my perspective massively. The key premise in the book is that it’s not what we do, but who we are that matters. When we act in a way that is consistent with what we believe is right, then lots of motivational, teamwork, and other issues disappear.
#4 Indistractable
This book talks about one of the main reasons we do not achieve what we want is because of distractions. A lot of these distractions are intentionally created by businesses to make their products addictive. Some of the distractions are our way of avoiding things we believe will be unpleasant. Lots of great actionable gold here.
#3 Getting to Yes
Getting to Yes talks about how to negotiate in a principle based approach. The premise of the book is that we are all negotiators wether we recognize that or not. We negotiate things with our spouse, kids, friends, co-workers, and so forth. Effective negotiation is actually a quest to find mutually beneficial solutions to a problem (i.e. win-win) solutions. When we strive to do this, not only do we find solutions that are better than we could have ever imagined ourselves, but we also strengthen and build relationships with others which will be mutually beneficial in the future as well.
#2 Atomic Habits
A fantastic book that brings to light why we do certain things and how they become habits. The book talks about how we can re-program our habits by re-organizing our space and making tweaks to how we do things so that its easier and more automatic. Fascinating and very applicable.
#1 – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
In my mind this is the foundation book for all other effectiveness/productivity books. This is not a coincidence because the author has done a lot of studying and teaching and neatly organized the 7 main points he has seen over and over again in so many other sources and observations. After reading this book and moving on to others, I keep seeing the same concepts repeat in other books in different ways. I have listened to this book at least 10 times and every time I picked up some new nuance and noticed more connections. Very deep, very amazing!
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