Theme
Personal Growth & Leadership
How people get better at hard things, and how they get others to follow. Practical more often than inspirational.
44 books
newest read first
True Gretch: What I've Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between
Gretchen Whitmer · 2024 · read Oct 2024Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's short, accessible leadership memoir — built around the major stress tests of her tenure…
Mindfulness: HBR Emotional Intelligence Series
Harvard Business Review · 2017 · read Jun 2024A compact HBR essay collection on mindfulness in the workplace — attention training, stress regulation, decision-making —…
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
Adam M. Grant · 2023 · read Jun 2024Adam Grant's argument that achievement is more determined by character skills, learning practices, and opportunity scaffolding…
The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery
Brianna Wiest · 2020 · read May 2024Brianna Wiest's compact self-help framework on self-sabotage as a coherent — if maladaptive — protective response, and the…
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Cal Newport · 2024 · read Apr 2024Cal Newport's follow-up to Deep Work — a slower, longer-horizon model of knowledge-work productivity built around three…
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Cal Newport · 2016 · read Mar 2024Cal Newport's argument that the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks ("deep work") is becoming…
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Anna Lembke · 2021 · read Jan 2024Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke's argument that modern abundance — of food, drugs, porn, screens, shopping — has…
Happiness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)
Harvard Business Review · 2017 · read Nov 2023A compact HBR essay collection drawing together short pieces on happiness, well-being, and engagement at work — built for…
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
Eliyahu M. Goldratt · 2004 · read Oct 2023Eli Goldratt's 1984 business novel — a struggling plant manager learns the Theory of Constraints from a mysterious mentor — that…
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
Daniel H. Pink · 2022 · read May 2023Daniel Pink's argument — built from a 16,000-person regret survey — that the cultural injunction to live "no regrets" is bad…
How Clients Buy: A Practical Guide to Business Development for Consulting and Professional Services
Tom McMakin · 2018 · read Jan 2023McMakin and Fletcher's research-based framework for what actually drives consulting and professional-services buyers — built from…
What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Bruce D. Perry · 2021 · read Jan 2023A conversational book between child psychiatrist and trauma researcher Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey, organized around the title…
How to Win Client Business When You Don't Know Where to Start: A Rainmaking Guide for Consulting and Professional Services
Doug Fletcher · 2021 · read Jan 2023Fletcher's companion to How Clients Buy (his co-authored book with McMakin), aimed specifically at consultants who deliver well…
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
Nir Eyal · 2019 · read Jan 2023Eyal's argument — interesting given he also wrote Hooked, the playbook for building habit-forming products — that distraction is…
I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else's Maze (Bk Business)
Deepak Malhotra · 2011 · read Jan 2023A short parable written as a direct response/rebuttal to Who Moved My Cheese?
The Snowball System: How to Win More Business and Turn Clients into Raving Fans
Mo Bunnell · 2018 · read Jan 2023Bunnell's framework for systematic business development in professional services, organized around the idea that BD is a…
Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control
Ryan Holiday · 2022 · read Dec 2022The second volume in Holiday's Stoic Virtues series (after Courage Is Calling), organized around self-discipline applied to body,…
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen · 2001 · read Oct 2022Allen's foundational system for handling the volume and ambiguity of modern knowledge work — the goal isn't to do more but to…
Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential
Tiago Forte · 2022 · read Oct 2022Forte's framework for using digital notes as an external memory system that captures, organizes, and recombines information into…
The Infinite Game
Simon Sinek · 2017 · read Aug 2022Sinek's application of James Carse's finite/infinite games distinction to business — arguing that companies in pursuit of a "win"…
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Ryan Holiday · 2014 · read Jul 2022Ryan Holiday's 2014 popular-Stoicism book — the volume that launched his "modern Stoicism" project and most of the subsequent…
The 12 Week Year
Brian P. Moran · 2009 · read Jun 2022Brian Moran's compact framework book on treating 12-week periods as your "year" — the argument that annual planning produces low…
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience
Brené Brown · 2021 · read May 2022Brené Brown's 2021 systematic mapping of 87 emotions — drawing on years of her research lab's qualitative coding work — organized…
Yoga and the Quest for the True Self
Stephen Cope · 1999 · read Mar 2022Psychotherapist and Kripalu Institute scholar-in-residence Stephen Cope's introduction to yoga's psychological dimensions —…
Ditch the Pitch: The Art of Improvised Persuasion
Steve Yastrow · 2014 · read Mar 2022Steve Yastrow's compact framework book on persuasion as improvisation — arguing that the "pitch" (rehearsed, one-directional,…
The Art Of Less Doing: One Entrepreneur's Formula for a Beautiful Life
Ari R. Meisel · 2016 · read Jan 2022Ari Meisel's compact framework book on his "Less Doing" methodology — a three-step optimize-automate-outsource progression…
The 4-Hour Workweek
Timothy Ferriss · 2007 · read Jun 2021Tim Ferriss's 2007 lifestyle-design manifesto — the book that popularized "lifestyle entrepreneurship," remote-work optimization,…
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
Michael Bungay Stanier · 2016 · read May 2021A compact playbook arguing that managers default to advice-giving when they should be asking, organized around seven specific…
The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win
Jocko Willink · 2018 · read Mar 2021Jocko Willink and Leif Babin's follow-up to Extreme Ownership — the corrective book addressing the failure modes that emerge when…
How to Train Your Mind: Exploring the Productivity Benefits of Meditation
Chris Bailey · 2021 · read Mar 2021Productivity writer Chris Bailey's short Audible-original treatment of meditation as a productivity practice — focused on the…
The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits
Judson Brewer · 2017 · read Jan 2021An addiction psychiatrist's argument that all habits — from smoking to scrolling to romantic obsession — run on the same…
Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day
Jay Shetty · 2020 · read Jan 2021Former monk Jay Shetty's translation of three years of ashram training into a Western self-help framework organized around…
Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter & Organize to Make More Room for Happiness
Gretchen Rubin · 2019 · read Jan 2021Gretchen Rubin's compact, aphoristic book on physical decluttering as a happiness practice — built around 150 short observations…
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Brené Brown · 2012 · read Dec 2020Brown's flagship synthesis of her shame and vulnerability research, arguing that vulnerability is not weakness but the…
Braving the Wilderness
Brené Brown · 2017 · read Dec 2020Brown's 2017 book on belonging in polarized times — drawing partly on her own experience of being targeted by both political left…
Dare to Lead
Brené Brown · 2018 · read Nov 2020Brené Brown's 2018 application of her vulnerability and shame research to organizational leadership — built around interviews…
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
Lori Gottlieb · 2019 · read Sep 2020A working psychotherapist's memoir that interleaves her own crisis (a sudden breakup) and her time on her own therapist's couch…
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
Charles Duhigg · 2012 · read Jun 2020Charles Duhigg's 2012 popular-science synthesis of habit research — built around the "habit loop" framework (cue → routine →…
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
James Clear · 2018 · read Jun 2020A practical synthesis of behavioral science into a four-step model for designing habits, organized around the claim that small…
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho · 1988 · read Jan 2020Paulo Coelho's 1988 allegorical novel — Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd, journeys to Egypt in pursuit of treasure revealed in a…
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Miguel Ruiz · 1997 · read Nov 2019A short distillation of Toltec teaching organized around four commitments meant to reduce self-inflicted suffering.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Stephen R. Covey · 1989 · read Nov 2019Covey's framework organizing personal and interpersonal effectiveness into seven cumulative habits, moving from independence to…
The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts
Gary Chapman · 1990 · read Oct 2019A pastoral counselor's framework arguing that people give and receive love in five distinct "languages" — and that most…
Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It
Dorie Clark · 2015Dorie Clark's framework for becoming a recognized thought leader in a field — through original idea development, audience…