The most productive, wealthy and highly efficient people devote at least 30 minutes a day to reading. If it works for them, it could work for you. You can make 2018 your best year yet.
These are the books many people will read to get better, smarter, improve how they think or change how they work. They are books I am most excited about. This year, make a better resolution: Read more books.
From high-profile names to lesser-known authors whose books are worthwhile reads, the list below is a roundup of 18 titles coming in the first half of the year to consider adding to your bookshelf.
1. The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course by Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee, and George Ward
“The Origins of Happiness is a wonderful book. It presents a new look at what causes human well-being, and carefully analyzes the policies and programs that can enhance it.” — Ed Diener, coauthor of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth
“The most significant contribution of The Origins of Happiness lies in its integrated approach to life satisfaction over the life cycle. The authors combine cohort studies, longitudinal panels, and cross-section surveys to provide fuller perspectives. No one else has done this in such a systematic way.” — John F. Helliwell, University of British Columbia
2. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke
Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result.
By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don’t, you’ll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You’ll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run.
3. Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life by Raoul Davis Jr, Kathy Palokoff (Author), and Paul Eder
The heart of the book features stories about successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, organizational leaders, and forward-looking thinkers from a variety of professions. They describe the factors and conditions that ignited their lives and helped them become achievers.
“Add this book to your library! Firestarters gives you a smart new way to achieve positive behavioral change that will improve your life and the world around you.” — Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times–bestselling author of Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
4. Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt
“Your Best Year Ever is full of compelling, real-life stories of average people who have achieved extraordinary results. Please take my advice and only buy this book if you want to be able to look back in twelve months and say, ‘Now that was my best year ever!’” — John C. Maxwell, author, speaker, and leadership expert
“Generous goals work (if you write them down) and powerful books work (if you read them). Michael Hyatt has created a fun, fast way to find your dreams and then turn them into reality.” — Seth Godin, author, Linchpin
5. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by
Daniel H. Pink
Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.
“Pink should change many people’s understanding of timing with this book, which provides insights from little-known scientific studies in an accessible way… By the book’s end, readers will be thinking much more carefully about how they divide up theirs days and organize their routines.” — Publishers Weekly
6. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others.
“The most prophetic voice of all . . . [Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher . . . someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone.” — John Gray, GQ
7. Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean
“I have to recommend Michelle Dean’s Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion, a delicious cultural history that comes out in April. It brings together some of the most influential social critics of the 20th century, including Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, and shows how these glamorous iconoclasts forged their singular careers. Dean makes the convincing argument that women’s voices―if not necessarily feminist ones―did far more to define the last century’s intellectual life than we realize.”―Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
8. Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More by Morten Hansen
“In this groundbreaking book, Morten Hansen delivers on the genius of “and:” rigorous and relevant, research-driven and well-written, empirical and empowering, timeless and practical, full of big concepts and useful tips. Hansen’s work is truly distinctive in the genre of professional effectiveness, and a tremendous contribution. This is a book I will read more than once, and reference forever.” — Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, co-author of Built to Last and Great by Choice
9. The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden
Haden shows us how to reframe our thinking about the relationship of motivation to success. He meets us at our level — at the beginning of any big goal we have for our lives, a little anxious and unsure about our way forward, a little burned by self help books and strategies that have failed us in the past — and offers practical advice that anyone can use to stop stalling and start working on those dreams.
10. The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything
by Paul Vigna, and Michael J. Casey
Casey and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and not-so-trusted) institutions on which we’ve relied for centuries with a radical model that bypasses them. The Truth Machine reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion that will accompany this shift.
11. The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku
The #1 bestselling author of The Future of the Mind traverses the frontiers of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and technology to offer a stunning vision of man’s future in space, from settling Mars to traveling to distant galaxies.
Formerly the domain of fiction, moving human civilization to the stars is increasingly becoming a scientific possibility — and a necessity. Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species.
12. Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI
by Paul R. Daugherty, and H. James Wilson
Based on the authors’ experience and new research with 1,500 organizations, the book reveals how companies are using the new rules of AI to leap ahead on innovation and profitability, as well as what you can do to achieve similar results.
It describes six entirely new types of hybrid human + machine roles that every company must develop, and it includes a “leader’s guide” with the five crucial principles required to become an AI-fueled business. Human + Machine provides the missing and much-needed management playbook for success in our new age of AI.
13. Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don’t Be Evil! Connect the World!) — and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back.
Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao’s high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they “won’t lower their standards” just to hire women.
14. Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success by Benjamin Hardy
“If you want to get more done, don’t worry about willpower — focus on motivation. Challenging the dominant view of self-control as a muscle, Benjamin Hardy reveals that productivity is really about clarity and commitment.”―Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take
“In an age when few people think deeply about life, Benjamin Hardy is the exception. Read this book if you want to be better.”―Jeff Goins, bestselling author of The Art of Work
15. Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation by Bob Roth
“Transcendental Meditation is the single most important reason for any success I have had in my life. Bob Roth’s Strength in Stillness masterfully distills the essence of this technique so that anyone can understand how it works — and why they should learn it.” — Ray Dalio
“My wife and I love Bob. He’s really helped us and our son, Oscar, who was a stressed, anxious kid. Now I see him blossoming and owning the things that make him unique. In many ways, Bob saved him during a difficult time.” — Hugh Jackman
16. The Career Manifesto: Discover Your Calling and Create an Extraordinary Life by Mike Steib
“Mike has long been a sought after mentor and revered manager, and for obvious reason: his practical, inspirational, no-nonsense advice works. This is the book that I will give to all of the motivated professionals that come through my door with questions about how to achieve their career, and life, aspirations.” — Jesse Haines, Director of Marketing, Google
17. Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being by Shawn Achor
In his highly anticipated follow-up to The Happiness Advantage, Achor reveals a better approach. Drawing on his work in 50 countries, he shows that success and happiness are not competitive sports. Rather, they depend almost entirely on how well we connect with, relate to, and learn from each other.
Just as happiness is contagious, every dimension of human potential — performance, intelligence, creativity, leadership ability and health — is influenced by those around us.
18. The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work the Way You Like. Have the Life You Want by Elaine Pofeldt
“Read The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business to learn strategies you can start using now to build a high-revenue business that gives you the freedom to lead the life you want. Pofeldt will convince you that you have more power to do so than you think!” — Stew Friedman, author of Total Leadership and Leading the Life You Want, practice professor of management at Wharton, and director of Wharton Work/Life Integration Project
“In an era when freelancing, small office/home office, and one-person businesses are exploding, Elaine Pofeldt has written a definitive guidebook for any would-be entrepreneur who is looking to brainstorm, grow, sell, and succeed.” — Gene Marks, CPA at the Marks Group PC
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