My productivity reading list
Every Friday, I send out the AI Weekender - a short briefing on 5 interesting articles from the last week out of the world of Artificial Intelligence. In the first few lines, I always include a few personal word about AI, me, China (I live in Beijing) or life in general. This Friday marked the first issue in 2019 and I talked just quickly about how I want to be more productive this year - and my email inbox exploded with feedback and questions about self-improvement. The questions were mostly in the range of “Tim - you work as a management consultant. How do you find the time to write articles, do online courses and program neural networks?” or “Tim - how do you think you can squeeze more meaningful work out of your day?”
So, although this blog is about Artificial Intelligence and little hobby programming projects, I will write down a list of productivity books to read for you, my trusted readers, so you as well can think for yourself about how to improve your professional and personal work (Disclaimer as always: The links are mostly Amazon affiliate links, so I make a small amount if you buy a book through them). Although I feel I have been quite productive especially throughout the last years, I have learned a lot in a couple of weeks. This once again tells me that most things just don’t come “naturally”, but that training and educating yourself on whatever matter always helps.
The list is not so much about concrete time management books or motivational books. Instead, the books will make you think what is important in your working life and how to make sure that (and only that!) gets done and improved (so some career-advice is hidden in this as well). Some are counter-intuitive, like the one about not “thinking big” or the one that says that open-office floor plans are decreasing production.
My general train of thought extracted from these books is this:
Find out what the few things are that define success and progress in your field of work.
Find out what the key activities are that you must master to deliver on those few things.
Develop a mindset, habits and working methods that help you improve vigorously on these key activities.
Deliver small but constant and tangible results in these activities to stay motivated.
Cut out everything else and focus on the above.
Of course, this is easier said than done - there is a reason only a few exceptional people like Steve Jobs, Beethoven, Einstein, Hawkings and others achieved such high level of productivity in their fields. The books lay out a path for you and can help you change your thinking about career, work and productivity though.
Tell me what you think in the comments or whether I forgot a book that definitely belongs on here (I most definitely did…)! And if you were instead looking for my Artificial Intelligence Reading list, click here!
Cal Newport - So good they can’t ignore you
The book that started my current quest into changing my work habits. Cal Newport runs the productivity blog Study Hacks. It began with tips about how to become a better (or even a straight-A) student and how to “win at college”. This book is from 2016 and it proposes - and then tests - the hypothesis that “following your passion” is terrible career advice. Instead, people will find happiness in their jobs if they get really good at it. Why and how are explained with lots of anecdotes, stories and facts from studies. Go read this, it will make you think twice about that idea in your head about finally starting that bar instead of sticking to your corporate career.
Cal Newport - Deep Work
Cal Newport again: After I read (or rather listed to) the above book, I immediately bought “Deep Work”. Over Christmas, I visited my parents in Germany and was able to browse Facebook and Instagram without a VPN again. The need of a VPN in Beijing made me somewhat quit the above services since it’s just too much of a hassle. After mindlessly scrolling and liking things for a couple of minutes, I asked myself what I was actually doing with my life. Deep Work takes a look at why we are so easily distracted, what that means for our brains and how we can overcome distractions to focus on doing more “deep” instead of “shallow” work - with the goal to become really, really good at the jobs we do.
Charles Duhigg - The Power of Habit
I already read this book a while ago, but it definitely belongs into this reading list. It explores the question, why diets don’t work, why new year’s resolutions almost always fail - and how to change that. Turns out, people’s behavior consists to almost 80% of learned routines or “habits”, meaning that your energy-efficient brain at some point learned a chain of actions that worked good enough and stuck to them. Acting outside of these is hard and requires willpower on your side - that’s the reason you still lay down on the sofa when you come home in the evening instead of going to the gym. The book gives concrete instructions on how to change and use your habits to “re-program” yourself. I love it!
Carol Dweck - Mindset
There is a Google Authors Talk and a Stanford Alumni Talk by Dr. Dweck that explains the basic ideas behind this book, but if you want to dig a little deeper (or prefer reading to being lectured to), then go for the book. The key message is this: skills (and with them, your intelligence) are not fixed, but defined by how hard, good and often you train them. This means that there is no such thing as talent, no shortcuts to becoming really outstanding at something - in fact, it shows that athletes who were considered “talented” more often failed early in their careers. Meanwhile, if you adopt a “growth” mindset (accepting that you are not stupid, but just didn’t train enough), you can do anything. This is book will immediately change your thinking.
Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
I thought hard whether to include this book. After all, this is not mainly about productivity, but about life in general. It has changed my thinking (and behaviors) on many things though and I think the main message - think very carefully what you care about - applies to the workplace as well. Why do we say “yes” to so many side tasks that are of only minor relevance to our main job? Why is it hard to say no to colleagues that are quite obviously taking advantage of us? Why do we let us be distracted so easily from the important things? The book has answers to that with the added benefit of making your personal life better as well.
David Allen - Getting Things Done
This book is an absolute classic and a must-read. I’ve read it back in university and though I’ve rarely ever achieved “inbox zero”, it is a perfect guide on how to organize your work. Wether you are a student, researcher or white-collar worker in a big company, this book offers practical guidance for managing your workday.
Peter Sims - Little Bets
We often make the mistake of “thinking big” - yes, I know that this sounds counter-intuitive. But think about how often you thought “if I only had that one brilliant idea, then I can finally quit my job and be self-employed”. The book offers a different approach: do little steps and let little ideas come to fruition - and see what happens. This enables you (and corporations as well) to see what works and what doesn’t, without investing lots of time and money only to fail. It fits perfectly into the agile mindset and is a proven way to iteratively work out the big breakthroughs.
