The Top 5 Books for Productivity
If you're striving to become more productive in your work, books are the best resource to help you along the way.
We've picked our top five titles about the subject.
Productivity is a goal that we all pursue, yet many of us struggle with achieving it. This can partially be because we fall victim to a common misconception: that simply getting things done is the same as being productive.
The truth is that you don't need to add new tasks to your list every day. This most likely won't boost your productivity but leave you overwhelmed and tired. In fact, the key to productivity is the consistent accomplishment of your vital goals.
Since consistency is crucial, your productivity is more about forming good habits. This is no easy feat, though - it will require plenty of time and effort to build.
Luckily, we have a plethora of valuable resources all around us that can help us become more productive. Books are the most valuable tool in that regard - if we can resist the visual stimuli that saturate our modern environment.
If you're looking for some excellent books about productivity, here are our top picks that you should undoubtedly check out.
The Books
1. Atomic Habits
by James Clear
With the subtitle "An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones", the purpose of this book is relatively straightforward.
The author, James Clear, offers a framework through which you can make daily improvements to your habits. In addition to that framework, there are strategies for achieving just that - breaking the bad and introducing the good habits. However, the approach to the issue in this book is somewhat surprising.
Atomic Habits frames the system around your daily routines as the source of trouble. In other words, the reason why you might be struggling with changing your habits isn't in you but rather in the system you've got in place.
The book aims to change how you see success and improvement. Then, it provides you with all the essential strategies and tools to turn your habits around. The method for doing this largely relies on small behavioral changes, but the results are quite significant.
Atomic Habits is a great book for anyone looking to introduce some quality of life changes and reach personal, professional, or wellbeing goals. You can use the lessons offered on its pages to excel in sports, redefine your industry, reduce everyday stress, and everything in between.
2. Deep Work
by Cal Newport
The title of this book refers to deep work as a skill that you can develop and nurture. The subtitle, "Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World", reinforces that idea.
According to Cal Newport, the book's author, deep work is a critical skill that was once a driving economic factor. Sadly, that skill's become rare and this book aims at reintroducing it as a powerful habit.
As a skill, deep work denotes focusing on a demanding task regardless of the distractions. Mastering deep work will allow you to achieve excellent results without spending large amounts of time. This skill will also make you process complex information more quickly and build up your craftsmanship to become much more effective in your work.
As a book, Deep Work reframes the narrative around modern-day distractions. The book doesn't take the standpoint that distraction is a detriment. Instead, it focuses on the opposite - the power of focus and work ethic.
Deep Work consists of two parts. The first part emphasizes the notion that a deep work ethic provides fantastic results in every profession. The conclusions of the first part are followed by four rules that will provide you with the necessary training to build up your deep work skill. This second part of the book focuses on changing how your mind works and building habits that promote deep work.
There are plenty of stories in Deep Work with various examples of people who honed the skill to the maximum. However, actionable advice forms the core of the book. Some of the rules might seem quite rigorous, prompting you to move away from social media and even embrace boredom. Still, if you're looking for the focus that will make you more productive and successful, this is an essential guide that you shouldn't pass.
3. Eat that Frog!
by Brian Tracy
This book owes its title to the famous quote by Mark Twain, which states that if you must eat a frog in the morning, you'll at least know that you've done the worst thing that will happen that day.
The frog in question is the work you might procrastinate on - something critical that you don't necessarily feel like doing. Expanding the analogy, if you must eat two frogs, it's best to start with the largest one and do it quickly. The same goes for the most challenging task that's in front of you.
These notions are, in essence, what Eat that Frog! teaches us. The book explains the benefits of handling large, vital tasks the right way. Doing the most demanding jobs as soon as your day starts is a habit you can develop, for which the author, Brian Tracy, stresses the importance of doing without giving yourself time to think about the challenge.
"Eating the frog" is a habit most useful in leadership, but it's a principle that can easily expand to every area of your professional and private life.
Another important aspect that this book brings to light is immediate action. This doesn't mean that plenty of activity leads to accomplishment. Rather, the book focuses on which action you take and when you take it.
Eat that Frog! advises the reader to turn their dreams into goals and then act on them without hesitation. Your dreams will not amount to anything more if they remain in your mind as pure ideas.
Acting with decisiveness and focus on your goals can produce a sort of positive addiction. This effect comes from how your body reacts to the feelings that arise when you start moving towards the goal. As a result, you'll begin to subconsciously direct your efforts towards the more vital projects and soon become hooked on that feeling.
Eat that Frog! points out practice as the ultimate method of developing great skills and habits and views the mind as a muscle to train and grow in strength.
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen Covey
Since it was first published in 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has become a classic. This book was a turning point for many people as they understood the wrong direction in which their lives were moving.
But the book was more than a wake-up call. Its author, Stephen Covey, offered ways for the necessary course correction in an educational way. Furthermore, most of the methods consisted of simple changes that were within everyone's reach.
Although The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is undoubtedly a classic, it presents a model that not everyone has understood correctly. One of the issues about this book is that people tend to either read it as light literature or view it as a magic wand. In the former case, the reader won't take the advice to heart, while in the latter, they'll take the principles stated in the book at face value and adopt them only as useful phrases.
In both cases, the risk after reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is in not adopting the model presented in the book and not acting on it.
When it comes to the value of this classic for people looking for a sure way towards success, there's no doubt that the quality is there. You'll certainly find plenty of wisdom on the pages, but it's up to you to understand the book's underlying message and apply it to your life.
5. The Power of Habit
by Charles Duhigg
The Power of Habit reaches for scientific explanations of the nature of habits. Yet, the story of the purpose of habits and how we can transform them is presented in an exciting narrative that will bring the scientific side of it that much closer.
Charles Duhigg, the book's author, aims to reveal a new perspective on our nature as human beings and explain the vast potential for change that lies within us. Throughout the book, these points are reinforced with examples of individuals and businesses, some struggling with transformation and others having no issues in that regard.
By delving into the inner workings of habits, The Power of Habit convinces us that we have the ultimate say in the direction of our lives and businesses. Rather than viewing habits as a form of destiny, this book prompts us to see them as something under our control and subject to change.
Reading Your Way to Productivity
There's nothing like a fine book to bring new insights and introduce novel ideas about how we live and work. The books from our list certainly excel at just that. Take the time to devote attention to these titles and you'll discover different practical methods to restructure your habits in the most productive way possible.
After all, the best way to progress is through learning and applying new information.
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