Page Turners: Books You Won’t Want to Put Down.
Mastery by Robert Greene
I could have put any of Robert Greene’s books on this list, but this one was the most powerful for me.
There are proven steps you can take to achieve mastery in a discipline. Don’t accept the notion that you were either born with talent or you were. Analyze the path of greatness and you too can become great.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn to trust and listen to your intuition
- Mastery takes discipline, and discipline is a muscle that can be developed
- Optimize for learning, not for money. money will follow
- Find a mentor, but you must be someone that a mentor would want to take under their wing
Challenge everything you learn (even from your mentors) and come up with your own path - Learn to embrace criticism and failure, and be grateful for the opportunity to learn and improve as a result of your mistakes
- Develop your social intelligence and the ability to see/understand things from other perspectives
- Don’t judge others – simply observe rather than projecting your own thoughts, emotions, or insecurities
- Learn to speak through your work
Try to see yourself as other see you - Always be open and receptive to new ideas that challenge conventions
- Always maintain a sense of duty and purpose.
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Ryan is one of my favorite authors, and this is one of his best works. In this book, Ryan shares a modern take on the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. It will help you overcome any situation in life with endurance and resilience.
Key Takeaways:
- Separate yourself from the situation and ask “If I was advising myself, as an objective observer, what advice would I give?”
- Large obstacles have large weaknesses – identify and use them against the situation and figure out how to come out on top.
- Use your will to accept what you cannot change and change the things you can.
- How to turn your problems into your biggest strengths by:
Altering your perspective — Don’t deceive others, but rather properly orient yourself
Always stay moving – courage is really just taking action
Fail quickly and cheaply, then iterate. Failure doesn’t have to be bad.
Follow the process – in the chaos of life, having a process provides a way
Think progress not perfection
Being outmatched isn’t always a disadvantage – it forces creativity and new ways of thinking
Use the obstacles against itself – Find a way to make the obstacle defeat itself
Seize the offensive – don’t shy away from challenges, but rather lean into them
Focus on something greater than yourself – if you can’t solve something for yourself, at least make it better for others.
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This book gives you the tools you can use to maximize your potential.
Key Takeaways:
- Not all practice is created equal learn Deep Practice. There’s a specific kind of practice that increases skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice
Everyone has dreams, but few have the fire to turn those dream into ambition. You need a higher level of commitment. Understand how these signals work for you and it will help you ignite your passion and catalyze skill development. - Deep practice harnesses the benefits of through three principles: chunking, repetition, and recognition.
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Have you ever been extremely busy by felt like you didn’t get any work done?
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.
Key Takeaways:
There are four strategies for deep work, all of which require intention. Find what works best for you:
- The monastic approach. This entails shutting yourself out from distraction completely for a prolonged period of time.
- The bimodal approach. Set a 4-6 hour block each day for deep work, for example, where you lock yourself in your office, similar to the monastic approach.
- The rhythmic approach. This chunks down your work into even shorter time blocks (similar to the Pomodoro technique), and relies a calendar to track your progress.
- The journalistic approach. If you have a busy daily routine, this works well. What you do is to simply dedicate any, unexpected free time to deep work.
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
This book goes hand-in-hand with the The Power of Habit in my opinion. It shares lessons on how to focus our strength, resist temptation, and redirect our energy.
The bottom line is that we can’t reach our goals without first learning to harness self-control.
Key Takeaways:
- Willpower is like a muscle. you need to learn to build it. The more you develop, the stronger it will get.
Willpower is like a muscle. if you use it too much at once, it gets worn out.
Set clear goals (and make sure they don’t compete with your other goals), but leave flexibility for your willpower.
4 steps for building willpower and delaying gratification a little bit every day
Step 1: Pick a habit you already do daily
Step 2: Make it harder to execute by making it more difficult, taking longer or shorter to complete it, or completing it in a better way, which requires you to be more thorough.
Step 3: Do it for 7 days in a row
Step 4: Rinse and repeat
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
If you’ve heard of the “10,000 Hour Rule,” then you’ve heard of Anders Ericsson’s work, but you may not know the entire story.
His work has been both lauded and debated, but it’s finally time to properly examine the truth.
Key Takeaways:
- The path professionals take is called “purposeful practice” and it consists of four parts.
- When you practice in a mature field of expertise and have someone to guide or mentor you, purposeful practice becomes deliberate.
- True genius isn’t an innate talent but the mere result of years of deliberate practice.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
Key Takeaways:
- People with a fixed mindset - those who believe that their abilities are fixed –are less likely to flourish. These people think "This was the way I was born. Therefore, this is how I’ll always be."
- People with a growth mindset – those who believe that abilities can be developed – have the capacity to reach outstanding accomplishments. These people tell themselves "I can achieve whatever I set my mind to."
- Turn challenges and failure into motivation and creative problem-solving
- Don’t ever give up. If you reach a plateau, keep your true north star goal in mind
- Surround yourself with people with positivity, grit, determination, and passion (they have a growth mindset).
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
Achievement isn’t reserved for only talented individuals, but for those with passion and perseverance.
Grit is about what creates outstanding achievement in people. Through her own story of success, research, science, and interviews with high achievers from various fields, Angela Duckworth reveals what it takes to persevere in any situation.
Key Takeaways:
- Grit = perseverance + passion + purpose
- We obsess over talent because it protects our ego – if we believe we either have it or we don’t, we don’t have to feel bad about not measuring up.
- Effort has a much greater impact on achievement than talent.
Combine small, low-level, daily goals with a larger vision to stay consistently motivated.
Grit is a change within .
Interest: enjoy what you’re doing
Practice: deliberate practice to improve on your weaknesses to constantly improve
Purpose: know that your work matters
Hope: believe in yourself. Have a growth mindset.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
This classic is still a must read. As much as I love books like Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and all of the other classics, I think this has the most practical applications today. Don’t get me wrong – those other most definitely do as well, but I’d start here.
In this book, you’ll discover 7 habits of personal and professional effectiveness. It will change your view of how the world works, and lead you to more success.
Key Takeaways:
- Be Proactive. Work from the center of your influence and constantly expand it. Never sit and wait – waiting for problems to happen before taking action is a losing game.
- Begin with the End in Mind. Envision what you want in the future so you can plan and work towards it. To be effective, you need to act based on principles and constantly mind your mission. Understand how people make decisions.
- Put First Things First. Leadership in the outside world begins with a personal vision and personal leadership. Priority should be given to the Important and Urgent activities. Important and Non-Urgent too often get neglected. Unimportant but Urgent problems waite too much time.
- Think Win-Win: Value and respect people by understanding a "win" for all is ultimately the best long-term outcome. Thinking Win-Win is a character-based code for collaboration.
- Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Use empathic listening to genuinely understand a person, which compels them to reciprocate and have an open mind.
- Synergize: Combine the strengths of different people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals that no one could have reached alone.
- Sharpen the Saw: Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable and effective lifestyle. Exercise for physical renewal, pray often (meditation, yoga, etc.) and read as much as you can for mental renewal.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankle
Man’s Search For Meaning details holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s horrifying experiences in Nazi concentration camps, along with his psychological approach of logotherapy, which is also what helped him survive and shows you how you can – and must – find meaning in your life.
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Fredrick Nietzsche
Love – experience something or encountering someone
Work – accomplishing something
Dignity in suffering – attitude you take in the face of unavoidable suffering
You can get used to anything – The human body is tougher than you think.
You can resist your environment’s influence
Frankl argues that we are not bound to our environments. Yes, the environment can be a harsh determiner of our actions but it is not fate. We do have a choice:
Without hope, meaning, a future, death will come soon
Logotherapy is all about constructing a future for oneself. It’s all about restoring one’s sense of purpose. Logotherapy is the pursuit of that meaning for one’s life.
Find meaning of life in your unique, personal situation. It arises moment by moment from the problems you experience.
When figuring out what to do with your life, think about what the world needs and how you can make it happen. The self can only be actualized once it is transcended.
Love has nothing to do with ownership, jealousy and constraints.
When you are no longer capable of changing a situation, change yourself.
I hope you would enjoy this article :’)
Recommend me some more books as well.
