Best Time Management in Business
In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. "― New York Times Book Review "DEEP WORK accomplishes two considerable tasks: One is putting out a wealth of concrete practices for the ambitious, without relying on gauzy clichés. Cal Newport's exciting new book is an introduction and guide to the kind of intense concentration in a distraction-free environment that results in fast, powerful learning and performance. "DEEP WORK makes a compelling case for cultivating intense focus, and offers immediately actionable steps for infusing more of it into our lives. "Cal Newport is a clear voice in a sea of noise, bringing science and passion in equal measure. "Cal Newport offers the most well-informed and astute collection of practical advice I have seen for reclaiming one's mental powers. "Deep work is the killer app of the knowledge economy: it is only by concentrating intensely that you can master a difficult discipline or solve a demanding problem. "A wonderfully entangled, intertwined, and erudite series of strategies, philosophies, disciplines, and techniques to sharpen your focus and dive deep into your work. Cal Newport, Ph.D., lives in Washington, DC, where he is a writer and an assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work. I build my days around a core of carefully chosen deep work, with the shallow activities I absolutely cannot avoid batched into smaller bursts at the peripheries of my schedule. Depth-destroying behaviors such as immediate e-mail responses and an active social media presence are lauded, while avoidance of these trends generates suspicion. …The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. … the minimum unit of time for deep work in this philosophy tends to be at least one full day. To put aside a few hours in the morning, for example, is too short to count as a deep work stretch for an adherent of this approach. Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets… it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. At the end of the workday, shut down your consideration of work issues until the next morning— no after-dinner e-mail check, no mental replays of conversations, and no scheming about how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge; shut down work thinking completely. If you need more time, then extend your workday, …trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown. 13. for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to as many as four hours— but rarely more. They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand… they’re pretty much mental wrecks."
"Deep Work is the execution/tactical companion to Newport's last book, So Good They Can't Ignore You and it doesn't disappoint. -However, these are usually also things that you need to trade in your career capital (rare skills and experience using them) in order to maximize. So Good They Can't Ignore You doesn't spend much time explaining how to actually implement deep work (deliberate practice) into you life. It tells you to focus deeply, stretch yourself cognitively and get constant high quality feedback on your work/output. If you have already bought into the idea, you can skim this part, but I found the examples and people he featured to be very interesting so it's worth a read. Newport lays out an interesting theory for 3 types of workers, Superstars, Owners and High Skill Workers and makes a convincing and important argument for the importance in the future of being able to work at higher levels of abstraction and work with intelligent machines. Meaning is a key part of Newport's argument because the whole book links back to the Passion vs. Rare Skills debate…which is a better strategy for finding a job you love? Newport give 3 theories on why deep work is meaningful, a psychological, neurological and a philosophical reason. Rule 1 gives you a bunch of strategies and examples of how to integrate deep work into your schedule. The Grand Gestures part of this chapter is really good, you learn about Bill Gates Think Week and same famous authors who go to secluded islands or build cabins to get a lot of deep work done when necessary. Newport gives a number of strategies for doing two important things: improving your ability to focus and eliminating your desire for distraction. This rule isn't as strategic as the other ones, it's mostly about making a side argument that these networking sites aren't as important is you think they are."
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER Have you ever felt the urge to declutter your work life? By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us. He can’t tell you what’s essential to every life, but he can help you find the meaning in yours.”. -- Daniel H. Pink, author of TO SELL IS HUMAN and DRIVE “Entrepreneurs succeed when they say "yes" to the right project, at the right time, in the right way. Essentialism offers concise and eloquent advice on how to determine what you care about most, and how to apply your energies in ways that ultimately bring you the greatest rewards.” -- Reid Hoffman, co-founder/chairman of LinkedIn and co-author of the #1 NYT bestseller “The Start-up of You” "Greg McKeown’s excellent new book is a much-needed antidote to the stress, burnout and compulsion to “do everything,” that infects us all. If you want to work better, not just less , you should read it too.” - Chris Guillebeau, NYT bestselling author of The $100 Startup "Great design takes us beyond the complex, the unnecessary and confusing, to the simple, clear and meaningful. -Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn "While everyone else is still leafing through Lean In or Outliers , get a competitive jump on the new year with....Essentialism... learn how to identify the right things, focus on getting them done, and forget the rest. Read Greg McKeown’s words slowly, stop and think about how to apply them to your life – you will do less, do it better, and begin to feel the insanity start to slip away.” - Robert I. Sutton, Professor at Stanford University and author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and Scaling Up Excellence. Greg offers deep insights, rich context and actionable steps to living life at its fullest. "In this likeable and astute treatise on the art of doing less in order to do better...McKeown makes the content fresh and the solutions easy to implement. He co-created the course, Designing Life, Essentially at Stanford University, was a collaborator of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Multipliers and serves as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It talks in a very clear and straightforward manner about how to simplify your life, your thinking, and your purpose to cut out all the extraneous "stuff" that continually distracts us and focus in on what's really important. I felt like it was a great use of time, it had a lot of important things to say, and it was concise in how it said it."
"The slight twist here is that rather than the material, the author ignores possessions and instead concentrates on tasks. Initially the author goes on about how busy people often don't get that much done because they are distracted by unimportant tasks impeding their work on vital tasks by being distractions. Finally, in the last maybe 30% of the book, the author branches off a bit into what an 'essentialist' is verus a 'non-essentialist' the latter is one who is still clogged up with unimportant tasks. Overall if the message is new to you, then the book is very worthwhile reading, but for most of us, we know this stuff and we're either doing it or finding some roadblock to being able to do it."
"It was because I was using every fragment of my time possible without realizing there is only more time slicing to come."
"This is an awesome book for anyone looking to simplify the way they run their life or business."
"Excellent, easy read!"
"This book is a must read for people who are seeking mastery in their personal skill development."
"This books is written for someone that wants to make a meaningful improvement in life choices. The book walks you through the principle of "Essentialism" - knowingly choosing a few things to focus on in life to have more impact and a better life."
"The Bible of business and personal productivity" — Lifehack "A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'" — Fast Company. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-do's clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists--all purportedly to free your mind to focus on whatever you're working on. (To wit, Allen, whom the New Economy bible Fast Company has dubbed "the personal productivity guru," suggests that instead of meditating on crouching tigers and hidden dragons while you wait for a plane, you should unsheathe that high-tech saber known as the cell phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.). That's where the processing and prioritizing begin; in Allen's system, it get a little convoluted at times, rife as it is with fancy terms, subterms, and sub-subterms for even the simplest concepts. Readers learn that there is no single means for perfecting organizational efficiency or productivity; rather, the author offers tools to focus energies strategically and tactically without letting anything fall through the cracks.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"His system for logging these tasks into an airtight and functional system for tracking them does take a bit of effort in the beginning and is why I procrastinated doing it in the beginning but once implemented it saves you grief 100 fold."
"Outstanding."
"He has some helpful charts but the prose is long and sloggy for me."
"I would rather stab my eyes out than read self-helpy stuff but I admit it, the advice totally changed my life."
"Getting Things Done by David Allen provides a systematic approach to using the abilities that we inherently have within ourselves to reduce daily stress and use that energy to become creative thinkers."
"GTD is the classic to organize your inputs into projects and next actions."
"I loved the first edition, but the 2015 edition was tedious to read and I didn't have the patience to get through it."
"Since the original release there has been a profound shift in the use of technology - hardware, software, mobile and cloud. 2015 finds us in much more diversified and integrated data input/output environment than what the Palm and MSOffice suite offered in 2000, and so there is a very good reason to update the "how" part of the equation to manage this new information capture and task-list ecosystem. In the new edition, the author provides some digital guideline feature specifics (software outline program should allow for sub-headings, expand/collapse ability), even more generalities, but mostly just derails the digital conversation of any 'how' by sweeping particulars under the carpet with a few ambiguities of "what" needs to be done, not "how" to do it, "Make sure you create comfort with the [computer] applications ["used for developing and capturing project plans and collateral"]. Punting on digital specifics of today's workflow world because, in his words, “the rate of innovation in this area means that any specific software program can easily be outdated, upgraded, or undermined by the next new thing", and that he has admittedly "hopped out of the fray, opting instead to provide a general model for how to evaluate the usefulness of any tool" is, for me, not useful. But whereas I was confident that I had a pretty holistic system set-up as a result of the original book (and actually, as much a result of a smaller digital footprint, and I know I'm not the exception), I now feel, with this "completely updated" edition, that I have half a system with a digital divide, a "black hole" as the author even alludes. I agree that it has helped me refine my thinking about how to use GTD in the digital age,,, i.e., I now think that I cannot rely just on this one book as a holistic model of how to get it all done ;). For anyone new to GTD, go ahead and buy this 2015 version, or save some money and buy the paperback original for a $1.50 and you'll learn the essentials that have not changed."
Best Personal Success in Business
Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek , shares the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book—a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world's top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life. To find answers, I reached out to the most impressive world-class performers in the world, ranging from wunderkinds in their 20s to icons in their 70s and 80s. This book, Tribe of Mentors , includes many of the people I grew up viewing as idols or demi-gods. • Why tennis champion Maria Sharapova believe that “losing makes you think in ways victories can’t.”. • How to truly achieve work-life balance (and why most people tell you it isn’t realistic). This reference book, which I wrote for myself, has already changed my life. He is one of Fast Company ’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show , which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"You are supposed to find an actionable nugget on every page, from some of the best people in the world. He basically sent out an email to hundreds of successful people, asking them the same questions. But unlike his "Tools of Titan" (which is one of the most valuable books you can have in your bookshelf), the informations is shallow. I like the Tools of Titans format, since it is more of Tim's distillied notes and higlights."
"The fascination with Hollywood and stardom and constantly introducing people as “billionaire” and “‘New York Times’ Bestselling Author” etc. Ah, the old Tools of Titans profiles of everyday brilliant heroes profiled elsewhere like P. Attia, R. Patrick, D. D'agostino, N. Ravikant, W. Hof; C. Sommer and P. Tsatsouline...real, complete, true people - also Gabi and Laird come to mind - who are true mentors in action, word and bravery...thank you again Tim for that. But now with Tribe we see many others who have reaped far too much pathological adoration already, too many money whores and power whores who deign to preach to us plebes, and too few everyday heroes who are truly humbling, inspiring, and unsung."
"The introduction (a few pages) by Tim is the only valuable part of the book."
"It was a massive treasure trove of wisdom and knowledge from some of the smartest people in the world. Most of the people who responded to his interview questions are not interesting people, especially the Hollywood celebrities."
"I bought this book because I was a fan of Tools of Titan even though a lot of the advice and insights can be had from Tim's podcast. I still give the book a few stars for being able to be something I can pick up casually and read a quick 2-3 page insight but there is nothing groundbreaking."
Best Business Ethics
Start with Why analyses leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Jobs and discovers that they all think in the same way - they all started with why. Simon Sinek explains the framework needed for businesses to move past knowing what they do to how they do it, and then to ask the more important question- WHY ? A perspective that is nothing short of the truth.” -MOKHTAR LAMANI, former ambassador, special envoy to Iraq SIMON SINEK , the bestselling author of LEADERS EAT LAST and TOGETHER IS BETTER, is an optimist who believes in a brighter future for humanity.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It reads a little bit like he took articles from his blog, stuck them in a large word-processing document, did some minor editing, and submitted the thing as-is for publication in order to create this book. As far as I can tell, if you're reasonably intelligent you can glean pretty much everything essential to Sinek's idea based on his TED Talk together with this understanding that "HOW" means something different in each of the two contexts he contrasts. What you WON'T get from that is his rather in-depth, incredibly clear exposé of why the "WHAT --> HOW" communication pattern requires manipulating people to some degree or another and why that is by necessity unsustainable in the long run. So in short, the book is a reasonable buy, certainly at the Kindle price, but do consider benefitting from Sinek's wisdom for free in 20 minutes first by watching his TED Talk."
"This book has inspired many thoughts as I read it, but it has helped me to truly put into perspective the age-old advice to follow your passion."
"If you're a leader this book tells you what you've always known on an instinctive level."
"I teach a college-level business course that shows people how to grow their business by word-of-mouth."
"I am confident this book has indeed the potential to change the world for the better through the life of its readers and organizations they might collaborate with."
"I did believe that the author took some leaps between an organization's existential rational and customer connections."
"The author was trying so hard to make a many-page book out of the message and it was excruciating to go through this repetition.. Save your money and (most importantly) your time and just watch the TED talk on YT.."
Best Business Mentoring & Coaching
Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek , shares the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book—a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world's top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life. To find answers, I reached out to the most impressive world-class performers in the world, ranging from wunderkinds in their 20s to icons in their 70s and 80s. This book, Tribe of Mentors , includes many of the people I grew up viewing as idols or demi-gods. • Why tennis champion Maria Sharapova believe that “losing makes you think in ways victories can’t.”. • How to truly achieve work-life balance (and why most people tell you it isn’t realistic). This reference book, which I wrote for myself, has already changed my life. He is one of Fast Company ’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show , which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"You are supposed to find an actionable nugget on every page, from some of the best people in the world. He basically sent out an email to hundreds of successful people, asking them the same questions. But unlike his "Tools of Titan" (which is one of the most valuable books you can have in your bookshelf), the informations is shallow. I like the Tools of Titans format, since it is more of Tim's distillied notes and higlights."
"The fascination with Hollywood and stardom and constantly introducing people as “billionaire” and “‘New York Times’ Bestselling Author” etc. Ah, the old Tools of Titans profiles of everyday brilliant heroes profiled elsewhere like P. Attia, R. Patrick, D. D'agostino, N. Ravikant, W. Hof; C. Sommer and P. Tsatsouline...real, complete, true people - also Gabi and Laird come to mind - who are true mentors in action, word and bravery...thank you again Tim for that. But now with Tribe we see many others who have reaped far too much pathological adoration already, too many money whores and power whores who deign to preach to us plebes, and too few everyday heroes who are truly humbling, inspiring, and unsung."
"The introduction (a few pages) by Tim is the only valuable part of the book."
"It was a massive treasure trove of wisdom and knowledge from some of the smartest people in the world. Most of the people who responded to his interview questions are not interesting people, especially the Hollywood celebrities."
"I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss and ran to the nearby Barnes and Nobles as soon as I heard that this book is released."
Best Business Etiquette
In this groundbreaking book, Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton builds on his acclaimed Harvard Business Review article to show you the best ways to deal with assholes...and why they can be so destructive to your company. This meticulously researched book, which grew from a much buzzed-about article in the Harvard Business Review, puts into plain language an undeniable fact: the modern workplace is beset with assholes. Sutton (Weird Ideas that Work), a professor of management science at Stanford University, argues that assholes—those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful—poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. Direct and punchy, Sutton uses accessible language and a bevy of examples to make his case, providing tests to determine if you are an asshole (and if so, advice for how to self-correct), a how-to guide to surviving environments where assholes freely roam and a carefully calibrated measure, the "Total Cost of Assholes," by which corporations can assess the damage.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Solid advice in a small format."
"Outstanding book."
"This book just helps you realize that everyone deals with this at work."
"Fine book, however it's a little boring and repeats itself in several chapters."
"I think every employer should read this book - it would waken some up."
"More people in positions of leadership need to read this and apply the theme addressed, Don't Allow People in Your Employ to Be Assholes!"
"First half of the book is interesting and informative but other half feels like it is repetition of the first."
Best Business Motivation & Self-Improvement
From the author: “For the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads. I’ve used dozens of the tactics and philosophies in high-stakes negotiations, high-risk environments, or large business dealings. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show , which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I have hereditary cholesterol problems and my forays into a ketogenic lifestyle dropped my particle count from ~1950 to ~1225. There are many other great things that have come as a result of my exposure to Tim's podcast, too many to list here. This is supposedly a "recipe book" (according to page xvi in the Foreword). A few guests on his podcast have amazing things to say about meditation (Sam Harris, Naval Ravikant, Kevin Rose, etc.). But there is no central place to which you can turn to find out the collected wisdom of the many guests who have delved into this topic. In fact, there's not even one central place in the book that gives a list of the commonalities between the guests. They have the discipline to turn down the good, so that they can pursue (and achieve) the great. It might teach the tactics and routines and habits of world-class performers, but there's FAR TOO MUCH here to make it valuable in showing YOU how to achieve those heights."
"This book suffers from the expectations of his previous work--Tim is honest about presenting "Tools of Titans" as sort of a glimpse of his journals/notes from his life's work, but this book loses nearly everything we've come to expect. It's WebMD with a clouded personality...it's a bit like a bound website without the hyperlinking. He's shown he's capable of completely rethinking a problem or a lifestyle or a way of doing things, and this book isn't like that at all."
"It was worth the price especially after 200+free episodes of the podcast which I enjoy every week."
"I ordered this book yesterday, and it showed up on my door step today. The book is laid out in a format that is easy to navigate should you want to go back to reference again."
"The four-hour work week was a mindset changer, the 4-hour body gave me a playbook for anything I want to do physically and the 4-hour chef showed me how to have fun learning. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. The 4 Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman. The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life."