One of the interesting things I’ve realized after learning from, reading about, and interviewing some of the most successful professionals in the world, is that we can’t separate our personal lives from our professional lives without sacrificing our productivity potential in one (or both) of those areas. The key to achieving high levels of productivity consistently is to blend it all together and focus on the few, key priorities that matter most in our lives… Whether these priorities are considered “work” or “personal” doesn’t make one any more important than the other.
The reason I’ve chosen to title this article “5 Productivity Books Every Professional Needs to Read” is because, as professionals, we tend to focus on being productive only at work; allowing our personal lives (friends, family, hobbies) to fall by the wayside.This is not productive. Nor is it healthy. Because sooner or later, it catches up to us. But not you. Not today. Because by the time you’re through here, you’ll have a solid list of best-selling productivity books you can reference and read whenever you need to revamp your workflow or tweak your way to a more productive way of life. All while maintaining that oh-so-sexy work-life balance everyone’s after these days.
#1. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
The author of The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker, is like the Godfather of modern management. In this book, Drucker provides actionable insights on how to be as effective as possible with our work — all drawn directly from his decorated career as a confidant to the CEOs of some of America’s most successful corporations. Buy the book here.
#2. Getting Things Done by David Allen
You know that feeling you get when you know there’s something you’re forgetting to do — but you just can’t remember what that something is? If you hate that feeling as much as I do, then GTD is your fool-proof guide to preventing that from ever happening again. How? Simple: the GTD methodology is all about capturing and closing every single one of your “open loops” (the things you know you need to do, but haven’t captured in a planning system you trust). Once you’ve done that, you’ve got a starting place to begin organizing and executing around every arena of your life. Buy the book here.
#3. The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
The ONE Thing advocates a simple path to success: determine your ONE most important priority in every major category of your life — and then simply work backwards from there; chunking down your own “one thing” into smaller single things that you can do this year, this month, this week, this day, and in this very moment. Buy the book here.
#4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
If there’s one book on this list that you need to read in order to get it together across every arena of your life, it’s this one. Unless you’ve been hibernating over the last couple decades, it’s very likely that you’ve heard of The 7 Habits. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s measure of just how much of an impact this book has had on the lives of the millions of people who’ve read and put it’s principles into practice. Buy the book here.
#5. The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo
What if you could start getting more done with less stress and overwhelm? What if you could finally beat procrastination? What if… you could actually enjoy doing your work and managing your time? If you’ve got issues maintaining your focus for extended periods of time, then The Pomodoro Technique’s unique approach to productivity might be just what you need in order to get your productivity where it needs to be. Buy the book here.
Let’s get productive.
Now that you’ve got this list of books, there’s only one question left… Which one do you read first? Should you go out and get them all right now? Should you read them all at once? So many options. So little time. Ultimately, it’s totally your decision what you do with this list and how you apply it to your life and career. But if I may, here’s what I would suggest you consider as you get started:
- Subscribe to a book summary site, like FlashNotes Book Summaries to get the key-takeaways from the books on this list.
- If you’d prefer to read an entire book, I would highly suggest that you read just ONE book at a time. Sometimes, when we see something new and exciting, we have tendency to want to do/learn/read it all at once… and as we all know, this is nearly impossible to do without stressing ourselves out. So, choose a book. And then commit to reading it from start to finish.
- If you’re in a rush, try Audiobooks, or Audio Summaries.
- Finally, if you’re in a super rush, checkout some YouTube video book summaries, like this one.
