We all at some point or another have had a really productive day. A day where everything is clicking and nothing goes wrong. But we have all also had a really unproductive day. A day where we can’t seem to get even a simple task completed.
Most of us hope to have more productive days than unproductive. But knowing how to be more productive is difficult and many people don’t know where to start.
Well, here is a place to start. Here is a list of five books to read to become a more productive person:
Deep Work by Cal Newport
It is now more difficult than ever before to simply focus.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” wrote Blaise Pascal in the 1600’s. When Pascal wrote this, there was no internet. No social media. No T.V’s. Yet Pascal noticed there were still people who struggled to sit alone without stimulation.
Imagine if Pascal was alive today!
Deep Work is all about not allowing distractions to impact our ability to work.
“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction,” wrote Newport in Deep Work.
Undistracted, uninterrupted work is what Newport would classify as Deep Work.
With Deep Work, you can take your productivity and production to another level.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
If you have a desire to become a productive person, you must build productive habits. And often, it can be the small habits that make the biggest difference.
In Atomic Habits, author James Clear writes about how small habits can make a big difference.
“If you can get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done,” wrote Clear.
Being a productive person is not about working 24/7 with no breaks (this is a common misconception). Instead, it is about forming productive habits. It is about making the small choices on a daily basis that lead towards success.
Clear’s book details how we can hack our own psychology to make better choices.
The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma
Waking up early is something that I have always struggled with.
I think that I am just naturally a night owl. But the few times that I have actually made waking up early a habit, I have become insanely productive.
The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma is a fascinating book that goes over all of the benefits of waking up early.
The book follows a story about a billionaire who decides to mentor an entrepreneur and a struggling artist. The billionaire goes in depth about particular strategies on how to “win the morning.”
For a person who normally spends their mornings in bed, this book was literally a giant wake up call.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
I read this book for the first time when I was a freshman in high school. This was the first book on productivity that I read, and it completely changed the way I went about completing work.
In the book, Stephen Covey goes over seven important habits.
Some self-help books focus on changing a person’s attitude or mindset. Covey doesn’t waste any time with that. Instead, he dives right into the real actions that we can take to become more productive.
Reading this book set me off on the journey to become a more effective and productive person. If you read it, I think that it will have a similar effect.
The Dip by Seth Godin
A lot of us think of quitting as a bad thing. And sometimes it is. But sometimes, quitting can be the most productive choice that we can make.
“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time,” wrote Godin.
Being a productive person is not about pouring all of your waking hours into a project that is unsuccessful. Being productive is being smart enough to know your project isn’t working.
Being productive is knowing when to quit — and as Godin calls it — knowing when to “stick.”
The Dip teaches us to better understand when we should quit and when we should stick.