The 15 Best Productivity Books of All Time (2024)
Welcome to our Best Productivity Books Collection. Here you’ll find summaries of the best books on productivity, designed to help you with time management, motivation, and goal achievement.
Deep Work is about focusing deeply so you can thrive in your professional career. Cal Newport says reducing distractions and increasing our ability to concentrate will allow us to learn new skills faster and produce higher quality work.
"Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not." —Cal Newport
Why should you read it? In a world where the siren song of distractions is almost impossible to resist, Cal Newport's "Deep Work" emerges as the lighthouse guiding us back to productivity and meaningful work. Newport champions the invaluable skill of deep work: the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks. He teaches us that in the age of superficiality, the depth of your focus determines the depth of your success. 🏆
Atomic Habits by James Clear is about how small 1% improvements in our daily habits can lead to remarkable results and change your life. This is a practical guide to building good habits and breaking bad habits. The Four Laws of Behaviour Change say to make good habits: obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
"Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity." —James Clear
Why should you read it? When I picked up "Atomic Habits," I didn't expect much. I've read tons of self-help books for my website over the last several years, and they often say the same things. But this book was different. James Clear basically summarizes ALL the best strategies on habit formation in a way that is incredibly... well, "Clear." Best of all, he focuses on making tiny improvements, not big leaps, showing how small daily changes can really add up. I was surprised how much I liked it. It's a book I plan to read again every few years. 📈
Getting Things Done is a system to help us be more organized and productive. It basically turned into a popular movement during the early 2000's. David Allen says we can feel in control of our busy work lives, simply by learning to manage our daily tasks effectively.
"Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them." —David Allen
Dopamine Nation explains how to break bad habits using the neuroscience of dopamine, the "pleasure molecule" in our brains. If you want to retrain your brain to like doing hard things, Dr. Anna Lembke shares tools that may help like dopamine fasting, self-binding, truth-telling and leaning into pain.
"The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind." —Anna Lembke, MD
Why should you read it? Imagine a book that helps you understand why we're all seemingly addicted to things like coffee, Instagram likes, or that that sweet, sweet rush of completing a to-do list. Dr. Anna Lembke takes us on a journey through the neuroscience of pleasure and pain, proving that sometimes, too much of a good thing is exactly as bad as it sounds. 🍩
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is about becoming more effective at reaching our goals and leading others. Stephen Covey says his teachings are based on timeless principles like personal responsibility, empathetic listening, and treating others with fairness.
"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." —Stephen Covey
Why should you read it? This book teaches 7 key principles that you can apply to almost any area of life, kind of like a Swiss Army knife for personal development. Stephen Covey shifts focus from the surface-level pursuits of busyness and status to the character ethic - which says true success is about who we are, not just what we achieve. After all, being busy isn't a personality trait, no matter how much we pretend it is on social media. 🤷♂️
"Eat That Frog!" by Brian Tracy is a guide to stop procrastinating, increase productivity, and master time management. It teaches you to tackle the hardest tasks first, helping you get more done and make each day more focused and productive.
"Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal." —Brian Tracy
The 4-Hour Workweek is about building a passive income business so we can escape the usual 40-hour workweek, and design our ideal lifestyle. Tim Ferris also shows how we can improve our productivity by following the 80/20 rule and a 'low information diet.'
"If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think." —Tim Ferriss
Why should you read it? This book is practically the bible of the "digital nomad" movement, where some people figured out how to work from their laptop anywhere in the world. To most people it sounds like a complete fantasy: Imagine traveling the world, indulging your curiosity, all while your business runs itself. But Tim Ferriss shares many inspirational case studies of people who have done it successfully. It's kind of like finding out that unicorns are real—and they know how to code websites! This book has opened the eyes of countless people that a radically different, unconventional type of lifestyle is possible.
The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg is a deep dive into the science of how habits work. If you want to change your habits but don't know where to start, this book can help you. It provides a simple 3-step formula called "The Habit Loop" to break bad habits and build better ones.
"Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort." —Charles Duhigg
Why should you read it? Charles Duhigg's book first popularized the habit loop - the idea that all our habits follow a cycle of "cue-routine-reward." More importantly, he gave practical ways we can "hack" the steps of this loop to take back control of our habits and our lives. Before Atomic Habits, this was THE go-to book on habits and it is still well worth reading. (For psychology nerds, the habit loop was actually based on the psychologist B.F. Skinner's work that described a 3-step process of stimulus, response, and reinforcement. Basically, his theory explains why your dog turns into a slobber machine the second you rustle their treat bag. 🐶
Thinking, Fast and Slow explains how people make decisions using two mental systems: "fast" thinking is instinctive and emotional, while "slow" thinking is deliberate and logical. Daniel Kahneman helps us understand our when our mind fall into common biases and irrational shortcuts, so we can make better decisions in the future.
"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth." —Daniel Kahneman
The 5AM Club is about learning to wake up at 5 a.m. and follow a morning routine, so we can become more self-disciplined, productive, and happy. Robin Sharma wrote this self-help book as a story, with a Billionaire mentoring an Entrepreneur and Artist, who were struggling with distraction and procrastination.
"All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end." —Robin Sharma
The War of Art explains how you can do more creative work and overcome your procrastination, distraction, and paralysis. Steven Pressfield says inside all of us is Resistance, a tricky enemy that sabotages our dreams, and it is the source of our fears, doubts, excuses, and poor habits.
"The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying." —Steven Pressfield
Grit says being a top achiever is less about natural talent and more about your "grit," which means working consistently and staying interested in one direction for multiple years. Angela Duckworth shares research on how we can become grittier, and help others do so too.
"Here’s what science has to say: passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening." —Angela Duckworth
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is about the hilarious wisdom and many business failures of Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. He shares pragmatic strategies for increasing our odds of success—by using systems over goals, building a talent stack and repeating (mysteriously powerful) affirmations.
"The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends." —Scott Adams
Essentialism by Greg McKeown is a productivity book that helps you get more done by doing less. It teaches you to focus only on what’s really important and say no to things that distract you. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by too many tasks, you'll learn how to prioritize and concentrate on what truly matters in your life and work.
"If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will." —Greg McKeown
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan emphasizes focusing on the single most important task in any area of your life to achieve extraordinary results. The book teaches the power of prioritization, guiding readers to simplify their approach by identifying and acting on the "one thing" that will make the biggest impact in their goals, careers, or personal lives.
"What’s the ONE thing you can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?" —Gary Keller
Why should you read it? I read The ONE Thing, and it completely shifted how I think about productivity. Instead of trying to juggle everything at once, this book taught me to focus on what truly matters—what will drive the biggest results. If you feel overwhelmed with too many tasks or unsure where to start, The ONE Thing will show you how simplifying and narrowing your focus can lead to extraordinary success.