Whether you’re into personal development, history, or fiction, books are a great source of education and entertainment. Over the past few years, I’ve been reading A LOT of non-fiction books that have helped shared my perspective in life.
Back in 2020, I’ve shared my top 5 favorite books that’s changed my life pre-pandemic. Since then, I’ve read a few more books that I would like to share to you that has highly inspired me to live a more intentional life.
Book 1: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*CK (Mark Manson)
(Purchase Link: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson)
Mark Manson is a legend! As you can tell from the title, Mark Manson is not your typical personal development/self-help author. He shares real-life stories to share his life lessons while backing them up with science/research. Mark challenges the idea that life is about avoiding struggles. He also challenges what your definitions of successes may be, and that your values will help you define what’s metrics to track instead.
This book is definitely a foundational book in my perspective on how to live an intentional life. If you’re willing to get some tough love, Mark Manson’s book is definitely the one to check out! He throws a lot of explicits throughout the book, so if you’re uncomfortable with that sort of writing, feel free to check out the other books below.
Book 2: Essentialism (Greg McKeown)
(Purchase Link: Essentialism - Greg McKeown)
Ok, I’ll admit, this book is is not technically new from my 2020 video. But this one is too good to not re-mention in this blog post! For so long, I’ve struggled with being a “Yes” Man all the time. I felt like I always had to do things for people out of obligation. I was proud of myself for being busy and not having enough sleep.
McKeown challenges the idea that being busy is a badge of honor. He explains that if you’re spreading yourself too thin with so many things, you’re most likely making little-to-no progress on all of them.
He explains t the most essential things in your life are the ones that provide you the most value. He help you create a new mindset around priorities and gives you the step-by-step strategies to say “No” to the things that aren’t important in your life.
BooK 3: Effortless (Greg McKeown)
(Purchase Link: Effortless - Greg McKeown)
Another amazing book by Greg McKeown, this books also challenges another perspective on life: that all things that are worth working towards are difficult to achieve.
Greg shares countless examples of effortless and successful pursuits to success through a three-part framework:
Effortless State (mindset)
Effortless Action
Effortless Results
I personally struggled with finding the effortless solutions to certain challenges. This book (plus my coach, Khe Hy) helped me finally search for more easy paths to solve my problems. I’ve reformatted my podcast from an interview-style video podcast to an audio-only one with a recurring co-host. My experiences have been SO MUCH better since then, and I couldn’t have done it without this book!
Book 4: Atomic Habits (James Clear)
(Purchase Link: Atomic Habits - James Clear)
Habits (good or bad) are a core part of our lives. I’d say I have a good amount of good habits, but I also have plenty of bad ones. James Clear is the master of habit-building, and explains how to build good habits while breaking the bad ones through a 4-part framework:
Cue -> Craving -> Response -> Reward
Utilizing habits as a tool is key to become better at something you want to be good. When you build a good habit, and you improve 1% better every day, you’ll be 37x better than you were a year ago!
Book 5: Start With WHY (Simon Sinek)
(Purchase Link: Start With Why - Simon Sinek)
For the longest time, I kept searching for work for the wrong reasons. Whether it was for more money, or on something that I thought was cool, I always felt like there was something missing. Throughout my working career so far, I’ve joined 4 different companies and have worked on multiple projects.
If that sounds impressive, I’d argue that some of these experiences led to me abandoning some projects because they didn’t keep my attention and motivation. I started asking the question as to why I’d always lose motivation in work.
Maybe you’ve seen this popular Ted Talk YouTube video, maybe you haven’t, but Simon Sinek wrote a book about the way we’ve been searching for work has been wrong for so long. Using examples like Apple and other successful companies, Sinek explains that instead of figuring out WHAT we want to do, we should start by asking ourselves WHY we do what we do.
When we understand our true intentions and motivations behind the things we already do, we can align ourselves to the mission and vision that we’d love to contribute to.
Ever since I read this book, I’ve been more aligned to what I wanted to do. I actually built Kurative Co. because I read this book! If you’ve been lost with where you want to contribute you time, energy, and mental capcaity, definitely check out this book!
Summary
I hope these book has provided me as much (or more) value as it had for me. These books are already classic in the intentional living and career worlds.
If you ever want to chat about these books, feel free to reach out! I love talking about them!
You can buy all of the books mentioned in this blog below (affiliate links):