Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter.Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of The Art Of Asking.Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. The Art Of Asking will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

    The president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ed Catmull, mixes three shots of espresso with three scoops of cocoa powder and two sweeteners. Fitness expert Jillian Michaels doesn’t set an alarm, because her five-year-old jolts her from sleep by jumping into bed for a cuddle every morning.Part instruction manual, part someone else’s diary, the authors of My Morning Routine interviewed sixty-four of today’s most successful people—including three-time Olympic gold medalist Rebecca Soni, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, and General Stanley McChrystal—and offer advice on creating a routine of your own.Some routines are all about early morning exercise and spartan living; others are more leisurely and self-indulgent. What they have in common is they don’t feel like a chore. Once you land on the right routine, you’ll look forward to waking up.This comprehensive guide will show you how to get into a routine that works for you so that you can develop the habits that move you forward. Just as a Jenga stack is only as sturdy as its foundational blocks, the choices we make throughout our day depend on the intentions we set in the morning. Like it or not, our morning habits form the stack that our whole day is built on.Whether you want to boost your productivity, implement a workout or meditation routine, or just learn to roll with the punches in the morning, this book has you covered.

    Effective Planning and Time Management

    Instead, she found a city full of people who knew where they were going and what they were doing and didn't have time for a girl still trying to figure it all out. Lonely and depressed, she noticed a woman who looked like she felt the same way on the subway. Hannah did something strange--she wrote the woman a letter. She folded it, scribbled If you find this letter, it's for you on the front and left it behind. When she realized that it made her feel better, she started writing and leaving love notes all over the city--in doctor's offices, in coat pockets, in library books, in bathroom stalls. Feeling crushed within a culture that only felt like connecting on a screen, she poured her heart out to complete strangers. She found solace in the idea that her words might brighten someone's day.Hannah's project took on a life of its own when she made an offer on her blog: She would handwrite a note and mail it to anyone who wanted one. Overnight, her inbox exploded with requests from people all over the world. Nearly 400 handwritten letters later, she started the website, The World Needs More Love Letters, which quickly grew. There is something about receiving a handwritten note that is so powerful in today's digital era. If You Find This Letter chronicles Hannah's attempts to bring more love into the world,and shows how she rediscovered her faith through the movement she started.

    To the Point. To Help High Performers Become Even More Productive Results are what matter the most to you. You want to be a reliable producer of value in your chosen domain: whether it’s your career, business, sports, studies, non-profit endeavors, or any other undertaking requiring intense focus. You’d like to learn how to become more productive, but your time is precious, and you don’t have time for a five-hundred-page book only to discover that you can summarize it with two sentences. If that’s you, Self-Disciplined Producer is for you. Written with high performers in mind, it’s a concise guide covering the most effective techniques to build self-control, improve your productivity and deliver consistent results day in, and day out. In about an hour and a half of reading you’ll discover: - a confusingly simple strategy of an American novelist and screenwriter that can help you overcome one habit that is most harming your productivity, - how distractions can make you more eager to get to work, - three strategies to ensure that you always finish what you started instead of leaving all your projects half-finished, - five strategies to embrace delayed gratification and become more patient with the process so that you won’t give up prematurely, - a fun mental exercise to help you identify the most important task and reduce time spent on less meaningful activities, - a principle developed in the 14th century by an English philosopher that can help you simplify your workday and become more productive, - a law humorously invented by a British naval historian that can help you perform your most important tasks in half the time usually needed to get them done, - six methods to recharge for higher productivity—because without a proper rest protocol you’ll be unlikely to ever operate at an optimal level. The author of Self-Disciplined Producer has been using these techniques to help him publish sixteen books, create four video courses with over 25,000 enrolled students in total, and translate his books into ten languages—all in the span of two years and a half. If you’re eager to learn how to double, triple, or even quadruple your productivity, don’t hesitate any longer. Invest an amount equivalent to what you pay for a cup of coffee, apply the teachings from this book to your workday and reap the benefits that might lead to thousandfold or higher returns.

    Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.Some of the steps toward thinking like a Freak:First, put away your moral compass—because it’s hard to see a problem clearly if you’ve already decided what to do about it.Learn to say “I don’t know”—for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to.Think like a child—because you’ll come up with better ideas and ask better questions.Take a master class in incentives—because for better or worse, incentives rule our world.Learn to persuade people who don’t want to be persuaded—because being right is rarely enough to carry the day.Learn to appreciate the upside of quitting—because you can’t solve tomorrow’s problem if you aren’t willing to abandon today’s dud.Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing—and so much fun to read.

    Essential Essays highlights essays from the first nine months of their journey into minimalism.Essential Essays is an edited collection of 29 of The Minimalists' favorite essays about living a more meaningful life with less stuff. This collection also contains a special forward by Joshua and Ryan, as well as two bonus essays you can't find anywhere else: "Dealing with Overwhelm" and "Focus On What's Important."The book is organized into seven interconnected themes: Living in the Moment, Emotional Health, Growth, Contribution, Taking Action, Passion and Mission, and Change and Experimentation. The order of this collection is deliberate; it is meant to be read from beginning to end. Doing so will result in a better overall experience--a different experience from reading these essays all over the web--connecting various concepts that might otherwise seem unconnected.

    Nobody wants to live a life of constant overthinking, but it doesn't feel like something we can choose to stop doing. It feels like something we're wired to do, something we just can't escape. But is it?Anne Bogel's answer is no. Not only can you overcome negative thought patterns that are repetitive, unhealthy, and unhelpful, you can replace them with positive thought patterns that will bring more peace, joy, and love into your life. In Don't Overthink It, you'll find actionable strategies that can make an immediate and lasting difference in how you deal with questions both small--Should I buy these flowers?--and large--What am I doing with my life? More than a book about making good decisions, Don't Overthink It offers you a framework for making choices you'll be comfortable with, using an appropriate amount of energy, freeing you to focus on all the other stuff that matters in life.

    It's about falling in love with books again and discovering the habits to help you read more. Author Kevin D. Hendricks read 137 books in 2012 without giving up TV, a day job or becoming completely antisocial. He shares what worked for him, including carrying a book everywhere (including church), reclaiming idle moments (software loading), and not being ashamed of genre (he's partial to post-apocalyptic sci-fi). It's a quick read so you can absorb the ideas, figure out what might work for you and fall in love with reading again.

    Never again will you think about thinking the same way.Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

    His liberating message: you'll be more successful if you stop struggling so hard to plan or control your success. Messy is a deeply researched, endlessly eye-opening adventure in the life-changing magic of not tidying up' Oliver BurkemanThe urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away.We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . . messiness.The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them. This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.

    With saucy detail on every page, this no-nonsense guide reveals why a strong woman is much more desirable than a "yes woman" who routinely sacrifices herself. The author provides compelling answers to the tough questions women often ask: · Why are men so romantic in the beginning and why do they change? · Why do men take nice girls for granted? · Why does a man respect a woman when she stands up for herself? Full of advice, hilarious real-life relationship scenarios, "she says/he thinks" tables, and the author's unique "Attraction Principles," Why Men Love Bitches gives you bottom-line answers. It helps you know who you are, stand your ground, and relate to men on a whole new level. Once you've discovered the feisty attitude men find so magnetic, you'll not only increase the romantic chemistry—you'll gain your man's love and respect with far less effort.

    That they individually have value, and their life has meaning that goes beyond what they see or have been told to believe. But that's just the life-changing message Debbie Lindell passionately shares and champions. Every woman, no matter her history, social status, or position in society, was beautifully and magnificently designed by her Creator to live an amazing life. In She Believes, Lindell shares with women the beautiful truth of God's love for them, empowering them to live out their own unique purpose and bring change to their homes, their workplaces, their communities, and the world. With personal stories and biblical truth, Debbie invites women to trust God's Word--and discover the incredible, abundant life that he created them to live.

    The One Thing explains the success habit to overcome the six lies that block our success, beat the seven thieves that steal time, and leverage the laws of purpose, priority, and productivity.

    And while this message may not seem stunningly original or fresh, Tolle's clear writing, supportive voice and enthusiasm make this an excellent manual for anyone who's ever wondered what exactly "living in the now" means. Foremost, Tolle is a world-class teacher, able to explain complicated concepts in concrete language. More importantly, within a chapter of reading this book, readers are already holding the world in a different container--more conscious of how thoughts and emotions get in the way of their ability to live in genuine peace and happiness.Tolle packs a lot of information and inspirational ideas into The Power of Now. (Topics include the source of Chi, enlightened relationships, creative use of the mind, impermanence and the cycle of life.) Thankfully, he's added markers that symbolise "break time". This is when readers should close the book and mull over what they just read. As a result, The Power of Now reads like the highly acclaimed A Course in Miracles--a spiritual guidebook that has the potential to inspire just as many study groups and change just as many lives for the better. --Gail Hudson