How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life


Caroline Webb - 2016
      Advances in these behavioral sciences are giving us ever better understanding of how our brains work, why we make the choices we do, and what it takes for us to be at our best. But it has not always been easy to see how to apply these insights in the real world – until now.  In How to Have a Good Day, Webb explains exactly how to apply this science to our daily tasks and routines. She translates three big scientific ideas into step-by-step guidance that shows us how to set better priorities, make our time go further, ace every interaction, be our smartest selves, strengthen our personal impact, be resilient to setbacks, and boost our energy and enjoyment. Through it all, Webb teaches us how to navigate the typical challenges of modern workplaces—from conflict with colleagues to dull meetings and overflowing inboxes—with skill and ease.  Filled with stories of people who have used Webb’s insights to boost their job satisfaction and performance at work, How to Have a Good Day is the book so many people wanted when they finished Nudge, Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow and were looking for practical ways to apply this fascinating science to their own lives and careers.   A remarkable and much-needed book, How to Have a Good Day gives us the tools we need to have a lifetime of good days.From the Hardcover edition.

You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education


George Anders - 2017
     Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In You Can Do Anything, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything.

Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life


Jim Kwik - 2020
    In Limitless, readers will learn Jim's revolutionary strategies and shortcuts to supercharging their brains, with simple, actionable tools to sharpen the mind, enhance focus, and fast-track their fullest potential. "No matter your age, background, or level of education, you can learn new ways to use your brain. If you've been searching for better ways of coping and growing, I'm here to help you fall in love with learning again." -- Jim Kwik

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time


Jeff Sutherland - 2014
    It already drives most of the world’s top technology companies. And now it’s starting to spread to every domain where leaders wrestle with complex projects. If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid – or compelling – explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty years ago. The thorny problem Jeff began tackling back then boils down to this: people are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross purposes to each other. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Drawing on his experience as a West Point-educated fighter pilot, biometrics expert, early innovator of ATM technology, and V.P. of engineering or CTO at eleven different technology companies, Jeff began challenging those dysfunctional realities, looking for solutions that would have global impact. In this book you’ll journey to Scrum’s front lines where Jeff’s system of deep accountability, team interaction, and constant iterative improvement is, among other feats, bringing the FBI into the 21st century, perfecting the design of an affordable 140 mile per hour/100 mile per gallon car, helping NPR report fast-moving action in the Middle East, changing the way pharmacists interact with patients, reducing poverty in the Third World, and even helping people plan their weddings and accomplish weekend chores. Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and many other disciplines, Scrum is consistently riveting. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable – whether it be inventing a trailblazing technology, devising a new system of education, pioneering a way to feed the hungry, or, closer to home, a building a foundation for your family to thrive and prosper.

How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up


Emilie Wapnick - 2017
    While seemingly harmless, the question has unintended consequences. It can make you feel like you need to choose one job, one passion, one thing to be about. Guess what? You don't.Having a lot of different interests, projects and curiosities doesn't make you a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none." Your endless curiosity doesn't mean you are broken or flaky. What you are is a multipotentialite: someone with many interests and creative pursuits. And that is actually your biggest strength.How to Be Everything helps you channel your diverse passions and skills to work for you. Based on her popular TED talk, "Why some of us don't have one true calling", Emilie Wapnick flips the script on conventional career advice. Instead of suggesting that you specialize, choose a niche or accumulate 10,000 hours of practice in a single area, Wapnick provides a practical framework for building a sustainable life around ALL of your passions.You'll discover:•  Why your multipotentiality is your biggest strength, especially in today's uncertain job market.•  How to make a living and structure your work if you have many skills and interests.•  How to focus on multiple projects and make progress on all of them.•  How to handle common insecurities such as the fear of not being the best, the guilt associated with losing interest in something you used to love and the challenge of explaining "what you do" to others. Not fitting neatly into a box can be a beautiful thing. How to Be Everything teaches you how to design a life, at any age and stage of your career, that allows you to be fully you, and find the kind of work you'll love.

The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want


Dave Kerpen - 2016
    But in reality, argues New York Times bestselling author Dave Kerpen, it’s actually those with the best people skills who win the day. Those who build the right relationships. Those who truly understand and connect with their colleagues, their customers, their partners.  Those who can teach, lead, and inspire.   In a world where we are constantly connected, and social media has become the primary way we communicate, the key to getting ahead is being the person others like, respect, and trust. Because no matter who you are or what profession you're in, success is contingent less on what you can do for yourself, but on what other people are willing to do for you.  Here, through 53 bite-sized, easy-to-execute, and often counterintuitive tips, you’ll learn to master the 11 People Skills that will get you more of what you want at work, at home, and in life. For example, you’ll learn:   ·         The single most important question you can ever ask to win attention in a meeting ·         The one simple key to networking that nobody talks about ·         How to remain top of mind for thousands of people, everyday ·         Why it usually pays to be the one to give the bad news ·         How to blow off the right people ·         And why, when in doubt, buy him a Bonsai  A book best described as “How to Win Friends and Influence People for today’s world,” The Art of People shows how to charm and win over anyone to be more successful at work and outside of it.

Successful Manager's Handbook


Susan H. Gebelein - 1992
    As a long time manager who dealt with organizational issues, growth, personnel matters, finance, and political influences, and one who teaches undergraduate and graduate school courses in management and leadership, I have experienced most of these issues. The author has done a remarkable job in the detail and accuracy of the work. The work is clear and understandable and organized in such as way as to allow easy access to information. To find such a compendium of information in one book instead of many is an additional benefit. Content is also ratified by the collective skills sets the authors bring.I highly recommend this book as a desk reference for anyone in a leadership or management role, and highly recommend it for anyone aspiring to the job. The comprehensive nature of the material in the book provides the foundation for new managers. In addition, the reference material leads readers to many other sources, reducing the need for Internet surfing trying to find information, or visiting the local library. As a graduate school faculty member I would also state for the record that this would be a great textbook. The book is written by practitioners who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. This book is a must read. Well done to all the authors - you have provided a book any manager, supervisor, or teacher should have.

Success Is a Choice: Ten Steps to Overachieving in Business and Life


Rick Pitino - 1997
    . . his personal style is also winning.” –Time

Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong


Kristen Hadeed - 2017
    This is the story of how Kristen Hadeed built Student Maid, a cleaning company where people are happy, loyal, productive, and empowered, even while they’re mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. It’s the story of how she went from being an almost comically inept leader to a sought-after CEO who teaches others how to lead.   Hadeed unintentionally launched Student Maid while attending college ten years ago. Since then, Student Maid has employed hundreds of students and is widely recognized for its industry-leading retention rate and its culture of trust and accountability. But Kristen and her company were no overnight sensa­tion. In fact, they were almost nothing at all. Along the way, Kristen got it wrong almost as often as she got it right. Giving out hugs instead of feed­back, fixing errors instead of enforcing accountability, and hosting parties instead of cultivating meaning­ful relationships were just a few of her many mistakes. But Kristen’s willingness to admit and learn from those mistakes helped her give her people the chance to learn from their own screwups too. Permission to Screw Up dismisses the idea that leaders and orga­nizations should try to be perfect. It encourages people of all ages to go for it and learn to lead by acting, rather than waiting or thinking. Through a brutally honest and often hilarious account of her own strug­gles, Kristen encourages us to embrace our failures and proves that we’ll be better leaders when we do.

How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs


Guy Raz - 2020
    Great ideas often come from a simple spark: A soccer player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips).   Award-winning journalist and NPR host Guy Raz has interviewed more than 200 highly successful entrepreneurs to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality.

Sooner Safer Happier: Patterns and Antipatterns for Organizational Agility


Jonathan Smart - 2020
    Technology companies make up seven of the world's ten largest firms by market capitalization. And the key to their success is the key to all modern organizations. Jonathan Smart, business agility practitioner, thought leader, and coach, reveals the patterns and antipatterns that will help organizations from every industry deliver better value sooner, safer, and happier through high levels of engagement, inclusion, and empowerment. Through his decades of experience in the technology world, Smart provides business leaders with a blueprint for creating a world-class organization of the future. Through Agile and Lean ways of working, business leaders can empower teams to improve production, grow together, and create better services for their customers. These better ways of working have overflowed from the IT department to every corner of successful organizations, taking root in every industry from aerospace to accounting, insurance to shipping. This book is not about software development. It is not a book about the computer industry. This book is about applying agility across the entire organization. It's a book that will put you at the front of change and ahead of the competition.

Six Thinking Hats


Edward de Bono - 1981
    Meetings are a crucial part of all our lives, but too often they go nowhere and waste valuable time. In Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono shows how meetings can be transformed to produce quick, decisive results every time. The Six Hats method is a devastatingly simple technique based on the brain's different modes of thinking. The intelligence, experience and information of everyone is harnessed to reach the right conclusions quickly. These principles fundamentally change the way you work and interact. They have been adopted by businesses and governments around the world to end conflict and confusion in favour of harmony and productivity. 'An inspiring man with brilliant ideas. De Bono never ceases to amaze with his clarity of thought' Richard Branson.Edward de Bono invented the concept of lateral thinking. A world-renowned writer and philosopher, he is the leading authority in the field of creative thinking and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. Dr de Bono has written more than 60 books, in 40 languages, with people now teaching his methods worldwide. He has chaired a special summit of Nobel Prize laureates, and been hailed as one of the 250 people who have contributed most to mankind

Turning Pro


Steven Pressfield - 2012
    In the War of Art Pressfield identifies the enemy to living an authentic life – resistance. In Turning Pro, Pressfield teaches you how to defeat it.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, & Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly


David Meerman Scott - 2007
    It offers a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power modern marketing and PR to communicate with buyers directly, raise visibility, and increase sales. It shows how large and small companies, nonprofits, and more can leverage Web-based content to get the right information to the right people at the right time for a fraction of the cost of big-budget campaigns.Including a wealth of compelling case studies and real-world examples of content marketing and inbound marketing success, this is a practical guide to the new reality of reaching buyers when they're ready.Includes updated information, examples, and case studies plus an examination of newly popular tools such as Infographics, photo-sharing using Pinterest and Instagram, as well as expanded information on social media such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedInDavid Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, bestselling author of eight books including three international bestsellers, advisor to emerging companies including HubSpot and Eloqua, and a professional speaker on topics including marketing, leadership, and social media. Prior to starting his own business, he was marketing VP for two U.S. publicly traded companies and was Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world's largest information companies."The New Rules of Marketing & PR" offers the single resource for entrepreneurs, business owners, nonprofit managers as well as those working in marketing or publicity departments to build a marketing and PR strategy to grow any business.

Brave Leadership: Unleash Your Most Confident, Powerful, and Authentic Self to Get the Results You Need


Kimberly Davis - 2018
    ​While we may think that we need to follow some kind of prescription to get results, the most amazing leaders are those who dare to be their true selves, powerfully. People want to give them their best. But in a business world that’s so competitive and uncertain, how do you connect with others more authentically to tap into their illusive want? Brave Leadership is the essential guide for leaders in today’s ever-shifting world. Wherever you are in your leadership journey—new, seasoned, young, or old—if you aspire to be the best leader you can be, then this book is for you. It will help you • Uncover your barriers to brave • Escape overwhelm and frustration and learn to manage stress and anxiety • Prepare for high-stakes meetings and conversations • Have the influence you want to have • Set the direction of your career • Connect powerfully  • Feel more confident, courageous, satisfied, and purposeful • Tap into the want of the people you lead to get the results you need On a quest to make these powerful conversations more accessible, professional-actress-turned-leadership-educator Kimberly Davis shares the transformative tools she uses in her workshops to help thousands of leaders worldwide. Drawing from years of working with leaders of all experience levels and industries and the latest research in psychology, sociology, business, and the arts, this provocative and inspiring book bridges traditional business how-to with a personal development approach to demystify what it takes to be the brave leader you were born to be.