Here are 100 books that Anything You Want fans have personally recommended if you like
Anything You Want.
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As an artist, photographer, author, and workshop leader, my goal is to help others become more skilled with photographic techniques and more creative with their photographic and artistic practice. I like to tell workshop participants that to take better photographs, one should stand in front of more interesting things. But to become a really better photographer one needs to become a more interesting person. The books in the list have helped me grow as a person and photographer, and I hope they also enhance your technique and your passion as a photographer.
This book has been extremely influential and helpful to my journey as a creative photographer. This is a short book and covers material that is often not easy because it gets at some of the deep-seated reasons that many of us find it hard to consistently create art.
The underlying issue is “resistance”: a force that is the antithesis of creativity and serves to stymie us all to a greater or lesser degree. I have found the succinct discussion of resistance in the book, along with tools and techniques for overcoming resistance, one of the most valuable discussions I have encountered in my journey as a photographer and artist.
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide forsucceeding in any creative sphere, The War ofArt is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.
What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?
Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid theroadblocks of any creative endeavor—be it starting up a dreambusiness venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?
Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy thatevery one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer thisinternal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
I’m a time management coach, author, keynote speaker, host of the top 1% ranked time management podcast It’s About Time, and founder of the It’s About Time Academy (a community of people who want to make time for what matters most). I help busy professionals and business owners struggling with overwhelm manage their time with my signature HEART Method. I’ve been devouring time management books for over a decade now—so I hope you enjoy these time management reads as much as I did!
This book was amazing for helping me when I felt stuck and wanted to make a change in my life. This book is all about the power of focus (and not just about avoiding distractions when you’re working). It gave me a focus for my life, and it gave me the tools, examples, and inspiration to break that big-picture focus into smaller pieces… so everything suddenly felt doable.
I loved using the book’s Focusing Question to identify the ONE thing that would make everything in my life easier.
YOU WANT LESS. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what's the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller paychecks, fewer promotions-and lots of stress. AND YOU WANT MORE. You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends. NOW YOU CAN HAVE BOTH-LESS AND MORE. In The ONE Thing, you'll learn…
I used to hate lifestyle businesses, looking down my nose at them, saying (as many others do!) that they weren’t realbusinesses. After a “lightbulb moment,” I now proudly describe myself as an ambitious lifestyle business owner – someone who designs their business around their lifestyle, rather than the other way around. Work to live, not live to work! As well as Big Ideas... for Small Businesses, a bestselling book about how to build a lifestyle business, I also host the Ambitious Lifestyle Business podcast, where I interview other lifestyle business owners, discovering how what an ambitious, lifestyle business looks like for them.
James Schramko feels like an Australian version of me: he's started, built and sold multiple successful businesses over a couple of decades. He's been there, done that, and sold the T-shirt – but prefers to spend his days surfing rather than working.
This book shows you how he achieves that work/life balance – by working less and making more.
Work Less, Make More is a dense delivery of solid systems and sane advice. It's not 80/20, it's 80/20 squared. Every few pages, James punches you in the face with an instantly actionable hack. ~ Perry Marshall, Author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing, Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, and Evolution 2.0
James gives massive value in a fun and easy-to-read book. Real, actionable ways to cut your hours while increasing your income. Want to know how to do it in your own business? Get this and find out! ~ Jonathan Mizel
In Work Less, Make More, James proves that keeping…
I have been motivated to be the best version of myself for as long as I can remember and that has included reading a ton of books, pushing my own limits on what I was capable of (Ironman triathlons and a cross-country bicycle ride), tapping into my own creativity as well as taking it to the next step and sharing what I have learned through my own books and TEDx presentation. I believe we have so much more inside of us than we realize and I love to share and see others reach their goals and dreams.
This book is wonderful. While it isn’t your typical self-improvement book, reading it made me want to be a better person. Buck O’Neil’s attitude is amazing despite all of the hardships he endured. He is an inspiration to everyone. No matter where we are or when we are born, we are all "right on time,” and hopefully striving to serve a purpose for a greater good. A good attitude and lots of gratitude are so important for our self-awareness journey and Buck had it in truckloads. Please read this book.
From Babe Ruth to Bo Jackson, from Cool Papa Bell to Lou Brock, Buck O'Neil has seen it all. As a first baseman and then manager of the legendary Kansas City Monarchs, O'Neil witnessed the heyday of the Negro leagues and their ultimate demise. In I Was Right on Time, he charmingly recalls his days as a ballplayer and as an African-American in a racially divided country. Whether he's telling of his barnstorming days with the likes of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson or the day in 1962 when he became the first African-American coach in the major leagues, O'Neil…
I have been motivated to be the best version of myself for as long as I can remember and that has included reading a ton of books, pushing my own limits on what I was capable of (Ironman triathlons and a cross-country bicycle ride), tapping into my own creativity as well as taking it to the next step and sharing what I have learned through my own books and TEDx presentation. I believe we have so much more inside of us than we realize and I love to share and see others reach their goals and dreams.
I loved this book because it is not only Inspiring in how it makes you understand your current money beliefs, but the exercises are easy to do and I found profound in what they reveal. Kyle explains spot-on how you can shift yourself from your current viewpoint into one that allows abundance and your true potential to shine through. And the book’s wonderful nuggets translate into all areas of your life!
Your obsession with money is costing you MILLIONS.
Money is one of the biggest excuses we make to not go after what we really want. Our fixation with money - the desire for more of it, and the fear of not having enough of it - is often really just a longing to feel safe. But this obsession with money is coming at a much bigger cost: our sanity, our creativity, our freedom, and our ability to step into our true power.
In this book, comedian turned transformational speaker and New York Times best-selling author Kyle Cease will help you…
I have been motivated to be the best version of myself for as long as I can remember and that has included reading a ton of books, pushing my own limits on what I was capable of (Ironman triathlons and a cross-country bicycle ride), tapping into my own creativity as well as taking it to the next step and sharing what I have learned through my own books and TEDx presentation. I believe we have so much more inside of us than we realize and I love to share and see others reach their goals and dreams.
What I really liked about this book was how it helped me become a lot more self-aware about the incorrect stories I told about myself and how they have held me back. This book does a great job of helping the reader identify their "imposters," the areas in one's lives where we hold onto false beliefs about ourselves which keep us from being the best version of who we can be and achieve our goals and dreams.
There are seven key Imposters, or archetypes, that underlie nearly every aspect of human behavior. In this groundbreaking self-help book, you’ll discover a framework for understanding these archetypes and how they impact your relationship to yourself, others, and the world at large.
SoulBlazing will help you:
Ignite meaningful change in your life
Understand and release false narratives and negative self-talk that hinder you
Transform your inner saboteurs into superpowers
Learn to respond rather than react to life
Cultivate a deeper, more life-affirming awareness of yourself and others
I used to hate lifestyle businesses, looking down my nose at them, saying (as many others do!) that they weren’t realbusinesses. After a “lightbulb moment,” I now proudly describe myself as an ambitious lifestyle business owner – someone who designs their business around their lifestyle, rather than the other way around. Work to live, not live to work! As well as Big Ideas... for Small Businesses, a bestselling book about how to build a lifestyle business, I also host the Ambitious Lifestyle Business podcast, where I interview other lifestyle business owners, discovering how what an ambitious, lifestyle business looks like for them.
Bigger isn't better – at least not when it comes to lifestyle businesses.
The “Company of One” mindset is very similar to my own “Ambitious, Lifestyle Business”: deliberately small, and designed to deliver the lifestyle desired by the owner, rather than growth at all costs. It doesn’t necessarily mean one person (personally, I run a Company of One with a team of seven).
There is only one “rule” for a Company of One – you must constantly question the need for growth. People say you should start with the end in mind. I say start with the lifestylein mind, and then design the business around this.
Company of One will help you do this from day one (and believe me, that's far easier than changing old habits!).
What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better - and smarter - solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth. Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that…
I used to hate lifestyle businesses, looking down my nose at them, saying (as many others do!) that they weren’t realbusinesses. After a “lightbulb moment,” I now proudly describe myself as an ambitious lifestyle business owner – someone who designs their business around their lifestyle, rather than the other way around. Work to live, not live to work! As well as Big Ideas... for Small Businesses, a bestselling book about how to build a lifestyle business, I also host the Ambitious Lifestyle Business podcast, where I interview other lifestyle business owners, discovering how what an ambitious, lifestyle business looks like for them.
If you need a kick up the arse to go and make a dent in the universe, then Life in Half a Second is the book for you. I often listen to the audiobook version of the first chapter to fire me up, and stop me from wasting my life.
Michalewicz's point is simple: the planet is 4.5 billion years old. Humans appeared 200,000 years ago. Most of us live 80 years, and have already wasted half that time. That time is all we have – and if the lifetime of Earth was condensed to a calendar year, then your entire life would flash by in less than half of one second.
What if there was a proven path to success? A path supported by science and research? A path that led to your goals and aspirations in less time, with less risk? Would you take it? Truthful and hard hitting, Life in Half a Second is the first "fact-based" formula for achieving success in life and business. Proven through thousands of studies and decades of research, it presents the five doors you must walk through to achieve success in your career, business, or personal life. Gimmicks, mind tricks, fairy tales, and wishful thinking NOT INCLUDED. Just facts.
I’ve always been fascinated by how we can fulfill our potential in a way that allows us to thrive rather than burning ourselves out in the process. My motto is I’d like to ‘save the world, but be back in time for tea.’ My fascination has led me down all sorts of intriguing avenues. I’ve become a stand-up comic (and taken four solo shows to the Edinburgh Fringe), exploring how humor can help us tackle tough topics. I’ve researched mental health (I’m currently studying for an MSc in the Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health), I’ve studied elite sports, and I’ve been an Executive Coach to leaders of diverse organizations.
I found this book wonderfully confronting! We’ve all heard the cliché that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade (grrr!), but this book helped me figure out HOW. It provoked me to reframe problems simply as contexts and celebrate constraints as clarity, helping me move forward.
Although it is very much a business book—full of plenty of corporate examples (I particularly loved the ones about growing crops and selling beer!)—I’ve found techniques like the ‘propelling questions’ useful more broadly, too.
An inspiring yet practical guide for transforming limitations into opportunities A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages And Why It's Everyone's Business Now is a book about everyday, practical inventiveness, designed for the constrained times in which we live. It describes how to take the kinds of issues that all of us face today lack of time, money, resources, attention, know-how and see in them the opportunity for transformation of oneself and one's organization's fortunes. The ideas in the book are based on the authors' extensive work as business consultants, and are brought to life in 35…
I’m a serial entrepreneur who’s built and sold several startups. I’ve been helping non-venture-backed startup founders since 2005 and now I run the first startup accelerator for bootstrappers, called TinySeed. I’ve invested in 57 startups, but I don’t believe the only way to start a SaaS company is to raise money. I host the most popular podcast for bootstrappers, called Startups for the Rest of Us. I also run the most well-known conference and online community for non-venture-track SaaS founders, called MicroConf.
The mental game is perhaps the most important part of being a successful founder while also living a sane and happy life. Sherry Walling is an entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and helps us understand how to properly equip ourselves for the startup journey. For full disclosure, I am married to Dr. Walling and credited as a contributing author since we collaborated on several of the ideas that served as the basis for this book. But this book is recommended far and wide by those who read it and understand the need to be aware of how difficult this journey can be.
Learn how to stay sane and ensure both you and your business thrive for years. You run a business. And running a business is hard. It can ruin your health. It can ruin your relationships. It can ruin your life.But only if you don’t equip yourself for the journey.The responsibility, stress and loneliness of being an entrepreneur are a far cry from your friends who work salaried jobs. The path of least resistance is to let the stress and isolation of starting, running and growing a business infiltrate most aspects of your life.
