Fans pick 100 books like How to Win a Lot More Business in a Lot Less Time

To truly stay ahead of failure, one must embrace discomfort and avoid becoming stagnant. Life is a constant race, and if you stop running, you cannot win. Who Moved My Cheese? serves as a great example that is easy to read, digest, and a powerful reminder to keep pushing forward in the race of life.

The book highlights the importance of not taking good fortune for granted and avoiding getting too comfortable. It teaches that everything is constantly evolving, and it is essential to remain vigilant and open to new opportunities.

I once used this book to teach a group of high schoolers how to stay alert to opportunities and overcome the fear of discomfort.

Information overload threatens our ability to educate ourselves, leaves us more vulnerable as consumers and less cohesive as a society, and diminishes control of our own lives. As such David Shenk offers numerous “Laws of Data Smog," i.e: Information is now plentiful and taken for granted. I was immediately impressed by his pithy observations: Putting a computer in every classroom is like putting an electric power plant into every home; education cannot be fixed with a digital pipeline of data. Too many experts spoil the clarity, and lead to the paralysis of analysis.

The law of diminishing returns, says Shenk, applied to the growing speed and abundance of information, will produce an infoglut that will no longer add to our quality of life. Infoglut is already cultivating stress, confusion, and, yes, ignorance. I have found this to be too true!

In a glutted environment, he says, the most difficult task… show more.

I love books that cause me to view things in ways I never had before. Connections did that over and over again.

Burke views history through the lens of technical innovation. What his book revealed to me was that everything has its antecedents; things that came before that were the building blocks of what was to come. The more I read, the more I noticed that I was looking at things differently, not only seeing links but thinking about what could come next based on where something came from and the direction our culture was moving. This is a transformative book.

The authors maintain that everybody experiences flashes of insight: those moments when an "aha!" reaction leaves us feeling enlightened and empowered. I have felt this and you probably have too. Insights are the bits of knowledge in different parts of ourselves and they can be harnessed into a more integrated and effective whole.

Learning To Use What You Already Know explains how you can encourage insight. Consider that each of us knows more than we think we do. Thus we can employ a reflective process, described in the book, that integrates our conscious and unconscious resources, and prompts our perceptions of everything from getting along with coworkers, to being a visionary leader, to coping with technological change.  

Here are what I consider to be some of the book’s amazing takeaways: Life repeats itself until we learn. Lack of fit is not failure. If you get it right the first time,… show more.

Ostensibly a book about emotional intelligence, this is in effect an account of Epstein’s theory of the self (see Chapter 3 onwards). I am a strong advocate of ‘dual process’ theories, the idea that we have two minds or modes of thinking, one that is fast, automatic, and reliant on heuristics, and another that is slower, deliberative, and rational. The most famous example of this is in the work of Kahneman and Tversky, who have identified various biases we employ in quick decision making. This understanding is vital for effective critical thinking, but I find Epstein’s notion of an affect-driven ‘experiential’ system to have deeper and more wide-ranging explanatory power. This applies both to self-knowledge, and to how we can engage more constructively with others.

This book had me hooked in the introduction when the author discussed her personal experience realizing that the pursuit of happiness hamster wheel (my words) never ends unless we end it. 

I took it everywhere, and everywhere people saw me reading it, they stopped so we could talk about it – even in Wendy’s over hamburgers during lunch one day! My dog-eared copy was happily gifted to my college-freshman niece, who saw it in my car, and I am delighted that she is implementing some of the advice in the book to get off the hamster wheel and enjoy her life. 

While success is important, living a satisfying life trumps all, and this book does a great job illustrating how to do that. 

This book took me by surprise; it is an eye-opening epic read highlighting the importance of energy, not just time, as an area that is most important to focus on and master.

As a previous sufferer of burnout, it taught me that, unlike time, energy is finite and pivotal for peak performance. This book took me on a journey and framework where I could practically think about my life in terms of energy (rather than just time) and maximise this in the areas of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health; just superb.

I also loved the concept, which we are never taught, that recovery is just as important as performance and to think more like an athlete in my everyday life. Energy is everything to me, so I found this book truly transformative!

This book is a classic. The reality is that if you can’t influence yourself – you can’t influence other people.  If you can’t lead yourself – you can’t lead other people. I call this book self-persuasion. There is a reason this book has sold 35 million copies. Maltz was the first to talk about the importance of your self-image.  He uses science to teach you how to reprogram your mind for success and increased motivation.

There has never been a more powerful and significant voice in the field of success and personal development than Napoleon Hill. I had become a student of his timeless classic, Think and Grow Rich, but had never read this novel until my friend, Sharon Lechter, edited a new edition of it, and my colleague Mark Victor Hansen wrote the foreword. I was only intending to read enough of it to tell Sharon and Mark I enjoyed it, but was drawn in by Napoleon Hill’s image of the devil which all of us have within our hearts, mind, and soul. This story teaches us that the devil is not a guy in a red suit with a pitchfork. The devil is our own apathy, lack of focus, and limited thinking.

This is my go-to book to feel motivated and get back into taking action (or “massive action” as Grant calls it). I highly recommend getting your hands on the audiobook version and setting the speed to at least 1.5x to get a world-class pep talk from one of the most energetic and best action-takers out there. I guarantee it will inspire you to get more out of your day.