100 books like Made to Stick

Frankl’s concept of finding meaning in suffering and the idea that our primary drive in life is not pleasure but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful deeply resonates with me.

The book underscores the belief that even in the most difficult of circumstances, we have the freedom to choose our attitudes and responses, a concept that is central to high-performance psychology.

Although this book is more than a century old, I find it just as relevant today as it was when it was first published. As a Man Thinketh offers digestible and easily understood tips to transform the way you look at barriers in life and positively embrace them. Each person holds the key to their own happiness and by dealing with thoughts intelligently and patiently, can help reconstruct life for the better. 

Cialdini is a social psychologist who set out to explore what makes us comply with requests from strangers.

He did this from the inside by taking jobs where he was trained by various organisations to sell their wares. What makes this book so valuable is that Cialdini not only identifies six key methods of persuasion that are routinely deployed but also offers guidance on how to defend yourself against them. This has huge relevance for personal finance.

As banks and other financial institutions increase their fraud detection systems, criminals increasingly see you, the individual, as the weak link they can exploit to defraud you. Cialdini’s book is a great tool to help you detect and rebuff scammers intent on parting you from your money.

I can't recommend this book highly enough, and here's why: it completely shattered my misconceptions about originality in the creative process. Kleon's candid and approachable narrative made me realize that all art is, in some form, a reinterpretation or recombination of what already exists.

This book came into my life at a pivotal moment, just when I was grappling with the dreaded "impostor syndrome" and the paralyzing belief that everything I created needed to be unprecedented. Kleon's perspective is liberating. He argues that embracing influences and integrating them into your work is not only acceptable but essential for creativity. 

Carefully read (and read again, and then read at least a third and fourth time) both books by Jim Collins. He's rightly famous for his masterful distillation of the core qualities and strategies of the world's most successful organizations.

Once you understand key concepts like "Getting the Right People on the Bus" and what your "20-mile March" really is, and you have the grit to keep trying to apply the concepts and work through mistakes and sticking points, you will be able to lead your organization to new heights of growth and impact, when so many other organizations struggle just to keep the lights on.

Note that his “Good to Great for the Social Sector'' misapplies his concepts to the non-profit and is best ignored. The texts above apply perfectly well to the nonprofit sector, and this attempt at re-interpreting his principles fails badly.

If work is going to work again, we need to be curious. The world is moving fast and the issues we are facing are arguably more complex than ever before, so we must avoid at all costs the rigid my way or the highway thinking.

Sometimes it feels good when we lock a solution in quickly because we feel we have solved the problem perhaps ticked the box. I really encourage people to stay in the messy middle and to “think again” to make sure it is not the quick solution, but they stick with the problem solving so they get the best solution.

It’s weird to recommend this book to get better at persuading. But if I had read it before presenting new ideas, I would have saved thousands of dollars in development costs and shortened the time it took to persuade others to back me. His main idea is “The minimum viable product.”

So, instead of spending too much time and money developing my idea before talking to anyone, trying to make it perfect, I showed a 2-slide mockup of the idea to a friend, who said “I would NEVER use this. It takes up too much time. I just want something quick and dirty to help me write a persuasive email.” Wow! Her comment blew my mind and prevented me from spending a fortune on an impractical tool.

Rich Dad Poor Dad is the book that changed the trajectory of my life forever.

It is a parable that explains the difference between the traditional way of thinking “Go to school, get a good job, work hard, retire” with the entrepreneur mentality, and the concepts of utilizing passive income to replace your job at an earlier age.

I love this book because it takes the normally boring subject of finance and investing and breaks it down in a fun and easy way to learn so that you will actually finish the book and have the ability to experience that light-switch moment! 

Without a doubt this is the most commonly mentioned book that I hear referenced on podcasts as “the book that started it all”.

I say this as a business owner myself… this book by Michael E. Gerber is an absolute must-read for any small business owner.

My book actually builds on The E-Myth, and I applied the principles myself — and achieved results!

If you're a new entrepreneur or small business owner, this book will teach you the ins and outs of using systems and processes to your advantage, and help you identify which areas of your business require them the most.

Plus, you'll gain valuable insights into why businesses often struggle to take off (or even fail after they do!) with practical examples and implementable ideas for your own business. I highly recommend The E-Myth for anyone looking to scale up in a systematic and sustainable way.

This classic book, unlike others in the list, is not so much about memory, as a collection of the author’s memories of his childhood and early years.

Nabokov was born into a wealthy family in pre-Revolutionary Russia in 1899. His childhood in St. Petersburg and at the family’s country estate are described in loving detail, as are aspects of later years in England, Germany, and France. Nabokov was one of the great writers of the 20th Century, and the memories are recounted in his glowing and evocative prose.

His writing is nostalgic, but also wryly humorous, aware that many aspects of his early life are gone forever. Many of the chapters first appeared as articles in The New Yorker; all are eminently readable.