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areer development is the process of choosing a career. It involves advancing into a career path. It’s a life long process that can vary and change. Neverhtless, these books on career development will allow you to flow into your ideal job as you gain skills and learn concepts over time. Self-knowledge is an exploration and decision-making process that shapes your career. The more concepts, skills, and knowledge you become famailiar with or learn the more the process of career development occurs.
Best Books on Career Development: THE LIST
1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | By Stephen R. Covey
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One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents—millions of people of all ages and 
The 7 Habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work!
With Sean Covey’s added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 Habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.
They include:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
This beloved classic presents a principle-centered approach for solving both personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and practical anecdotes, Stephen R. Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity—principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
Quotes from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People;
“In fact, until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world.”
“Think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.”
“Real self-respect comes from dominion over self.”
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
“By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living.”
“Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.”
“In choosing our response to circumstance, we powerfully affect our circumstance.”
“The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed.”
2. So Good They Can’t Ignore You | By Cal Newport
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In this eye-opening account, Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice. Not only is the cliché flawed-preexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work-but it can also be dangerous, 
After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers.
Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before.
In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.
With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to “be so good they can’t ignore you,” Cal Newport’s clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love.
SO GOOD THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU will change the way we think about our careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.
Quotes from So Good They Can’t Ignore You;
“Most jobs don’t offer their employees great creativity, impact or control over what they do and how they do it.”
“Working right trumps finding the right work.”
“When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it.”
“If you want to identify a mission for your working life…you must first get to the cutting edge – the only place where these missions become visible.”
“Once you have the capital required to identify a mission, you must still figure out how to put the mission into practice.”
“Become good at something rare and valuable, and then invest the career capital this generates into the type of traits that make a job great.”
“How can we follow our passions if we don’t have any relevant passions to follow?”
3. Deep Work | By Cal Newport
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ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.Quotes from Deep Work;
“Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capacities to their limit.”
“Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction.”
“Those who use their minds to create valuable things [are] rarely haphazard in their work habits.”
“Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity.”
“To succeed with deep work you must rewire your brain to be comfortable resisting distracting stimuli.”
“Without structure, it’s easy to allow your time to devolve into the shallow – email, social media, web surfing.”
“Shallow Work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted.”
4. Start with Why | By Simon Sinek
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In 2009, Simon Sinek started a movement to help people become more inspired at work, and in turn inspire their colleagues and customers.
Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, including more than 28 million who’ve watched his TED Talk based on START WITH WHY — the third most popular TED video of all time.Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won’t truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.
START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
Quotes from Start With Why;
“Inspiring leaders and companies…think, act and communicate exactly alike. And it’s the complete opposite of everyone else.”
“Imagine if every organization started with Why. Decisions would be simpler. Loyalties would be greater. Trust would be a common currency.”
“If there were no trust…no one would take risks. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society.”
“If the levels of the Golden Circle are in balance, all those who share the organization’s view of the world will be drawn to it and its products like a moth to a light bulb.”
“The goal of business should not be to do business with anyone who simply wants what you have. It should be to focus on the people who believe what you believe.”
“Companies with a clear sense of Why…ignore their competition, whereas those with a fuzzy sense of Why are obsessed with what others are doing.”
“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it, or you can inspire it.”
5. The Power of Habit | By Charles Duhigg
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In The Power of Habit, award-winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. Distilling vast amounts of information into
engrossing narratives that take us from the boardrooms of Procter & Gamble to the sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the civil rights movement, Duhigg presents a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential. At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.Quotes from The Power of Habit;
“Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.”
“Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.”
“The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.”
“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”
“Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.”
“Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.”
6. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team | By Patrick Lencioni
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In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.
Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech’s CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni’s utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
Quotes from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team;
“Organizations fail to achieve team – work because they unknowingly fall prey to five natural but dangerous pitfalls.”
“Teamwork deteriorates if even a single dysfunction is allowed to flourish.”
“Remember teamwork begins by building trust.”
“The enemy of accountability is ambiguity.”
“One of the best tools for ensuring commitment is the use of clear deadlines for when decisions will be made.”
“Teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with each other.”
“Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in.”
7. Good to Great | By James C. Collings
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The Challenge:
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study:
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
The Standards:
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.
The Comparisons:
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?
Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness — why some companies make the leap and others don’t.
The Findings:
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:
- Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
- The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
- A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
- The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, “fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”
Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Quotes from Good To Great;
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
“By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.”
“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”
“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”
“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.”
8. How to Win Friends and Influence People | By Dale Carnegie
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You can go after the job you want—and get it!
You can take the job you have—and improve it!
You can take any situation—and make it work for you!
Dale Carnegie’s rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you:
-Six ways to make people like you
-Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
-Nine ways to change people without arousing resentment
And much more! Achieve your maximum potential—a must-read for the twenty-first century with more than 15 million copies sold!
Quotes from How to Win Friends and Influence People;
“Criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home.”
“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
“Make the other person feel important, and do it sincerely.”
“The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.”
9. What Color Is Your Parachute? | By Richard Nelson Bolles
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In today’s complex job-market, the time-tested advice of What Color Is Your Parachute? is needed more than ever. 
Quotes from What Color Is Your Parachute?;
“Job hunting is an activity that repeats itself over and over again in most people’s lives.”
“The road to a dream job is a road that passes first of all through you.”
“Most job-hunters who fail to find their dream job fail not because they lack information about the job market, but because they lack information about themselves.”
“To meet up with employers, study what employers do, go where employers go, adapt your behavior to theirs.”
“[You might think] that the more job-hunting methods you use in looking for a job, the more successful you will be. But you would be wrong.”
10. Leaders Eat Last | By Simon Sinek
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Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home 
In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why?
The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. “Officers eat last,” he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What’s symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort–even their own survival–for the good of those in their care.
Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a “Circle of Safety” that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.
Sinek illustrates his ideas with fascinating true stories that range from the military to big business, from government to investment banking.
Quotes from Leaders Eat Last;
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
“It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.”
“And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way.”
“Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.”
“As the Zen Buddhist saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything.”
11. Getting Things Done | By David Allen
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Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become
Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.
Quotes from Getting Things Done;
“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”
“You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it “done.”
“Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pin-pointed.”
“Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”
“Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it’s not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly.”
12. Drive | By Daniel H. Pink
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Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, 
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
Quotes from Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us;
“We are not as endlessly manipulable and predictable as you would think.”
“Management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement…, self-direction is better.”
“We are purpose maximizers, not only profit maximizers.”
13. Grit | By Angela Duckworth
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The daughter of a scientist who frequently noted her lack of “genius,” Angela Duckworth is now a celebrated researcher and professor. 
In Grit, she takes us into the field to visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.
“Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better” (The New York Times Book Review). Among Grit’s most valuable insights: any effort you make ultimately counts twice toward your goal; grit can be learned, regardless of IQ or circumstances; when it comes to child-rearing, neither a warm embrace nor high standards will work by themselves; how to trigger lifelong interest; the magic of the Hard Thing Rule; and so much more. Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference. This is “a fascinating tour of the psychological research on success” (The Wall Street Journal).
Quotes from Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance;
“…there are no shortcuts to excellence. Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time―longer than most people imagine….you’ve got to apply those skills and produce goods or services that are valuable to people….Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it…it’s doing what you love, but not just falling in love―staying in love.”
“…interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can’t really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won’t…Without experimenting, you can’t figure out which interests will stick, and which won’t.”
“I learned a lesson I’d never forget. The lesson was that, when you have setbacks and failures, you can’t overreact to them.”
“It soon became clear that doing one thing better and better might be more satisfying than staying an amateur at many different things:”
“I won’t just have a job; I’ll have a calling. I’ll challenge myself every day. When I get knocked down, I’ll get back up. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I’ll strive to be the grittiest.”
14. Strengths Finder 2.0 | By Tom Rath
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Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
Chances are, you don’t. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing 
To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in 2001 which ignited a global conversation and helped millions to discover their top five talents.
In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades.
Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself–and the world around you–forever.
Available exclusively in StrengthsFinder 2.0:
(using the unique access code included with each book)
* A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment
* A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year
* A more customized version of your top five theme report
* 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)
15. Never Eat Alone | By Keith Ferrazzi
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Do you want to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to personal success?
The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered in early life, 
In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates on his contacts list, people he has helped and who have helped him. And in the time since Never Eat Alone was published in 2005, the rise of social media and new, collaborative management styles have only made Ferrazzi’s advice more essential for anyone hoping to get ahead in business.
The son of a small-town steelworker and a cleaning lady, Ferrazzi first used his remarkable ability to connect with others to pave the way to Yale, a Harvard M.B.A., and several top executive posts. Not yet out of his thirties, he developed a network of relationships that stretched from Washington’s corridors of power to Hollywood’s A-list, leading to him being named one of Crain’s 40 Under 40 and selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the Davos World Economic Forum.
Ferrazzi’s form of connecting to the world around him is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends. Ferrazzi distinguishes genuine relationship-building from the crude, desperate glad-handing usually associated with “networking.” He then distills his system of reaching out to people into practical, proven principles. Among them:
Don’t keep score: It’s never simply about getting what you want. It’s about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too.
“Ping” constantly: The ins and outs of reaching out to those in your circle of contacts all the time—not just when you need something.
Never Eat Alone: The dynamics of status are the same whether you’re working at a corporation or attending a social event—“invisibility” is a fate worse than failure.
Become the “King of Content”: How to use social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to make meaningful connections, spark engagement, and curate a network of people who can help you with your interests and goals.
In the course of this book, Ferrazzi outlines the timeless strategies shared by the world’s most connected individuals, from Winston Churchill to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan to the Dalai Lama.
Chock-full of specific advice on handling rejection, getting past gatekeepers, becoming a “conference commando,” and more, this new edition of Never Eat Alone will remain a classic alongside alongside How to Win Friends and Influence People for years to come.
Quotes from Never Eat Alone;
“Whom you meet, how you meet them, and what they think of you afterward should not be left to chance.”
“The law of probability ensures that the more new people you know, the more opportunities will come your way and the more help you’ll get at critical junctures in your career.”
“In the information age, openness – whether it concerns your intentions, the information you provide, or even your admiration – has become a valuable and much sought-after attribute.”
“Success in any field, but especially in business, is about working with people, not against them.”
“Before my eyes, I saw proof that success breeds success and, indeed, the rich do get richer.”
“Poverty, I realized wasn’t only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people that could help you make more of yourself.”
16. Never Eat Alone | By Keith Ferrazzi
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Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in
This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches:
• How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week
• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”
The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:
• More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point
• Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal
• How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times
• The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either
Quotes from The 4-Hour Workweek;
“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.”
“But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.”
“Focus on being productive instead of busy.”
“To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.”
“The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.”
“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.”
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
17. Getting to Yes | By Roger Fisher
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Since its original publication nearly thirty years ago, Getting to Yes has helped millions of people learn a better 
Getting to Yes offers a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. Thoroughly updated and revised, it offers readers a straight- forward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry-or getting taken.
Quotes from Getting to Yes;
“The first thing you are trying to win is a better way to negotiate – a way that avoids your having to choose between the satisfactions of getting what you deserve and of being decent. You can have both.”
“If you do not like the choice between hard and soft positional bargaining, you can change the game.”
“Separating the people from the problem allows you to deal directly and empathetically with the other negotiator as a human being, thus making possible an amicable agreement.”
“The relative negotiating power of a large industry and a small town is determined not by the relative size of their respective budgets, or their political clout, but by each side’s best alternative.”
“The relative negotiating power of two parties depends primarily upon how attractive to each is the option of not reaching agreement.”
“If your response to sustained, hard positional bargaining is soft positional bargaining, you will probably lose your shirt.”
18. Who Moved My Cheese? | By Spencer Johnson
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A timeless business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life.
It would be all so easy if you had a map to the Maze.
If the same old routines worked.
If they’d just stop moving “The Cheese.”
But things keep changing…
Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional, because they don’t have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude.
Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.
Quotes from Who Moved My Cheese?;
“Life moves on and so should we”
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
“See what you’re doing wrong, laugh at it, change and do better.”
“The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.”
“It is safer to search in the maze than to remain in a cheeseless situation”
“What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.”
19. Crucial Conversations | By Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
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The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions
- Prepare for high-stakes situations
- Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue
- Make it safe to talk about almost anything
- Be persuasive, not abrasive
Quotes from Crucial Conversations;
“A crucial conversation is a discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary and (3) emotions run strong.”
“If you know how to handle crucial conversations, you can step up to and effectively hold tough conversations about virtually any topic.”
“Strong relationships, careers, organizations, and communities all draw from the same source of power – the ability to talk openly about high-stakes, emotional, controversial topics.”
“The path to high productivity passes not through a static system, but through face-to-face conversations at all levels.”
“In business, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.”
“People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool – even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs.”
20. Outliers | By Malcolm Gladwell
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In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
Quotes from Outliers;
“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”
“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”
“Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.”
“Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
“It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.”
“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
“Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
21.Radical Candor | By Kim Malone Scott
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Radical Candor has been embraced around the world by leaders of every stripe at companies of all sizes. Now a cultural touchstone, the concept has come to be applied to a wide range of human relationships.
The idea is simple: You don’t have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor―avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy―you can be kind and clear at the same time.
Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class. Since the original publication of Radical Candor in 2017, Scott has earned international fame with her vital approach to effective leadership and co-founded the Radical Candor executive education company, which helps companies put the book’s philosophy into practice.
Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn’t shy away from criticism―to help you love your work and the people you work with.
Radically Candid relationships with team members enable bosses to fulfill their three core responsibilities:
1. Create a culture of Compassionate Candor
2. Build a cohesive team
3. Achieve results collaboratively
Required reading for the most successful organizations, Radical Candor has raised the bar for management practices worldwide.
22.Essentialism | By Greg McKeown
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Have you ever:
• found yourself stretched too thin?
• simultaneously felt overworked and underutilized?
• felt busy but not productive?
• felt like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?
If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.
Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.
By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy—instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.
Essentialism is not one more thing—it’s a whole new way of doing everything. It’s about doing less, but better, in every area of our lives. Essentialism is a movement whose time has come.
Quotes from Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less;
“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
“Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?”
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.”
“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”
23.The Tipping Point | By Malcolm Gladwell
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The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.
Quotes from The Tipping Point;
“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”
“To be someone’s best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.”
“If you want to bring a fundamental change in people’s belief and behavior…you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.”
“Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.”
“That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.”
24. Clean Code | By Robert C. Martin
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Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer―but only if you work at it.
What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code―lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.
Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code―of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.
Readers will come away from this book understanding
- How to tell the difference between good and bad code
- How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
- How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
- How to format code for maximum readability
- How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
- How to unit test and practice test-driven development
This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.
25. The Effective Executive | By Peter F. Drucker
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What makes an effective executive?
The measure of the executive, Peter F. Drucker reminds us, is the ability to “get the right things done.” This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.
Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned:
- Managing time
- Choosing what to contribute to the organization
- Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
- Setting the right priorities
- Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making
Ranging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter F. Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.
Quotes from The Effective Executive;
“The executive is paid for being effective.”
“The sooner operating managers learn to make decisions as genuine judgments on risk and uncertainty, the sooner we will overcome one of the basic weaknesses of large organizations – the absence of any training and testing for the decision-making top positions.”
“Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.”
“A decision requires courage as much as it requires judgment.”
“Most executives have learned that what one postpones, one actually abandons.”
“Effective executives do first things first, and they do one thing at a time.”
“Executives are doers; they execute.”
26. Give and Take | By Adam M. Grant
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A groundbreaking look at why our interactions with others hold the key to success, from the bestselling author of Originals
For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured 
Quotes from Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success;
“By shifting ever so slightly in the giver direction, we might find our waking hours marked by greater success, richer meaning and more lasting impact.”
“Otherish givers may appear less altruistic than selfless givers, but their resilience against burnout enables them to contribute more.”
“Although we often stereotype givers as chumps and doormats, they turn out to be surprisingly successful.”
“Otherish givers build a support network that they can access for help when they need it.”
“Success involves more than just capitalizing on the strengths of giving; it also requires avoiding the pitfalls.”
“Do we try to claim as much value as we can or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?”
“The fear of being judged as weak or naïve prevents many people from operating like givers at work.”
27. Do What You Are | By Paul D. Tieger
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Finding a career path that you’re passionate about can be difficult—but it doesn’t have to be! With this bestselling guide, learn how to find a fulfilling career that fits your personality.
Do What You Are—the bestselling classic that has helped more than a million people find truly satisfying work—is now updated for the 
What hasn’t changed is the power of Personality Type to help people achieve job satisfaction. This updated edition, featuring 30% new material, is especially useful for millennials and baby boomers who are experiencing midlife career switches, and even those looking for fulfillment in retirement. This book will lead you through the step-by-step process of determining and verifying your Personality Type. Then you’ll learn which occupations are popular with each Type, discover helpful case studies, and get a full rundown of your Type’s work-related strengths and weaknesses.
Focusing on each Type’s strengths, Do What You Are uses workbook exercises to help you customize your job search, get the most out of your current career, obtain leadership positions, and ensure that you achieve the best results in the shortest period of time.
28. When | By Daniel H. Pink
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Daniel H. Pink, the #1 bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, unlocks the scientific secrets to good timing to help you flourish at work, at school, and at home.
Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don’t know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of “when” decisions: 
Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.
Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married?
In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.
29. The Manager’s Path | By Camille Fournier
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Managing people is difficult wherever you work. But in the tech industry, where management is also a technical discipline, the learning curve can be brutal—especially when there are few tools, texts, and frameworks to help you. In this practical guide, author Camille Fournier (tech lead turned CTO) takes
From mentoring interns to working with senior staff, you’ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path. This book is ideal whether you’re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization.
- Begin by exploring what you expect from a manager
- Understand what it takes to be a good mentor, and a good tech lead
- Learn how to manage individual members while remaining focused on the entire team
- Understand how to manage yourself and avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders
- Manage multiple teams and learn how to manage managers
- Learn how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams
Quotes from The Manager’s Path;
“The tech industry is filled with people who despise management, thinking it’s not as important a job as writing code.”
“But management is a job, it is a necessary and important job, and in particular, it’s your job right now.”
“As a manager you help your team succeed by creating clear, focused, measurable goals.”
“Breaking down a project has a lot of similarity to…designing systems, and learning this skill is valuable even for engineers who don’t want to manage people.”
“Plenty of great engineers make ineffective managers because they don’t know or want to deal with the politics of leadership in their companies.”
“Very rarely is the tech lead given an increase in salary or a title bump, and first-time tech leads often have no idea how hard the new responsibilities can be.”
30. Presence | By Amy Cuddy
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Have you ever left a nerve-racking challenge and immediately wished for a do over? Maybe after a job interview, a performance,
By accessing our personal power, we can achieve “presence,” the state in which we stop worrying about the impression we’re making on others and instead adjust the impression we’ve been making on ourselves. As Harvard professor Amy Cuddy’s revolutionary book reveals, we don’t need to embark on a grand spiritual quest or complete an inner transformation to harness the power of presence. Instead, we need to nudge ourselves, moment by moment, by tweaking our body language, behavior, and mind-set in our day-to-day lives.
Amy Cuddy has galvanized tens of millions of viewers around the world with her TED talk about “power poses.” Now she presents the enthralling science underlying these and many other fascinating body-mind effects, and teaches us how to use simple techniques to liberate ourselves from fear in high-pressure moments, perform at our best, and connect with and empower others to do the same.
Brilliantly researched, impassioned, and accessible, Presence is filled with stories of individuals who learned how to flourish during the stressful moments that once terrified them. Every reader will learn how to approach their biggest challenges with confidence instead of dread, and to leave them with satisfaction instead of regret.
Quotes from Presense: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges;
“Presence stems from believing in and trusting yourself – your real, honest feelings, values, and abilities. That’s important, because if you don’t trust yourself, how can others trust you?”
“When we feel powerful, we speak more slowly and take more time. We don’t rush. We’re not afraid to pause. We feel entitled to the time we’re using.”
“If you’re protecting yourself against harm – emotional harm or humiliation – you can’t be present, because you’re too protected.”
“Power makes us fearless, independent and less susceptible to outside pressures and expectations, allowing us to be more creative.”
“That the body affects the mind is, fair to say, incontestable. And it’s doing so in ways that either facilitate or impede our ability to bring our authentic best selves to our biggest challenges.”
“Sometimes you have to get out of the way of yourself so you can be yourself.”
31. Thinking, Fast and Slow | By Daniel Kahneman
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In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner 
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.
Quotes from Thinking, Fast and Slow;
“Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book.”
“People who are ‘cognitively busy’ are…more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language and make superficial judgments in social situations.”
“Facts that challenge…basic assumptions – and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem – are simply not absorbed.”
“When an unpredicted event occurs, we immediately adjust our view of the world to accommodate the surprise.”
“A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.”
“The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it.”
32. Daring Greatly | By Brene Brown
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From thought leader Brené Brown, a transformative new vision for the way we lead, love, work, parent, and educate that teaches us the power of 
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”—Theodore Roosevelt
Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly. Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown PhD, LMSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.
Brown explains how vulnerability is both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment, and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity. She writes: “When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”
Daring Greatly is not about winning or losing. It’s about courage. In a world where “never enough” dominates and feeling afraid has become second nature, vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It’s even a little dangerous at times. And, without question, putting ourselves out there means there’s a far greater risk of getting criticized or feeling hurt. But when we step back and examine our lives, we will find that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, and hurtful as standing on the outside of our lives looking in and wondering what it would be like if we had the courage to step into the arena—whether it’s a new relationship, an important meeting, the creative process, or a difficult family conversation. Daring Greatly is a practice and a powerful new vision for letting ourselves be seen.
33. The Lean Startup | By Eric Ries
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Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being 
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
34. The One Thing | By Gary Keller
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People are using this simple, powerful concept to focus on what matters most in their personal and work lives. Companies are helping their 
By focusing their energy on one thing at a time people are living more rewarding lives by building their careers, strengthening their finances, losing weight and getting in shape, deepening their faith, and nurturing stronger marriages and personal relationships.
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 to * cut through the clutter * achieve better results in less time * build momentum toward your goal* dial down the stress * overcome that overwhelmed feeling * revive your energy * stay on track * master what matters to you The ONE Thing delivers extraordinary results in every area of your life–work, personal, family, and spiritual. WHAT’S YOUR ONE THING?
Quotes from the The One Thing;
“You want your achievements to add up, but that actually takes subtraction, not addition. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.”
“The most productive people start with purpose and use it like a compass. They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions.”
“Willpower is like a fast-twitch muscle that gets tired and needs rest. It’s incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance.”
“Knowing when to pursue the middle and when to pursue the extremes is in essence the true beginning of wisdom. Extraordinary results are achieved by this negotiation with your time.”
“Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.”
“Applying the ‘ONE thing’ to your work – and in your life – is the simplest and smartest thing you can do to propel yourself toward the success you want.”
35. Zero to One | By Peter Thiel
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If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.
Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.
Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.
Quotes from the Zero To One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future;
“ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”
“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”
“The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.”
“Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
36. The Art of Work | By Jeff Goins
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Jeff Goins, a brilliant new voice counting Seth Godin and Jon Acuff among his fans, explains how to abandon the status quo and live a life that
The path to your life’s work is difficult and risky, even scary, which is why few finish the journey. This is a book about discovering your life’s work, that treasure of immeasurable worth we all long for. It’s about the task you were born to do.
As Jeff Goins explains, the search begins with passion but does not end there. Only when our interests connect with the needs of the world do we begin living for a larger purpose. Those who experience this intersection experience something exceptional and enviable. Though it is rare, such a life is attainable by anyone brave enough to try.
Through personal experience, compelling case studies, and current research on the mysteries of motivation and talent, Jeff shows readers how to find their vocation and what to expect along the way.
Final Thoughts on the Best Books on Career Development
The best books on career development will guide you in the process on improving your skills, showing you your strenghts and weaknesses that will further your guidance into other topics. Career development is a lifeong process that brings you closer to your lifestyle and ideal job that determines who you are.
Happy reading!
Do you see a book that you think should be on the list? Let us know your feedback here.
Meet Maurice, a staff editor at Bigger Investing. He’s an accomplished entrepreneur who owns multiple successful websites and a thriving merch shop. When he’s not busy with work, Maurice indulges in his passion for kayaking, climbing, and his family. As a savvy investor, Maurice loves putting his money to work and seeking out new opportunities. With his expertise and passion for finance, he’s dedicated to helping readers achieve their financial goals through Bigger Investing.
