2022 Book Club — 5 Business Books Worth Reading (or Re-Reading) This Year
I’m an avid reader. I don’t cover a lot of ground because I really take my time and consume what I’m reading, so if I find myself with drifting thoughts while I read, I stop, I go back to last place I remember in the text, and I start over. But over the years I’ve accumulated a list of books that have really impacted me and I find myself going back to over and over again.
When you like to read the type of stuff I do which is a lot of business development, leadership, personal growth type of material, there’s a fine line these authors have to walk between having the right material to validate their claims and still be engaging vs. having their books read like an all out text book in an entry level college psychology course. I tend to gravitate towards the former — that is books that offer solid information but remain engaging, interesting, and ultimately, revelatory.
With that, I read about 20–30 books a year. I tend to read through about two books a month, some of them I fly through because they’re that good, and some of them I struggle through and find myself having to go back and re-read quite a bit, as I described above, because although the information is great, it’s just a bit dry and hard to stay engaged with at times.
But, all that is to say that I read through a bunch of books in the past few years so you don’t have to! And from those books, here are my top 5 that you should read in 2022.
(Note: I’ll be including links to where you can find these books if you’re interested in picking up a physical copy. These are affiliate links. If you purchase through these links it doesn’t cost you anything and I earn a small commission and that is much apprecaited.)
Here it goes:
#1 — Atomic Habits by James Clear (https://amzn.to/3L3ez1E)
If you’ve done any reading in the past couple of years in the productivity/personal development space, you’ve probably heard of this book, and for good reason — it’s freaking phenomenal!
The thing I appreciate most about this book is that James doesn’t just highlight the negative traits that so many of us tend to struggle with (i.e. consistency around making healthy choices like working out or eating right. Or why we can’t stop mindlessly scrolling), and tell us why we need to change. He beats us up gently by offering sound reasoning, rooted in science, as to why we struggle with the things that we do and furthermore reassures us that we’re not the only failures in most of the areas that we struggle with, in fact we’re in the vast majority.
Then he goes on to offer practical and actionable things that we can do to get from where we are to where we want to be. These aren’t quantum leaps of “stop doing this and start doing that”. These aren’t even baby steps for specific problems. Rather, he outlines a method of breaking down big goals into manageable pieces so that eventually, we can end up where we want to be. Emphasis on the word “eventually” because by definition, a habit is something that forms you over time.
This book creates room for the messiness of being a human in process while still providing hope and encouragement that you can become the type of person that you want to be, and that’s what I love about it.
There’s so much to say about this book, but the last thing I’m going to say is that if you only read one book on this list, read this one. It’s incredible and it’s worth it.
#2 — Deep Work by Cal Newport (https://amzn.to/3Gaf2Ly)
Again, if you do any reading in this space, you had to know that Cal Newport was going to make an appearance. And deservedly so. Cal is an all out authority in the world of decluttering your environment, both mental and virtual, so that you can be the most focused version of yourself possible.
Again, my favorite thing of this book (and really any Cal Newport title like Digital Minimalism, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, or A World Without Email), is the practicality of it. This book is being written by somebody who exists in a quintessential roll of the distraction economy. He’s a college professor and the levels of administrative structure, interconnected department collaboration, teaching dozens or hundreds of students, balancing research, being an author — it all screams distraction. The amount of email you would get in the day to day would be a full time job.
Despite all of that he has incredible systems in place to prevent the absolute information overload that comes along with that and he presents his experience to the reader in a manageable way that shows that it’s totally possible for us as well.
#3 — Linchpin by Seth Godin (https://amzn.to/3INglBS)
This book changed the way that I think and provided a vocabulary so that I could understand why I was making a smart decision when I dropped out of college.
In a nutshell, the current state of the economy is that creative problem solving is the most valuable skill set somebody could have. It doesn’t matter if you’re building bridges or creating youtube videos for a living, creative problem solving is valuable. And the people who succeed, both working for themselves or for someone else, are the ones who can solve problems creatively. Knowledge is cheap, there’s thousands of people who have the same college degree you do and can access the same information and resources.
What’s unique is the individual approach to a challenge.
The world is looking for your unique perspective to show up and propose interesting solutions to uninteresting problems and that’s how you become a linchpin.
This ones a quick read, maybe a week or so if you’re a slow reader like me and it’s definitely worth it!
#4 — The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (https://amzn.to/3AIBKJz)
If you want to better understand the current layout of the world as far as ‘content’ and marketing is concerned; from social media to the blockchain and NFT’s than this book offers a fairly compelling explanation and it’s been happening for, literally, centuries since the rise of the penny papers in the late 1800's, and is the same business model copied and pasted to digital content today.
This clickbait driven, shock and awe, ‘fake news’ method of capturing and harvesting attention for resale is not a new strategy. What is new is the scale that’s been opened up by the existence of the internet. But by understanding how media moguls have done it in the past, we can understand what’s happening in the current and potentially in the future and make educated decisions about the level of involvement that we’re willing to let these things have in our lives.
#5 — The Practice by Seth Godin (https://amzn.to/344LbXU)
Another one by Seth Godin. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about this one but suffice it to say that it’s an encouraging read that really got me to fall back in love with the journey and the day in/day out grind of being an artistic based entrepreneur.
I’m pretty sure that I read this one in a weekend so even if you get nothing out of it, it’s worth giving it a shot.
Honorable Mentions: Literally any one of these titles could have been on the list in place of any of the others, they’re all equally as good and worth the read. And I could have just made this a “10 books to read…” list instead of 5, but I’m going to be honest — I didn’t feel like giving my synopsis of all 10 so you’re just going to have to take my word for these 5 that they are also phenomenal and equally inspiring and you should most definitely go ahead and give them a read as well!
Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis (https://amzn.to/3r8TR8v)
Essentialism by Greg McKeown (https://amzn.to/35r6aVf)
Twelve and a Half by Gary Vaynerchuk (https://amzn.to/3o8eRKG)
The Motivation Myth by Jeff Haden (https://amzn.to/3r9bBAE)
