Top Books on Productivity that You Should Read in 2024
A lot of us are feeling very unproductive lately, especially with the pandemic going on. Just because we are stuck at home doesn’t give us the excuse to continue being sluggish and slobby.
Being productive is a lifestyle and not a temporary activity. This is why the most successful people are usually the ones who are constantly productive and make the best use of their time.
While there are tons of videos on YouTube by influencers talking about productivity, books are always the best source of any sort of information. Even said influencers encourage reading books to improve yourself, so why not give it a try?
In this article, we will show you the top 5 books on productivity written by highly productive people. These books will surely help you figure out a good routine and strategy to be more productive.
So, if that interests you, continue reading this article.
Top 5 Best Books on Productivity
Following are the best books on productivity that explain various methods and strategies that you can implement into your life to get more things done in a day. Let’s look at short descriptions of each of these books.
Getting Things Done- David Allen
For the first book on productivity on our list, we have this book by David Allen called “Getting Things Done.” This is a brilliant book to get started with if you want to learn how to be more productive. The author of this book designed it in a way that shows you exactly how you can arrange everything in a day.
The author talks about enlisting your tasks in a checklist form and removing them from your mind. But wait! It’s not what you think. Just by writing them down, you are not exactly just told to forget them entirely. You just save yourself the trouble of having to waste time trying to remember what you are supposed to do.
In our view, this is one of the best ways to organize your tasks for each day to get better results at being productive. Every successful person would agree that in order to be productive, you must first organize your to-do list and record everything that you are doing. Check off the tasks that are done, and move on to the next one!
In his book, David introduces three frameworks that he has constructed for deciding on various actions. Those are
- The four criteria model for making the current decision
- The threefold model for evaluation of everyday work
- The six-level model for reflecting on your work throughout the day
These productivity models and theories sure do sound interesting! Other than these theories and models, the book also discusses things like the “do it, delegate it, drop it” rule, how to reassess goals and stay focused with changes in situations, Combatting confusion, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed with work, and being okay with not accomplishing certain things.
We highly recommend you give this book a read and see if you can implement the models into your own life. It won’t necessarily be a life-changing experience, but it surely would be an eye-opening one. So if you want to learn more about this book, be sure to check it out!
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People- Stephen R. Covey
For the second book on our list of best productivity books, we have “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey. This is an excellent book that revolves around 7 highly productive habits that you should develop in order to get more stuff done.
Here highly effective also suggests highly successful people, so you would basically learn about people who implemented these habits and became successful in their respective fields.
The book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change” is one of the best books on leadership and success. The book provides information that you could describe as “people-focused.”
Stephen R. Covey uses these 7 habits in his personal life, and in the book, he explains how you too can start implementing them into your daily life. The habits he mentions are highly effective in setting you up for a more organized, productive, and successful lifestyle.
When you focus on building said habits, you learn to battle your laziness and bring out the best in you with confidence. Every successful person is confident about their abilities and then lives up to that expectation as well.
These habits are encouraged to be developed because they make you understand yourself better and better recognize your strengths and weaknesses. You become more aware of yourself and invest more time in strengthening the weak points and polishing the strong points.
These habits take pretty long to develop, so in the book, the author urges the readers to remain consistent with the habits. After all, consistency is key to success! (So is a failure, but consistency is too)
We recommend this book to those who want to develop habits of highly effective, productive, and successful people, and suggest that you not only read the book but also develop these habits. So if you want to know more about what the author talks about in the book, be sure to check it out!
Rework- Jason Fried and David Hansson
Are you a business owner? It doesn’t matter if you own a small business on the internet or run a large company; you would want to know certain things about running a business.
While there are many guidebooks on how to run a business smoothly, one particular book catches our eye, and that is “Rework” by Jason Fried and David Hansson. This is an excellent book that provides information about how to make your business stand out and make more profit from your business.
The book features various ideas, methods, and strategies on how to build a great business and more. This book is not only a guidebook for running a business but also covers topics such as productivity, maximum efficiency, and getting more stuff done. Hence this book made it to our list.
The authors discuss how many businesses fail to deliver projects on time due to a lack of organization and management of workload. They provide solutions and strategies that you can follow to get more work done and outwork your competitor's businesses.
This is a brilliant book that will surely help you become more productive in the right way. Just getting work done is not enough. The work needs to be sincerely done and with full focus. The authors cover such topics as well as business strategies you need to implement to grow your business.
These books are very helpful for personal improvement as well as growing a company or small business.
We recommend the book “Rework” to any of you struggling to grow and manage your business and urge you to read the book and implement the strategies in your personal life and business life.
So if you want to know more about how the authors explain how to get projects finished, definitely check this book out!
The 80/20 Principle- Richard Koch
For the 4th book on this list of best productivity books, we have the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch.
There is a well-documented but counter-intuitive theory on efforts and outcomes called the “Pareto principle.” It is pretty well known and taught in various books and spoken of by many successful people.
This theory suggests that 80% of the outcomes of an activity stem from approximately 20% of the effort that is put into that activity. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Well, it is not as simple as it sounds, as there are many scenarios and examples associated with this theory, as are various exceptions.
This principle was first proposed and introduced by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1896. The theory was explained first in his work “Cours d'économie politique.”
The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch explains this theory in detail, rather better than the economist, Pareto himself. Richard Koch gives a more in-depth explanation and provides more examples to better understand this principle.
One example provided in Richard Koch’s book is- “Most sales will come only from 20% of the products; and if applied to a personal life, 80% of happiness comes from less than 20% of your time.”
This is a brilliant interpretation of the theory, and this isn’t the only example, so you know you’re in for a great read! Richard explains how putting 20% effort into our work can go a long way, up to 80%.
Another amazing take on this theory is that the best things in life come from the 20% of things that truly matter. So instead of focusing on everything all at once, we should focus on 20% of the most important things if we want to be happy.
In terms of productivity and getting things done, this book helps you to prioritize your work, better understand which things need to be focused on, and how to amplify the outcomes just by focusing on the 20%.
This is, without a doubt, a great book, so we suggest you give it a read if you want to acquire a better understanding of the 80/20 principle.
The 4-Hour Workweek- Timothy Ferris
For the last book in our top five books for productivity, we have a rather common and well-known one. The 4-hour Workweek is a famous book by Timothy Ferris and is an amazing book on self-help, business, productivity, and a lot more!
If you are someone who dreads waking up every morning to go to work for someone else, this is the perfect book for you. This brilliantly written book provides you with various solutions and options on how to get out of a nine-to-five job cycle. The author encourages the readers to work from home in order to save time and get more work done without any sort of distractions.
As we all know, the worst enemy of being productive is distractions. To combat the distractions of a workplace, you need to first quit that job itself and focus on working for yourself.
The book also has topics such as how to create a muse, otherwise known as a business idea, that will motivate you and drive you to work a little extra to build that dream career of yours.
This will allow you to slowly but surely move away from this dreaded 9 to 5 job life and free you from the shackles of it. This is why we love this book so much!
There is a misconception among people that efficiency and effectiveness are one and the same. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Both efficiency and effectiveness are key aspects of being properly productive and succeeding.
People often focus on just one of those aspects and ignore the other. This is where this book comes in! The author thoroughly describes and distinguishes between efficiency and effectiveness and how or when the two can benefit you.
We definitely recommend this book to all you future entrepreneurs who are striving to leave your jobs and start your very own businesses. Hope it helps in being more productive and become more successful!
Final Words
The 5 books that we mentioned and recommended are very informative and contain topics that you must read if you want to get more work done and succeed in life. We hope this helps in building various productive habits and paving the way for you to become successful.
Do not forget to check out these best productivity books and read them thoroughly so you can implement them into your life. We hope you enjoyed reading this article, found it informative, and learned something new today.
Have fun reading books. That’s all for this article. See you next time! If you are interested in increasing productivity, you can also use a time tracker.