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Best Time Management Books

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The most successful people pride themselves on their ability to manage their time wisely. Your skills and talents alone may allow you to progress to a certain point, but never all the way. Only when combined with exceptional time management skills will you be able to achieve everything you want in life.

Balancing your career and personal life remains one of the most difficult challenges in today’s modern society. A successful job is so often a demanding one that robs you of your time with friends and family members.

At a certain point in life, this can make you regret some of the decisions you’ve made. In the same way, putting your career on hold to spend time with family can also have its negative effects, and sometimes ends up with you resenting someone you love dearly.

How do you start addressing this problem? At the end of the day, it is just about time management. When you know how to manage your time, you can make anything a possibility.

One thing that plays a huge part in time management is knowing what’s important. You should organize your priorities and find out which among them, in the long run, will benefit you most.

Of course, there are a ton of other factors to keep in mind, all of which will be discussed in my compilation of the best time management books. It’s time for you to stop wondering whether to put more time on your family or your business. It’s also time for you to know how important self-care is and why it’s crucial to give yourself a break now and then.

While you will never be able to completely break free of the hold time, give yourself some form of control over it and of your life. You can do all that and more with the help of the following books:

Best Time Management Books

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Michael Bungay-Stanier’s The Coaching Habit was the first book I read when I received the altMBA6 “care package.” It delivers a system for developing worthwhile habits and engagements that I found compelling and effective. I use the seven question system Michael teaches in my work as a guitar teacher, life coach, and musical collaborator.
Scott Perry
Author, Stoic Guitarist
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

This book is about one super-important concept. You must learn about Strategic Inflection Points, because sooner or later you are going to live through one.
Steve Jobs
Founder/Apple
A Gentleman in Moscow

A Gentleman in Moscow

I promote range and diversity. Thus, I recommend readers to expose themselves to as many different topics as possible. I usually have 2-4 books I refer back to at any given time. They range in topics from management, art, spirituality and philosophy. Trying to get the engineering thing going but don't much of a mind for science.
Henry Medine
Co-Founder/Space Jam Data
Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job

Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job

Joy At Work provides great insight into the journey of Dennis Bakke and AES, the company he co-founded. Bakke and his partner Roger Sant started the company and strived to live to a core value of Fun. It is a fascinating read in terms of their definition of fun (making important decisions and being given trust, not ping pong tables and snacks), and also in how difficult they found it to run the company unconventionally in order to be true to their values.

AES reached over 40,000 employees all across the world and they created a significantly different corporate structure than many organizations of today. At Buffer, AES and Bakke have been a big inspiration for us in staying true to our own values.

A large part of the process of staying true to the value of fun for Bakke was for him to be a sevant leader and to help individuals in the company make as many important decisions as possible. They devised the Decision Maker method of making decisions as a team, where the person closest to the problem (rather than a manger) makes key decisions. He also wrote a fable called The Decesion Maker around this concept, which I have also included in this list.

Joel Gascoigne
Co-founder/Buffer
Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder

Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder

The perfect is not just the enemy of the good; the pressure to be perfect is the enemy of girls around the world. Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, examines how to free girls—and women—from the shackles of social expectations.
Adam Grant
Author
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Ruimin cites Shirky's book as another example of contemporary thought leadership influencing Haier's direction. In the book, Shirky offers examples of companies which have thrived in the absence of traditional organizational structures. The ideas have clearly influenced Ruimin. He tells strategy business: We used to have a pyramid-style structure for our sales in China. The people in charge of sales had to manage business at the national, provincial, and city levels. After the arrival of the internet age, we realized that under this triangular hierarchical structure, people had a difficult time adapting to the requirements of the times. So we reorganized ourselves as an entrepreneurial platform. We flattened everything out, taking out all the middle management. We decentralized the structure to one with more than 2,800 counties. Each county organization has seven people or fewer.
Zhang Ruimin
CEO/Haier Group
The Soros Lectures: At the Central European University

The Soros Lectures: At the Central European University

I promote range and diversity. Thus, I recommend readers to expose themselves to as many different topics as possible. I usually have 2-4 books I refer back to at any given time. They range in topics from management, art, spirituality and philosophy. Trying to get the engineering thing going but don't much of a mind for science.
Henry Medine
Co-Founder/Space Jam Data
The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management

The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management

Business books come and go, with the times and trends but anything by Peter Drucker, as in the collection of The Essential Drucker.
Audrey Russo
President & CEO/Pittsburgh Technology Council
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)

The single most important book on leadership of our time. This insightful, innovative, original perspective is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to identify the best leaders for their business and to be the best leaders they can be themselves--men and women alike. This book is now going to be my go-to gift for everyone I know, in business and in life.
Cindy Gallop
Founder/IfWeRanTheWorld, MakeLoveNotPorn
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

This is one of the most provocative, lucidly written books I’ve read on work, by a renowned thought leader and an influential talent executive. Be prepared to throw your strategic plan out the window and become well-lopsided instead of well-rounded.
Adam Grant
Author
Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow

This book is amazing—it didn't change my mind, so much as it has changed the way I think. It helps to understand the difference between the way you make quick decisions, versus considered decisions—it takes different mechanisms in the brain. Understanding which you're doing at any given time can have a profound impact on what you ultimately decide.

John Lilly
Partner/Greylock Partners
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Getting Things Done by David Allen. He recently spoke at our Zappos all-hands meeting and gave me a signed copy of his book.
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos
Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention

Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention

Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path?

Answer:

  • 50 Signs You Know You Are An Entrepreneur - John Rampton and Joel Comm
  • Giftology - John Ruhlin
John Hall
CEO & Co-Founder/Influence & Co
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

Imagine working in an organization where the aim of your colleagues is to help you achieve your results. I could not believe it possible. After reading this book I just had to bring Arbinger to the UK to teach our people. What an experience! We are all better people for it. This book touches the very foundation of culture, teamwork, and performance.
Mark Ashworth
CEO/Butcher’s Pet Care
How Google Works

How Google Works

How Google Works is a good insight to a large corporate in the tech world.
Gary Bury
Co-Founder/Timetastic
The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

The book is all about self-development, building a strong mindset that helps you to conquest problems and obstacles. We can’t be successful until we keep on learning and implementing new techniques to make them strong skills for us. The book is not only ideal to read just but also epitome enough for practical implementations.

The idea to change begins from thoughts. When you start anything from scratch, you follow a thought process to give practical execution to your idea and for that, you need strength, wisdom, power, courage, inspiration, and guidance.

This book is not only for entrepreneur or marketer instead it’s for everyone who loves to develop themselves to achieve heights in life. It has tons of practical knowledge on leadership; easy to put into practice in your life and career. Read this book and charismatically feel the change inside you.

Haris Siddique
Co-Founder/Artimization
The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership

The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership

Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why?

Answer:

  • Radical Leap by Steve Farber
  • Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway
  • Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
  • Killing Marketing by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose
  • Waiting for your Cat to Bark by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg
  • The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath
Drew McLellan
Founder/McLellan Marketing Group & Agency Management Institute
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts

Brilliant. Buy ten copies and give one to everyone you work with. It's that good.
Seth Godin
Author & Entrepreneur
The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Player

The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Player

For too long, stat geeks like me ignored the 'development' side of 'scouting and development.' The MVP Machine is the book that's going to change that. Travis Sawchik and Ben Lindbergh persuasively and entertainingly demonstrate that a baseball player's success is less about God-given talent and more about innovation, hard work, and the willingness to take a more scientific approach to the game. Read it, and you won't think about baseball in quite the same way again.
Nate Silver
Founder & Editor-in-Chief/FiveThirtyEight
My Years with General Motors

My Years with General Motors

If you have to read just one business book to understand the global corporate world we live in today, I think this is it. And I think Bill Gates said this first. Alfred P. Sloan was the CEO of General Motors in its early beginnings, and he went through all the stages of the growth, going bust, growth and then consolidation of the beginning (when some companies were creating mechanical horses - no kidding) to the '60s, when he retired.
Bogdan Iordache
Co-Founder/How to Web

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