Best Books on Learning How to Learn: 32 CEO Picks

Daniel Coyle reported from nine talent hotbeds, from a music academy in upstate New York to Caribbean baseball fields, and pairs that with neurology to name three drivers of skill: deep practice, ignition and master coaching. Jason Fried recommends it highly for its insights.

Joshua Foer set out to report on memory champions and ended up training for a year with a coach, explaining how memories form and techniques from the memory palace to systems for memorizing cards and numbers. Jay Shetty says it lays out the methods memory pros rely on.

Chess prodigy turned Tai Chi Chuan world champion Josh Waitzkin argues that his real skill is learning itself, and uses matches and bouts to show how to trigger intuitive leaps, refine technique and turn defeats into progress. Chris Oliver calls learning well a crucial skill for programmers and founders.

Mortimer J. Adler, with Charles Van Doren, treats reading for understanding as a learnable skill, climbing from basic and inspectional reading to analytical reading, where a reader maps a book’s structure and arguments before judging it. Ben Chestnut passes its tips on to his young children.

Scott H. Young, who learned four languages and covered MIT’s four-year computer science curriculum in a year, lays out ultralearning, a structured and intense way to teach oneself hard skills, with stories of other ultralearners. Barbara Oakley ranks it above every other book on learning she has read.

Matthew Syed, a former table tennis champion, weighs talent against practice to explain how champions are made, from figure skaters who fell most often to one street in Reading that produced a crowd of top table tennis players. Melody Hossaini found its sports examples convincing on how expertise is built.

A lifelong non-cook, Tim Ferriss uses cooking to teach meta-learning, a stepwise method for learning any skill quickly, opening with a section on learning how to learn before moving through kitchen basics, foraging and food science. Marin Gerov recommends it.

Barbara Oakley uses neuroscience to show that people of any age can uncover hidden talents, with profiles of career changers who turned weaknesses such as a poor memory into strengths. Daniel Pink recommends it to anyone seeking a reboot or reinvention.

Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool distill three decades of research on athletes, memory experts, chess players and violinists into deliberate practice, a method built on the mental representations experts learn, and play down IQ and innate gifts. Sergey Sapelnyk says it shows people can get much better at almost anything.

Scott Young explains why some skills come easily while others stall even after decades, and argues that improvement rests on three things: learning from others, the right kind of practice and constant feedback. Cal Newport calls it an approachable guide to getting better at what matters.

Peter C. Brown and his coauthors, Mark A. McDaniel and Henry L. Roediger III, show from cognitive psychology that rereading, highlighting and cramming give a false sense of mastery, while self-testing, spaced review and mixed practice make learning last. Barbara Oakley counts it among the best books on the subject.

Science reporter Benedict Carey reviews decades of research to argue that forgetting, sleep and daydreaming aid learning, and tests counterintuitive techniques such as interleaving subjects and abandoning the single quiet study spot. Vladimir Oane says it shows that common ideas about learning rest on superstition more than science.

Fortune editor Geoff Colvin argues that top performers in golf, politics, investing and business owe their results neither to talent nor to plain hard work, but to a specific kind of practice sustained over decades, and to how they review progress and learn from mistakes. Chelsea Frank recommends it.

Barbara Oakley, who failed high school math and science and later became an engineering professor, explains how to retrain the brain for technical subjects, arguing that stepping away from a problem lets a more relaxed mode of thinking work. Mike Rowe praises her as a teacher who leaves people curious.

Carol S. Dweck’s study of fixed and growth mindsets is mainly about beliefs about ability, but it bears directly on learning, showing why praising intelligence can backfire and how a workshop shifts students toward growth. Julia Enthoven says believing any skill can be built with practice helped her embrace challenges.

Cal Newport’s book is mainly career advice against following a passion, but its case rests on building valuable skills first, learned from people who take deep satisfaction in jobs from screenwriting to programming. Reid Hoffman praises its research-based advice on investing in oneself to stand out.

Robert Greene studies how historical and living masters reached the top of their fields, mainly a guide to a life’s work with a demanding apprenticeship at the heart of the path. Chris Oliver found its study of exceptionally talented people reassuring.

Developmental molecular biologist John Medina states twelve rules about how the brain works, citing only replicated research, with chapters on sleep, stress, exercise, attention and short and long term memory that bear directly on learning. Dmitry Dragilev recommends it as a primer on the brain.

Peter M. Senge applies learning to whole companies, setting out five disciplines for a learning organization, with systems thinking at the center alongside personal mastery, mental models, team learning and shared vision. Josh Brewer has found that the best companies are the ones most oriented toward learning.

Josh Kaufman’s alternative to business school is a plan for teaching oneself business, gathering the core ideas of marketing, sales, negotiation, operations and productivity into simple mental models. Brian Burkhart praises its short, digestible lessons from finance to organizational development.

Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann collect mental models from psychology, physics, economics and other fields, such as the Eisenhower matrix, the 5 Whys and Hanlon’s Razor, a toolkit for thinking more than a study method. Shane Parrish calls it an intellectual playground for the brain.

Khan Academy founder Salman Khan argues that AI will change how people learn, describing tutoring fitted to each student’s pace and style, with road maps for teachers, parents and students. Bill Gates finds his case that AI will change the classroom convincing.

Matthew Syed contrasts aviation, which studies every mishap, with health care, where mistakes often stay hidden, to argue that any field improves only when people admit failure and learn from it. Richard Branson says it shows that people learn by trying things and adjusting to the results.

Thomas M. Sterner treats practice as inseparable from learning, and argues that the act of practicing, done with focus and mental discipline, can be rewarding in itself. James Clear recommends it for its plain route to mastery.

Alexander Kotov’s chess manual sets out how a grandmaster analyzes a position, builds a tree of analysis and chooses candidate moves, a training method for one game. Tyler Cowen says it taught him that people learn mostly by working on actual problems, not from reading alone.

John Taylor Gatto, a public school teacher for thirty years, argues that compulsory schooling trains children to see learning as rote memorization, and proposes what he calls open source learning instead. Seth Godin keeps recommending it to parents.

Jill Konrath writes for salespeople who must learn fast after a promotion, a new job or a changed market, with a plan for absorbing information and mastering skills quickly through mindsets, learning strategies and habits. Genevieve Bos says it shows how to become an overnight expert for clients.

Sönke Ahrens explains the slip-box that sociologist Niklas Luhmann used for his notes, mainly a system for writing and research, and draws on psychology to show why organizing ideas this way helps students and academics. Ali Abdaal says it transformed how he takes notes.

Tony Buzan, inventor of the Mind Map, and his coauthor Chris Griffiths put the technique to work on meetings, negotiations, marketing plans and strategy documents, a tool for organizing thinking at work. David Sisk recommends it to visual thinkers planning business work.

Elaine Biech writes for trainers, laying out the science of learning and development and how skilled facilitators keep learners first when a session goes off plan. Armina Sirbu advises anyone drawn to training and learning design to read it before starting.

Michael Ellsberg interviewed millionaires and billionaires without degrees and concludes that the skills behind success are mostly picked up outside school, from finding mentors to building a network. Marin Gerov says it started his interest in nonfiction about productivity.

Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien set out nine general-purpose mental models for better decisions and productivity, mainly a thinking toolkit rather than a study method. Matt Mullenweg expects to recommend it often.