5 books for personal development

It’s almost time to put on your out of office, swap your shirt for a festive jumper and mentally prepare yourself for the endurance sport that is charades with the family.

As well as a chance to perfect your Christmas sandwich recipe, the downtime during the festive period gives us a golden opportunity to work on our self-development and set intentions for the upcoming year.

A great way to do this is by getting your nose into a book – with a mince pie in hand of course. Here’s our top personal development books that we reckon you should add to your Christmas list this year.

1. Take a leaf out of amazon’s book, literally

This book outlines clear principles for succeeding in the world of business and crystalises the key pillars that have led to Amazon’s success. There’s no textbook format here, one reviewer puts it perfectly – ‘it’s just like eavesdropping on a conversation between an incredibly wise mentor and a young entrepreneur.’

Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or somebody that’s just got an interest in business, this book will teach you about business practices, marketing, and innovation.

Find it here: Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It by Jeffrey Eisenberg and Bryan Eisenberg

 

 

2. The one for budding entrepreneurs

In today’s society we’re unlikely to work for the same business for the majority of our adult lives and instead opt to move around and get involved with side projects, exploring various passions.

This book gives you the framework and advice on how to monetise your particular area of expertise. Dorie doesn’t shy away from the fact that there is hard work in building such a career, this isn’t a quick fix, but instead offers real insight from her own life experience.

 Find it here: Entrepreneurial You by Dorie Clark

 

 

3. Unleash your potential

This book explores closing the gap between how good you are and how good you could be. Sanborn provides how-to tactics and specific growth tasks, discussing how breakthrough improvement happens: by “disrupting yourself, refocusing, engaging others and expanding your capacity.”

The key message in this book is that you could be at the top of your game, but there is always room to improve and we should never stop striving.

 Find it here: The Potential Principal by Mark Sanborn

4. Simplified you

Calloway highlights the issues that come with overcomplicating processes in everyday life and business. By removing the obstacles that we create and focusing on the things that don’t bring us value and purpose, we lose focus on what we are working towards.

In this book you’ll learn why keeping it simple is so important and what you can achieve when you strip back to the core.

Find it here: Keep it Simple: Unclutter Your Mind to Uncomplicate Your Life by Joe Calloway

5. Work less, do more

This book shatters the illusion that we have to wait until retirement to escape the rat race and claim time back for yourself. Ferris focuses on the small changes that can be made to make a big difference and offers lots of practical advice to streamline your life that can be put in to practice straight away.

With a humorous, storytelling vibe, this book sparks inspiration in us that certainly makes the prospect of taking 2018 by storm thrilling.

Want to make a change next year and build the career that you’ve always wanted? Now is the time, check out our online learning courses and take control of your future today.

 Find it here: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris

Do you know a book that we should add to our list or have a self-development tip that you’d love to share? Let us know by tweeting us @tlp_tweets, we want to hear from you.