2017 was a year of renewed commitment to my own self-education. This year for the first time (but definitely not the last) I shelled out some money for an online course, and during the course of the year I read more than 50 books, averaging over a book a week.
Not every book was a winner, but some of them had a profound impact on how I see the world and how I live my life. I’ve been eager to share the contents of these books with others and all of my friends have heard me ramble on about the things that I have learned from them.
Reading 50+ books this year has been incredibly beneficial, and I want 2018 to be as enriching for you as 2017 was for me.
I once heard Dale Partridge of StartupCamp say that if you aren’t reading at least six good books a year, you aren’t committed enough to your own education.
If 2018 is your year to re-commit yourself to your own education (and it should be), here are my most recommended books from the past year to get you started:
1) Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
It seems like in the self-help space there is a lot of talk about mindsets right now, and with good reason. As Eker himself points out, your thoughts determine your feelings, which determine your actions, which determine your results.
If you have a bad mindset, you have a subconscious preference for unhelpful actions which lead to poor results. Eker says that because of the mindset they posses around money, most people have a certain financial “thermostat” they are set at. In other words, a poor person might experience a fortunate upswing in their financial situation at some point, but in the long term they will end up right back where they started, just like weather conditions might change the temperature of your house, but eventually it will be brought back in line to what the thermostat is set to. Conversely, a rich person’s thermostat is set very high. If Warren Buffet lost a significant chunk of money tomorrow, no one would doubt his ability to eventually gain it back.
Probably the most valuable part of his book are the seventeen “wealth files.” These are short statements about the differences in mindset between the rich and the poor which he elaborates on throughout the book. Even if you don’t pick up the book, I think this list alone will make this post worth reading for you. Here are his 17 “wealth files”:
- Rich people believe “I create my life.” Poor people believe “Life happens to me.”
- Rich people play the money game to win. Poor people play the money game to not lose.
- Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.
- Rich people think big. Poor people think small.
- Rich people focus on opportunities. Poor people focus on obstacles.
- Rich people admire other rich and successful people. Poor people resent rich and successful people.
- Rich people associate with positive, successful people. Poor people associate with negative or unsuccessful people.
- Rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling and promotion.
- Rich people are bigger than their problems. Poor people are smaller than their problems.
- Rich people are excellent receivers. Poor people are poor receivers.
- Rich people choose to get paid based on results. Poor people choose to get paid based on time.
- Rich people think “both”. Poor people think “either/or”.
- Rich people focus on their net worth. Poor people focus on their working income.
- Rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well.
- Rich people have their money work hard for them. Poor people work hard for their money.
- Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.
- Rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know.
You can read my full review of the book including the notes that I took here: http://thematthewkent.com/books/secrets-of-the-millionaire-mind/
2) The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
Since Tim Ferriss has so many fans, this is one that if you’ve likely already heard of, if not already read.
After reading his breakthrough The 4-Hour Work Week in 2016, I read The 4-Hour Body and 2016’s Tools of Titans in 2017. Although Tools of Titans was the newer book and the one that was getting more buzz (and in many respects is probably a better book), The 4-Hour Body makes this list because so far it has had a much bigger impact on my life.
Like most of Tim’s books, this is a huge volume that he describes as a “choose-your-own-adventure buffet of options” rather than a traditional book that is meant to be read cover-to-cover (I read it cover-to-cover anyway).
It contains advice for losing weight, building muscle, improving athletic ability, and having better sex (you want to be careful leaving this book somewhere that a kid could pick it up unless you’re ready to have “the talk”). The advice given comes from both his own self-experimentation as well as his interviews with the experts.
The most impact part of the book for me was the introduction of the Slow-Carb diet, the first diet that I’ve ever tried and the one that helped me lose 30+ pounds and get into better shape at age 30 than I was at age 20.
The reason that the Slow-Carb diet is so powerful is because it is both biologically and psychologically sound.
Many diets are biologically unsound, they are based around the erroneous notions that people get fat because they eat too much and exercise too little, and they get sick because they eat too much saturated fat.
The truth is that people get fat because they eat too much sugar and too many cheap carbs, and they get sick because they eat too much sugar.
By going after the root cause of obesity, the Slow-Carb diet allows you to effortlessly lose weight without ever having to go hungry, count calories, or work out.
Perhaps even more importantly, the diet is psychologically sound, being set up in a way that maximizes adherence. One of the biggest criticisms of low-carb diets is that restrictive diets which cut out whole categories of foods will cause you to feel deprived, making it hard to stick with the diet over time. I completely agree, which is why it’s so important that the Slow-Carb diet has a weekly unrestricted cheat day. You can eat as much as you want all day every day and you can eat whatever you want once a week. No need to miss out on the joy of junk food and no need to consciously balance eating in “moderation” (No one who says they”try to eat healthy 80% of the time” actually does unless they have a real system). Instead, you get guilt-free indulgence while enjoying rock-solid results.
You can read my full review here: http://thematthewkent.com/books/the-4-hour-body/
3) Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle
I picked this one up from the library on a whim because I was intrigued by the title and boy, I wasn’t disappointed.
Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and MIT Professor who has been studying our relationship to technology since people first started using networked computers.
Her career has seen the whole evolution of humans interacting with computers, from email to role-playing games to social media.
There’s no doubt that our technology has helped us out tremendously and we are all very happy to have our phones, but there are some pitfalls that come with the devices that we hold so dear that we need to be aware of.
For instance, people today are beginning to struggle with finding solitude. Our constant access to a device that captures and divides our attention has conditioned us to feel anxious when there is nothing to immediately respond to. Whenever there is a dull moment, we turn to our devices and start scrolling through some news feed, almost like a gambler returning to their slot machines.
This is critical, because real solitude –time when our mind is free to wander– is critical to both creativity and productivity. Our brains need a chance to escape the demand to be reactive so that they can make connections between ideas, and can rest and recharge in preparation for our next bout of work. When you are plugged in, you are unable to enter the mentally restful state that primes you for peak performance and gets your creative juices flowing.
Not only does technology have a way of encroaching on our time alone, it has a way of encroaching on our time with others. How many times have you seen people that are physically together, but are mentally absent, interacting primarily with their phones instead of each other (but I’m sure you’ve never done anything like that).
It’s great that our phones can connect us to people who we would have lost touch with in the past, but for a lot of people, messaging is overtaking conversation as the primary method of communication. Messaging certainly has it’s advantages, but real emotional connection and empathy come through physical presence, attention, and especially, eye contact.
Empathy is something that we all need to develop, and the only way to do that is to actively engage in more face-to-face conversations.
I’m very much pro-technology and I’m not at all suggesting that you need to get rid of your smart phone. What I am emphatically saying is that everyone in a digital age needs to also consider the downsides of being hyper-connected and come up with a plan for making sure technology doesn’t crush your creativity and destroy your empathy.
I think that reading Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle is a great place to start.
You can read my full review here: http://thematthewkent.com/books/reclaiming-conversation/
4) Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Minimalism is all the rage these days and I’m definitely on board. A culture as extravagant as ours could use a good reminder that often times less is more. The unique angle that Essentialism brings do the table is that in order to escape the undisciplined pursuit of more, you need to embrace the relentless pursuit of less, but better.
The main task of Essentiasm is the hard work of separating of the trivial many from the essential few. Most of the things that you do are trivial, but some are essential. Most of the opportunities in front of you are trivial, but some are essential. Most of the things that you own are trivial, but some are essential.
Greg points out that legendary management guru Peter Drucker predicted that we were entering into an age where the number of choices available to us would exceed our ability to choose, something that has in fact happened. In modern times, we are all suffering from decision fatigue, information overload, and even opinion overload. According to Peter, the great challenge that we face is that for the first time in human history, we need to learn how to manage ourselves.
Part of becoming an Essentialist is learning to ask more disciplined questions. For instance, a common question people ask when cleaning out their closet is “is there even the remotest chance that I might use this one day in the future?” An Essentialist would ask “do I love this item?”, “does it look amazing on me?”, and, most importantly, “if I didn’t already own this item, how much would I pay to acquire it in the condition it is currently in?”
You can see how that last question can apply to other areas as well: “If I didn’t have this opportunity, how hard would I work to get it?”
In addition to asking better questions, Greg lays out a variety of techniques to help you out the pursuit of “less, but better”, including journaling, play, saying “no”, setting up boundaries, routines, early preparation, and prioritization.
In terms of prioritization, Greg says that until you know what the most important thing is at any given moment, the most important thing is figuring out what the most important thing is.
This is a book I plan to return to in the future. The lessons it contains aren’t something you can effortlessly implement on one go-round.
You can read my full review including all the notes that I took here: http://thematthewkent.com/books/essentialism/
5) Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes
There are two myths in the nutrition industry that are so pervasive, so firmly entrenched that they amount to religious dogma. The first is that we get fat because we eat too much and exercise too little, and the second is that we get sick because we eat saturated fat.
Both of these myths are related and both of them are absurd. The truth is that we get fat because we eat sugar and other cheap carbs such as flour, and we get sick because we eat sugar.
Gary Taubes is a journalist who studies Science and has a healthy understanding of just how hard it is to get things right when it comes to scientific inquiry.
Since 2007 he has been working to fight the pernicious nutrition myths mentioned above. His initial book on the subject was 2007’s Good Calories, Bad Calories, an enormous, meticulously researched volume that exhaustively reviewed the history of nutrition science to see where things went wrong, and how our misguided crusade against saturated fat caused us to miss the dangers of carbohydrates.
If a 640 page book sounds a little too intimidating for an introduction to the subject, you want to start with his 2010 follow up, Why We Get Fat, which is the more readable version of his argument that sugar and other carbs –not saturated fat or a surplus of calories– are the reason for our health problems.
I don’t have time to unpack his whole argument here, but to give you some food for thought, I’ll leave you with what Gary calls “the great medical disconnect.” If you were to ask any nutritionist (or anyone who went to medical school, or who studied biology or endocrinology), “How does fat get stored in the body?” they would all give you either a long or short version of this basic answer: “dietary carbohydrates drive insulin secretion, and insulin secretion leads to fat storage.” That answer is entirely uncontroversial and universally agreed upon. If you then ask them, “How do people get fat?” you’ll likely here some variation of, “They eat too much and exercise too little.”
What I’m hoping you can see is that those are two wildly different answers to what essentially amounts to two different wordings of the same question. The “radical” hypothesis of Why We Get Fat is that maybe, just maybe the same thing that causes you to store body fat and to not burn it is the same thing that causes you to get fat.
That’s the essence of his argument: that sugar, flour, and other cheap carbs elevate insulin levels causing you to store fat. All that is necessary to lose weight is the negative stimulus of insulin deficiency.
If you want to read the whole nearly 300 page argument, pick up a copy of Why We Get Fat.
You can also read my review here: http://thematthewkent.com/books/why-we-get-fat/
6) Grit by Angela Duckworth
Is effort or talent more important for achieving success? It’s an age old question, but an important one.
Americans are much more likely than people from other countries to say that effort matters more, but research indicates that even Americans have a deep-seated bias toward “natural talents.” In one study, subjects were given the fictitious biography of two musicians, a “natural talent” and a “natural hard worker.” They then listened to samples of each of these fictitious artists music, which were really just two different sections of one piece played by the same artist. The “natural talent” was deemed to sound better, to be more likely to succeed, and to be more hireable.
The reason that we are so enthralled with mythologizing the “natural talent” is because it lets us off the hook. We say, “this is an area where I don’t need to compete,” and we stop working hard.
The good news for us and bad news for our excuses is that success is not best predicted by natural talent after all, but rather by our passion and perseverance toward long-term goals, in other words, by grit. This is the position Angela Duckworth defends in this insightful guide to achievement.
Talent may mean that your skills improve more quickly than other people’s do when you invest effort, but by itself talent doesn’t guarantee you will develop those skills. You have to combine talent and effort to create skills.
According to Duckworth, talent x effort = skill, and skill x effort = achievement. As you may notice, effort “counts twice.”
Personal growth is available to all of us, but most people avoid it because it is uncomfortable. To grow, you need to seek out a challenge you can’y yet meet and then focus on it with undivided attention. Ideally, you would try to seek immediate feedback on your efforts and focus entirely on improving the areas where the feedback was negative. This is repeated until “conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence.”
Duckworth thinks that most people cruise through life averaging exactly zero hours of this kind of “deliberate practice.”
Deliberate practice may be difficult, but as Duckworth notes: “complacency has its charms, but none worth trading for the fulfillment of realizing [your] potential.”
Combining fascinating research and practical advice, this is a great book for anyone who wants to aim higher.
7) Start! by Jon Acuff
This was one of only a handful of books that I read this year where I had never heard of the author or the title. My wife went to the library with the kids, saw the book, thought I might enjoy it, and checked it out for me.
I love my wife.
Anyway, it was a good call on her part because I really enjoyed the book and have since started following the author on Instagram (he has an awesome Instagram account that you should check out).
As you might be able to pick up on from the cover art and subtitle, this book is a very funny, but also very insightful guide about how to get started chasing your dreams.
The main idea of the book is that there are five stages that you have to go through when transitioning from “average to awesome”:
- Learning
- Editing
- Mastering
- Harvesting
- Guiding
These stages used to correspond to the various decades of a typical career, but thanks to the time that we live in and the magic of the internet, you can blaze through them much faster.
Anyway, rather than elaborate more on the premise, I’d like to share with you my favorite passage from the book. It might very well be my favorite passage of any book that I’ve read this year:
We All Used to be Awesome
Awesome is a lot simpler than you think, because you used to know awesome quite well.
Everyone did at one point. Especially when we were kids.
I was reminded of this one night as I was walking down the hall at home. My daughters were brushing their teeth, an event that usually boils over into an international crisis. This time though, they weren’t fighting over sink space, –they were talking literature. I heard L.E., my 9-year-old say to her little sister McRae “Did you know that the guy who wrote The Twits also wrote James and the Giant Peach?” I heard McRae respond “I know! I love that guy. He’s got a great imagination, like me.”
Like me.
What a powerful declaration.
Roald Dahl has been called the greatest storyteller of our generation. He also wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’s sold millions and millions of books. And in McRae’s little 6-year-old mind, his imagination is on par with hers. He’s a peer.
You used to believe like that too.
You can read my full review with all the notes that I took here: http://thematthewkent.com/books/start/
Final Thoughts
I generally put the books on this list into three categories: healthy (The 4-Hour Body, Why We Get Fat), wealthy (Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, Start!) and wise (Reclaiming Conversation, Essentialism, and Grit). If you need books to read in 2018 to help you become healthy, wealthy, and wise (and I highly recommend keeping a running list of books to read), these are all awesome choices.
What were your favorite books that you read this year? What should I be reading in 2018?
Get Your Utimate Daily Checklist: 13 Steps to Winning the Day
If you're chasing your dreams, willpower won't work. You need a system that keeps you on track.
This simple 13 point checklist will help you get further faster.
People will think you are superhuman.
