I loved The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and have been looking forward to his next book, Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity. I must admit being disappointed, but only slightly. I still recommend this book and it’s “productivity hacks”. Smarter Faster Better is well written, with great stories which bring quality science read more…
I strongly recommend Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown, because it compellingly tells us why, and how, to do less, better.
Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change by Shawn Achor is the follow-on to his international best seller, The Happiness Advantage. I recently reviewed The Upside of Your Dark Side, by Robert Biswas-Deiner and Todd Kashdan, and shared that I had mixed feelings about it. This book read more…
It’s with very mixed feelings that I write this review of The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self–Not Just Your “Good” Self–Drives Success and Fulfillment; and the authors would undoubtedly approve! This is a bold and thought-provoking book by Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Deiner (who, in the interest of full disclosure, read more…
Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals focuses on goals: how we set them, how we reach them, and why we fail. This book is an extension of social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson’s popular Harvard Business Review blog post: Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. The things people do to succeed are: 1. Be specific 2. Seize the read more…
What’s even better than an inspiring, innovative, and useful book that helps us thrive? One that also supports a good cause. Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life, edited by Kathryn Britton and Shannon Polly, is just such a book. Character Strengths Matter explores strengths: those things we do very well and that energize us. The read more…
David Eagleman is a very smart person with an infectious enthusiasm for how the brain works. He does an excellent job describing how much of what happens in our brain is typically beyond our conscious awareness, like changing lanes on the highway, for example. In Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Eagleman spends a significant portion read more…
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull is literally and figuratively an exceptional book. I made a rare exception to my steady diet of books about science to read Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Normally I prefer science to people’s opinions based on experience (including my own), but I made an read more…
Martin Seligman helped launch positive psychology. In Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, he redefines it. The book is important, and strongly recommended for anyone interested in deeply understanding positive psychology. That said, it is not a self-help book, and may not be terribly useful to the average person who wants to be flourishing more in life! read more…
Based on years of groundbreaking research, The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want is a comprehensive guide to understanding the fundamentals of happiness. It is data based, thorough, and practical — the best of the bunch on happiness. I truly love this book because it was my introduction to the science read more…