Book Recommendations

The Books That Have Most Increased our Quality of Life

The Alchemist

When I taught literature to seniors, this was the last book we read. It’s the perfect send-off to a bunch of burned-out kids heading off to college. (If they can understand it, you sure can).

In teaching it I got to dive deep into the lessons this book teaches and it changed my life. The Alchemist has had the most positive effect on my psychology. It’s written as a parable, in clear simple language that a fourth-grader could read.

And yet it teaches lessons that are at a crossroads between spirituality and psychology. The lessons are presented with clear symbols that are easy to hold in your head and use when needed.

By the way, over the years I have found that each of these lessons has been studied and verified by psychology (you’ll see them in Grit, Mindset, Drive, Flow), even though The Alchemist was tten in 1988, and Positive Psychology as a field of study wasn’t established until 2013.

It’s the only book I re-read each year, and each year I learn something new from it.

Flow

Flow has added many meaningful hours to my life in a concrete and intentional way.

It is the psychology of entering a ‘Flow’ state, that timeless in-the-zone feeling in which you become so absorbed that you block out all outside distractions.

After reading this, you will have the tools to pursue your own flow state. You will feel more fulfilled, satisfied, and contented with yourself. I can hardly think of a positive psychological attribute that isn’t increased after a good session in flow.

In short, Flow has added a significant amount of joy to my life.

Man’s Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl’s answer to the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’

It’s hard to explain this book except to say that Frankl found his answer amid the death and despair of a Nazi concentration camp, and once he lays out his arguments, you will not only agree with him, but you will also hold a newfound power over the meaning of your own life.

Your Money or Your Life

This one is also on the ‘Save the Most Money’ list, but this book isn’t really about saving money.

This book is actually about focusing on what really matters in your life and getting everything else out of the way.

After reading this, we cut our monthly spending in half and noticed a drastic increase in our happiness, and a drastic decrease in our stress levels. We spend so much less, but have so much more.

Seriously, this book is close to magic.

Learning How to Learn

A book that should be read by all students and teachers. Or by anyone who ever has to learn anything in an intentional way.

It was written with ‘tweens’ as the target audience and does an excellent job of putting complicated neuroscience into language even I could understand.

I wish I had this book when I took learning psychology classes in college.

This book also lays out a framework for learning anything in much less time.

The lessons in this book let me increase my reading rate (to the point that I now read more than 100 books per year).

Make It Stick

If you need to teach someone who must learn, you need this book.

Whether that’s in a formal classroom or within a company, or even just coaching a little league team, you need this book. It literally changed the way I run my classroom.

My students cover more material, retain more information, perform better on tests.

AND I do much less work.

This little book is packed with science and the all-too-hard-to-find actionable advice you need to take teaching to the next level. Before this book, I didn’t even know there was a next level.

How to Read a Book

A fantastic primer on how to take notes on, and retain more of, what you read.

I doubt anyone follows the advice of this book exactly (it’s pretty demanding) but it’s one of those take-what-you-like-and-leave-the-rest sort of books.

From it you will build your own system of acquiring and using knowledge. All college freshman should have to read it.

In fact, anyone who wants to take reading seriously (which should be all of you) should read it.

Principles

This book is half business advice and half personal advice. It’s main message is one of “radical transparency”, a concept that has colored the content on this site as well as how we operate in person.

This is also a compendium of the principles used by the largest hedge fund. Seeing how both Ray Dalio and his Bridgewater operate is invaluable to anyone with a business, even a small one.

Meditations

Stoicism is having a bit of a moment right now, propelled by several best-selling authors.

But that’s not why you should read this.

The problem with stoicism being ‘in’ right now is that it is touted as a philosophy that everyone should try out. I’m not convinced. I believe that some people just have a mentality that is right for stoicism. Others, maybe even most others, do not. When you read this, it will either click or not.

Don’t worry if not.

Meditations is the single most recommended book for stoics. It’s a short work, comprised of just the random thoughts of Marcus Aurelius.

They are disconnected and often don’t make sense at first, but there is timeless wisdom here.

You could pick this up at just about any point in your life and find something useful.

Ideas and Opinions

A collection of the personal thoughts of Albert Einstein. Taken from letters, essays, and other writings, this books makes it clear that Einstein was not just the brilliant physicist the world knows, but a truly beautiful soul.

Honestly, I feel like Einstein’s true value is in these essays. Yes he changed our understanding of physics forever, but if more people paid attention to the thoughts in these essays, the world would be a better place.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

I read this one in a religion class in college and it has stuck with me since.

It’s an attempt to answer the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” To do so, it relies on an ancient paradox (one Sophocles references in Oedipus Rex, so at least that ancient).

The paradox states that God (or a god or gods) can be either all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-good, but never all three at once.

He/she/it can be any two, but never all three. That might sound slightly heretical to you if you were raised strictly Christian (like I was; strict Calvinist) but the book has done more to ease my suffering during tragedies than any other.

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant

Timeless advice for both personal and business dealings. Mostly business.

Get a highlighter, because you’ll be marking about a gem per page. Funny as it is smart and useful, Letters is full of the sort of wisdom your grandfather would have handed down to you, if your grandfather owned a pork-packing plant in the 1920s.

At the time of this writing, the Kindle version is on sale, and it might be the best $1.99 you’ll ever spend.

Mindset

If you tend to blame yourself when you mess up, or beat yourself up for not being good/smart/talented enough, or you feel despair at the thought of starting new large projects, or if you fear criticism, or you fear failure…. (who doesn’t, right?) This book is for you.

There is not a single person whose life would not benefit from this book.

But wait, I don’t want you to think this is some fluffy self-help book. It’s psychology and science. It is practical and actionable. It was not easy to shift from my former static mindset (and I still slip back into that from time to time) but now that I, mostly, have embraced the growth mindset, It’s hard to keep me down. Everything looks different.

I have more positive energy, more confidence, more drive than ever before in my life.

Quiet

Leslie and I are deeply introverted people. This is the book that told us it was OK to be introverts.

We both come from extroverted families that made it a habit of literally apologizing to other people right in front of us for our introversion.

Hell, my dad used to tell people I was ‘backward’. Thanks, Dad.

Up until we read this one, we both had just sort of accepted that we weren’t normal. This is the book that showed us that introversion is not only ‘normal’ but powerful.

You would not be reading this blog without Quiet. I’m not even sure we’d be ourselves right now without it.

If you are introverted, Quiet will show you exactly how that introversion is your greatest asset, and how it can be far better than extroversion.

Zen In the Art of Writing

This book was written by Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest Sci-fi writers ever. It’s a collection of essays about the actual act of writing.

So why do you care?

The book, and much of Bradbury’s writing, positively bristles with passion and energy. Everyone would benefit from watching someone doing what they love to do with all their heart and soul. And that’s what this book is on every page.

Between the lines you will find a guide to following your passions with beautiful abandon. If we can each work with just a fraction of this man’s zeal, the world would be a better place.

Essentialism

This is the book for understanding our philosophy here ate 3MM.

We had begun the shift to what McKeown call “Essentialism” long before this book was written. We didn’t have a name for it. It was just a feeling a sense that we weren’t enjoying our work or our lives very much.

It took us years to work through all that and come up with our own philosophy about what life should be. Then I read Essentialism and it was just like, “Somebody gets it!”. It was validation.

And having it written down in one succinct book makes it easy to return to when life gets in the way.

Luckily for you, you don’t have to work through this stuff for years like we did. You could read this whole book in a weekend and accomplish exactly the same thing.

To this day, when I start to feel over extended, I pull this book out and flip through my highlights.

It hasn’t failed me yet.

The Happiness Hypothesis

Confession time: when I first heard about this book, I rolled my eyes.

I have an extreme dislike for fluffy feel-good self-help books. Actually I have an extreme dislike for anything that doesn’t offer pragmatic actionable advice.

So when I saw this book I rolled my eyes and walked away.

Huge mistake.

I wouldn’t pick this thing up for another twelve years.

I shudder to think what could have been different in my life for those twelve years.

When I finally got over myself and did read it. I was blown away. I have since read this three times, highlighter in hand, and I still don’t think I’ve gotten everything out of it.

This book is not fluffy in the least. It is a hard look at neuroscience in an attempt to answer the questions “What is happiness?” and “How do I have more of it?”.

And it works. Putting the stuff in this book to use in my life has absolutely added more happiness to my life.

The Books That Have Made Us the Most Money

Getting Things Done

How did a productivity guide make us more money than any other book?

At its heart GTD is about organizing to become more productive. And the first time I read it, that’s what it did.

But then I read it again, and I really saw the value. What this really does, once you get the system rolling, to allow you live in a state of calm, clear-headed control.

You keep as little of your to-dos in your head as possible (a state Allen calls having a mind ‘like water’). This frees up your processing power for creativity and insight. Seriously, you will not believe the sheer number of ideas that you can have each day once your mind is like water.

Every creative needs this system in place. Every business owner needs this. Because of this book, I have more control of my life, generate more creative thoughts and projects, and have more free time to boot.

Before this book I couldn’t get my grading done on time. After it, I maintain two small businesses, teach full time, read over 100 books per year, and still have to time for playing with my kid, and hobbies, and….

You get the idea.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing

This is the book that finally convinced me to give up trying to beat the market by picking stocks. I am nothing if not stubborn. I went into this book rolling my eyes, convinced that I could be the market and nothing was going to change my mind.

Then Jack Bogle changed my mind.

Jack Bogle is the man who brought index investing to us mortal (ie, non-billionaire) investors. (If index investing is a new concept to you, this book does a great job of explaining it.)

But besides all that, this book offers clear logic that simply cannot be refuted. It shattered some of my longest-held investor biases.

My favorite part of this book is the story of a man (a janitor if I remember correctly) who never made more than $25,000 per year in his life, but still left his children over $1 million.

Makes you wonder about what you could do with your salary, right?

The Richest Man in Babylon

Ugh. This book.

This thing was written in 1926 and the author, George S, Clason, decided to write the whole thing in parable.

Here’s an actual quote “For every ten coins thou placest within thy purse take out for use but nine.”

The whole thing is so dramatic and overwrought that… well, it’s painful to read. I hate this book.

But that’s how good the message is that I am still recommending it. Thankfully it’s only 100 pages. Also thankfully the ebook is only $2.

The motto of this book is “A portion of all you earn is yours to keep” which was updated and rephrased in…

The Wealthy Barber

An updated and mercifully non-biblical version of The Richest Man in Babylon.

I still kind of hate it, though.

This thing was written in the 80’s and I don’t think it’s been updated since the 90’s, BUT it offers timeless advice and a fair amount of argumentation and explanation that I, for one, really needed.

I almost threw this thing away without finishing the first chapter because of its opening gambit of sexist good-ol-boy fan-pandering. The whole first chapter was too much like listening to my father’s generation brag about golf handicaps and housewives. I’m pretty sure one man even referred to his wife as ‘the little lady’ before commenting on how progressive he was because he helped her cook.

I’m glad I stuck it out, though, because it teaches the first financial advice to have an actual impact on our financial life: pay yourself first.

It also discusses, in very practical terms, the management of retirement accounts, investment in real estate, tax deductions…. You know, boring things that we all need to know about.

The Books That Have Saved Us the Most Money

Your Money or Your Life

This is all about understanding the true cost of the money we spend.

It does a fantastic job showing you the real cost of unintentional spending without beating you over the head with guilt.

It’s not even going to ask you to give up your lattes or avocado toast, but it will show you how to find out the true value of what you own.

You will clean out your drawers. You will reexamine your life. You will approach material things completely differently after you read this one.

In short, this book will help you calculate a ‘life energy’ number. Or put another way, you will always know how much of your life you are trading for the things you buy.

It really puts things in perspective.

I Will Teach You to be Rich

Please excuse the hyperbolic title. This one is purely functional. At its core it is a step-by-step guide to getting a bunch of financial ducks in a row.

It has stuff that you would normally expect, like the difference between different retirement accounts, but the real gems are the ‘scripts’ that teach you how to lower your expenses like car insurance or cable bills.

It will even tell you how to negotiate a raise.

All in all, this book has saved us good deal of money, mostly from lowering our car insurance and internet bills.

The Simple Path to Wealth

This is the best of the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) books I’ve read.

It’s down-to-earth and easy to follow. It eschews that flamboyant used-car sales pitch that ‘You could retire by 20!’ and instead offers practical and simple advice.

What I really appreciate is that for Collins, it’s not about retiring early. It’s about what he calls “FU money” or having enough financial security to walk away from jobs you don’t enjoy. It’s about freedom. I deeply respect that.

This really is the only FIRE book you need.

The Books That Have Most Opened our Minds

The Alchemist

• See above. Should be required reading for anyone who plans to do anything, ever.

Antifragile

My favorite of Taleb’s books. He introduces the idea of “Antifragility” or something that gets stronger as it endures more and more destructive forces.

This is more a work of philosophy, as it doesn’t give much by way of actionable advice, but this book is largely responsible for both of our businesses and the site you see before you.

The 3MM strategy that we developed is our attempt to be as ‘antifragile’ as possible.

After you read this you will see opportunities to add antifragility to many areas of your life.

The Black Swan

Another book by Taleb. Again, mostly a philosophic work because there is little actionable advice. But then, part of the premise is that a black swan event cannot be predicted or planned for.

So I guess that makes sense?

Black Swan was an important book when I first read it years ago. But it has taken on a whole new life in post-covid world.

The Tao of Pooh

This cute little book did more to further my understanding of Taoism than anything else I have read.

I’ve always struggled with eastern philosophies, but hearing it come from Pooh-bear made it (finally) gel in my thoroughly western mind.

Who Moved My Cheese

My Aunt gave me a copy of this when I graduated college and made me promise to read it.

I was doubtful; the cover of my copy looked like a Chicken Soup for the Soul knockoff. But I read it and I’m glad.

It was my first exposure into one of the greatest business lessons there is. One of hustle, hope, and growth. It resonates well with The Alchemist, Flow, and Mindset.

If more people were willing to learn from the mice in this little parable, the world would be a better place.

Influence

A psychological look at the tactics used to influence and manipulate us.

This book is useful in two directions 1) protecting yourself from people who would manipulate you and 2) using psychology to get people to do what you want.

That second point might seem a bit Machiavellian, but it doesn’t have to be. You can use these powers for good. I’ve used these tactics to get higher levels of cooperation and focus out of my students as well as getting administration to pay for clubs and activities for the kids.

Reading this book is also a giant step on the road to freedom. You really start to see the ways that advertising, politicians, even your bosses manipulate you. And it gives you advice on how to fight back.

This is one of my all-time favorite reads.

Sophie’s World

If you’ve ever been curious about philosophy but were overwhelmed by the sheer number of philosophical schools out there, this is the book for you.

I first heard about this book when our philosophy program adopted as their textbook for Intro to Philosophy. I started reading it to help a kid I was tutoring and then I couldn’t put it down.

It’s told in the form of a story and that makes all the difference.

This is simply the fastest, most painless way to learn about philosophy.

Seeking Wisdom

Far and away the highest proportion of wisdom per square inch of any book I’ve ever read.

The only reason this book isn’t on every book list in the world is because there is no fluff in it. No flowery prose. No fast-talking promises of increasing your IQ.

It simply states. It has to, or else this thing would be thousands of pages long.

You will get an overview of the great lessons from the major world subjects (ie biology, history, math) and will show you how to connect them and use them to make the most informed decisions possible.

Seeking Wisdom is an antidote to manipulation, a cure for fear, a detector of lies, a hotbed of creativity. If all books were banned, this would be the one to risk your life for, because in it’s pages are all the great advances of thought since the cognitive revolution began.

Factfulness

I had no idea how much negativity had been secreted into my mental frameworks until I read this book.

Rosling shows areas of incredible human progress that go completely unreported by the media. He also shows that even top government and UN officials are clueless as to the true nature of the world.

This is as much about human progress as it is a caution against believing all the background noise you adsorb through media contact. Utterly eye-opening.

This and our next recommendation completely changed my my perspective on the world. I, like so many people around me, believed the whole world was going to hell in handbasket.

Now I know better.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Sets out to prove that violence, contrary to the way it feels when we consume the news, has decreased over time.

Pinker uses historical data, human psychology, and even economics to prove his point and explain why and how this has happened. All in all, this books serves as a hopeful message for anyone who feels that we are living in violent times.

It’s an excellent companion to Factfulness, and is the foundation of Pinker’s later (and in my opinion even better) Enlightenment Now.

Enlightenment Now

Was written in response to the widespread hopelessness that began to spread through the US in 2016. In it Pinker shows that the Enlightenment-era ideals of reason, science, and humanism have not been for nothing, but have brought vast improvements to our world.

This is not just an attempt at hopefulness, but a catalog of how much we have gained… and how much we have to lose if we allow Enlightenment ideals to be eroded.

It made me at once more hopeful about the future, and more aware of just how many anti-enlightenment people are in my life.

Fun Fact: Bill Gates called this “My new favorite book of all time”.

Godel, Escher, Bach

I fully admit that this one is for the nerds. I also fully admit that I don’t think I’m smart enough to really understand this book.

But I had a blast with it all the same. It uses mathematical logic to point out some interesting and counter-intuitive connections. It deals with math and language and philosophy and has a turtle in it.

There is real wisdom in here, too. It introduced me to concepts like isomorphisms, which I think about almost every day. As you read, the ideas presented seem so esoteric, but then you start to see them in action all around you.

This books shows you that you are living right next to hidden world. This is just a very fun, very challenging read.

In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Both of these books by Michael Pollan should be read together.

Between them you will reexamine your relationship with food and your food’s relationship with the environment.

Pollan does a great job of getting to the tough subjects surrounding our industrialized food practices without getting preachy or trying to make you feel bad.

Honestly, I had tried to read deeper about this stuff years ago when we couldn’t afford healthy whole foods, but everything I read tried to guilt me into changing my behavior.

Only these books gave me the information I needed to make my own choices guilt-free. Michael Pollan has been a godsend.

How to Change Your Mind

Another one by Michael Pollan, this time about drugs.

Not normally the kind of thing that interests me but I gave this one a go because of Pollan’s other books. And like his other books, he does not get preachy.

He does lay out both objective and subjective evidence about the nature of mind-altering substances.

Very informative. Gave me an incredible amount of insight into the working of the mind.

I’m trying really hard not to say ‘mind-blowing’, here.

The Best Books About Running a Business

The Berkshire Letters to Shareholders

The absolute best writings on capital allocation, management, and both business and stock ownership.

If you’re unaware, Buffet writes one of these letters every year and discusses the nature of Berkshire Hathaway. His honesty and transparency are unmatched.

And you can get them (at least the letters from 1975 to present) for free from the Berkshire website. You can also buy them in published format (including letters from 1965-present).

Personally, I just printed them off and stuck them in a three-ring binder. Mine are covered in highlighting and notes. I recommend that anyone interested in business should print and read one of these per week. In about a year you’ll be up-to-date and more savvy than most of the small business owners you bump into.

I still do this and I still learn new things.

Business Made Simple

If you don’t have a business degree, this is the simplest, fastest way to get up to speed on all the moving parts of running a business.

Donald Miller does great work and has been helping entrepreneurs for a long time. He’s easy to read and very very clear in his writing. This book tackles topics as amorphous as character and leadership as well as concrete concepts like sales and marketing. Byt the end of it you will have a far better understanding of what allows a business to run and grow than most small business owners out there.

I expect a great many of you will benefit from this book. I know I did.

Marketing Made Simple

Hands down the best beginner’s guide to marketing.

For plain-stated, actionable (as in do this, then do this) advice, the is the book. Nothing else comes close.

If marketing feels like a alien world to you, or if its not even on your radar yet, this is the book to read. I mean it. Miller lays out exactly what you need to do. Other books tend to get philosophical and wishy-washy about marketing. Not here. It’s basically a to-do list of only the most universally successful tactics.

To really get the most out of this, you may also want to read….

Building a Story Brand

This was my first introduction to Donald Miller. Miller teaches you to create and define your brand using some interesting psychology that revolves around the human narrative instinct.

Basically, he teaches you to use some of the best tricks in storytelling to create a memorable and relatable brand identity.

Really, you should read all three Donald Miller books. As of this writing, you can buy all three on Amazon for less than $50. I’m hard pressed to think of a better deal.

The E-Myth Revisited

This book helped to crystallize many of the many beliefs about business ownership I had floating around in my head.

Growing up, my dad had owned no less than three small businesses, and none of them seemed (to me at least) to be worth it. I mean, he made enough to support us. But he worked all the time. No sick days. No vacations. Nothing.

So I spent most of my life harboring this prejudice against being a business owner. I mean, why would anyone want to live like that? If you didn’t become your own boss to have an easier life, then what was the point?

This is book that helped me to see the light and taught me that it’s OK to want to work less. In fact, it makes the argument that most small businesses fail, because the owner’s work too hard.

The E-myth itself (The Entrepreneurial Myth) is that to be a business owner you have to be working 60 hour weeks, making huge personal sacrifices. It’s just no way to live.

That’s why we set up this website, to share our journey to working less, to fighting the E-myth

Rework

One of my all time favorite books. Rework challenges the status-quo of running a or working in a business.

Rework makes bold claims about what is right and wrong in the world of business and what you can do to fix the wrong. It’s actionable and concrete with very little ‘fluff’.

As an example, Rework tells you to “Sell your byproducts” and that’s exactly what we’re doing with this article. I already read the books, so I might as well put together a list of the best of them for the blog.

The advice given in Rework is also very modern. If you are a constant reader of business you books, you know that much of the advice given out is recycled from older work. It starts to get stale and much of it feels outdated in a post-internet world. Rework feels like it was written yesterday.

Actually Rework doesn’t feel like it was written at all. It feels like a conversation with valuable mentor.

There is a reason Rework is listed as required reading in our Ultimate Business Guide.