Top 10 books you should read in 2020 to improve productivity

Best book on day-to-day productivity strategies
In today’s world, yesterday’s methods just don’t work. In Getting Things Done, veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares the breakthrough methods for stress-free performance that he has introduced to tens of thousands of people across the country. Allen’s premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective productivity and unleash our creative potential.

Few books become essential manuals for business and living. The Power of Habit is an exception. Charles Duhigg not only explains how habits are formed but how to kick bad ones and hang on to the good.

Leading expert on habit formation
When it comes to change, TINY IS MIGHTY. Start with two pushups a day, not a two-hour workout; or five deep breaths each morning rather than an hour of meditation. All you need is Fogg’s behavior formula: make it easy, make it fit your life, and make it rewarding.
Change can be easy—once it starts, it grows. Let B.J. Fogg show you exactly how.

A concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. This essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world–war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation–are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.

Wall Street Journal bestseller
Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximizes your competitive advantage through self-education.

Mini Habits will better equip you to change your life than 99% of the people you see walking around on this globe. People so often think that they are the reason they can’t achieve lasting change, but the problem isn’t with them—it’s with their strategy. You can achieve great things without the guilt, intimidation, and repeated failure associated with such strategies such as “getting motivated,” resolutions, or even “just doing it.” To make changes last, you need to stop fighting against your brain. When you start playing by your brain’s rules—as mini habits show you how to do—lasting change isn’t so hard.

The revolutionary movement behind the explosive growth of Intel, Google, Amazon, and Uber.
With a foreword by Larry Page, and contributions from Bono and Bill Gates.
Measure What Matters is about using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), a revolutionary approach to goal-setting, to make tough choices in business.

If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid – or compelling – explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty years ago.

The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life
Recent studies have shown that spending extended time on our phones affects our ability to form new memories, think deeply, focus and absorb information, and the hormones triggered every time we hear our phones buzz both add to our stress levels and are the hallmark signs of addiction. Over the course of 30 days, Catherine will guide you through an easy-to-follow plan that enables you to identify your goals, priorities, and bad habits, tidy your apps, prune your email, and take time away. Lastly, you will create a new, healthier relationship with your phone and establish habits and routines to ensure this new relationship sticks.

Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day
Understand why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources. Why it’s so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions. how to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems. how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible. How to collaborate more effectively with others. Why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier. How to be more effective at changing other people’s behavior?