Best Time Management Books
The most successful people pride themselves on their ability to manage their time wisely. Your skills and talents alone may allow you to progress to a certain point, but never all the way. Only when combined with exceptional time management skills will you be able to achieve everything you want in life.
Balancing your career and personal life remains one of the most difficult challenges in today’s modern society. A successful job is so often a demanding one that robs you of your time with friends and family members.
At a certain point in life, this can make you regret some of the decisions you’ve made. In the same way, putting your career on hold to spend time with family can also have its negative effects, and sometimes ends up with you resenting someone you love dearly.
How do you start addressing this problem? At the end of the day, it is just about time management. When you know how to manage your time, you can make anything a possibility.
One thing that plays a huge part in time management is knowing what’s important. You should organize your priorities and find out which among them, in the long run, will benefit you most.
Of course, there are a ton of other factors to keep in mind, all of which will be discussed in my compilation of the best time management books. It’s time for you to stop wondering whether to put more time on your family or your business. It’s also time for you to know how important self-care is and why it’s crucial to give yourself a break now and then.
While you will never be able to completely break free of the hold time, give yourself some form of control over it and of your life. You can do all that and more with the help of the following books:
Best Time Management Books
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series)

The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: Achieve More Success with Less Stress

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self – Every Day
How to be a Productivity Ninja: Worry Less, Achieve More and Love What You Do

Management Tips: From Harvard Business Review

Juliet’s School of Possibilities: A Little Story About the Power of Priorities

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models
What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive
Question: What books had the biggest impact on you? Perhaps changed the way you see things or dramatically changed your career path.
Answer:
- “Zen and the Art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design” By Laurence Boldt
- “Horse Sense: The Key to Success Is Finding a Horse to Ride” by Al Ries and Jack Trout
- “What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School” by Mark McCormack

Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
My favorite business book is the Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. No question. Business literature is full of nonsense. Drucker doesn’t tolerate nonsense 🙂
Drucker defines an effective executive as anyone who gets the right things done (an “executive” for Drucker is broad — it’s essentially what we would call knowledge workers). It’s actually a really important point: being effective is not about your personality. The only thing that matters is if you get the right stuff done.
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Here are some of the guests and some of their books, in no particular order. I recommend all of the below books. If I didn't like a book, I wouldn't have them on the show.
Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Creating an Effective Management System: Integrating Policy Deployment, TWI, and Kata
Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business

The Alchemist
Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today’s Ever-Changing Sales World

Competing Against Time
The Decision Maker: Unlock the Potential of Everyone in Your Organization, One Decision at a Time
Within Buffer, we have a concept where anyone is able to make any decision, provided they get advice from people who will be affected by the decision. It is the way we've found to envision a company without managers or bosses. We're still at the beginning of this journey, it's an exciting one to be on and I think we're creating an incredible company to be part of.
This decision making concept originates from a company called AES. I already mentioned Joy At Work, AES co-founder Dennis Bakke's first book and this is a fable he wrote to describe a company changing how they work and adopting the Advice Process.

Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind
Question: What are your must-read books for business leaders?
Answer: Time to Think by Nancy Kline and Thrive by Ariana Huffington.

Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook
Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less

Principles: Life and Work
So Good They Can’t Ignore You

The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
I would say because it influenced me and created an imperial impact on my career path. An amazing book to read as it teaches you How to reprogram your mind in minutes to eliminate fears and phobia. Being a sales and marketing professional. I adopted many great changes in me and used some of the best techniques which are explained very well in this book by Grant Cardone.
I would definitely recommend it to everyone who wants growth. Be focused and keep fueling the fire of success with your tries and learnings!

The 80/20 Manager: The Secret to Working Less and Achieving More

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less
The Pursuit of Wow! Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times

Managing Oneself

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
Ben Horowitz recently published another book called What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture.
When we were starting MavenHut, company culture was one of the things I struggled with.
I mean, I worked 70 hours/week, should my employees do the same (no, of course not!). My business parteners were working weekends as well during the early days of the company, I didn't want to. But people say that the leaders of the company should be part of the culture. So?
I just found out about the book so I only read the first few chapters, but it goes some ways I didn't think about.
The first part of the book is about the slave rebellion that created, in the end, Haiti. What is so interesting about this? Well, it's apparently the only slave rebellion in the world that was successful in creating a new country. How is it connected to company culture? I have no idea yet.
There's, apparently, another chapter on a prison gang. And another on Genghis Khan.
If you are confused, you're not the only one. But since I trust the author, I'm sure it will make sense at some point.
To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work!
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
It's important that we make this transformation, because of what Clayton Christensen calls the innovator's dilemma, where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it, and we certainly don't want to be left behind.

Developing the Leader Within You

Reinventing Organizations
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Over the years he’s [Tony Hsieh] recommended well over 20 business books — including his own, the 2010 bestseller Delivering Happiness and you can always find what he’s currently reading atop his cluttered desk. Start with Why is amogst those titles.
The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook
This is the bible for starting and running a restaurant. I recommend you get the printed version and the Kindle version. Use the Kindle version for quick reference and the printed version for study.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors
In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies
Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor

The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
I read this book at a time when Udemy was rapidly growing—over the 18 months where we went from 30 to 200 people. It was helpful to read about Horowitz's challenges, worries, and triumphs when addressing the same types of issues at a similar stage of growth. There are so many big decisions you need to make where there's just no clear-cut, right or wrong answer. There are a lot of gray areas. You gather information from your team, but the hard decisions rest with you. This book helped me realize that while I needed to carefully and objectively consider feedback, I was responsible for making a decision in the end—even when it was an unpopular one.

The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.

Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur

Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success

Man’s Search for Meaning – The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust
Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production

The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works
Ricardo Semler took over his father's business, Semco, in 1980 under the condition that he could change it completely. On his first day as CEO, he fired 60% of all top managers. Since then he has introduced a wide range of unconventional practices, such as having no official working hours, employees choosing their own salaries, and having no vision (instead wanting employees to find the way using their instinct).
For me, The Seven-Day Weekend opened my eyes and helped me to question every business practice that exists today. Semler aimed to operate as a 'sevant leader' and made a conscious effort to make zero decisions himself.
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Shantaram
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

A Gentleman in Moscow

Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job
Joy At Work provides great insight into the journey of Dennis Bakke and AES, the company he co-founded. Bakke and his partner Roger Sant started the company and strived to live to a core value of Fun. It is a fascinating read in terms of their definition of fun (making important decisions and being given trust, not ping pong tables and snacks), and also in how difficult they found it to run the company unconventionally in order to be true to their values.
AES reached over 40,000 employees all across the world and they created a significantly different corporate structure than many organizations of today. At Buffer, AES and Bakke have been a big inspiration for us in staying true to our own values.
A large part of the process of staying true to the value of fun for Bakke was for him to be a sevant leader and to help individuals in the company make as many important decisions as possible. They devised the Decision Maker method of making decisions as a team, where the person closest to the problem (rather than a manger) makes key decisions. He also wrote a fable called The Decesion Maker around this concept, which I have also included in this list.
Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

The Soros Lectures: At the Central European University
The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World

Thinking, Fast and Slow
This book is amazing—it didn't change my mind, so much as it has changed the way I think. It helps to understand the difference between the way you make quick decisions, versus considered decisions—it takes different mechanisms in the brain. Understanding which you're doing at any given time can have a profound impact on what you ultimately decide.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention
Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path?
Answer:
- 50 Signs You Know You Are An Entrepreneur - John Rampton and Joel Comm
- Giftology - John Ruhlin

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

How Google Works

The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life
The book is all about self-development, building a strong mindset that helps you to conquest problems and obstacles. We can’t be successful until we keep on learning and implementing new techniques to make them strong skills for us. The book is not only ideal to read just but also epitome enough for practical implementations.
The idea to change begins from thoughts. When you start anything from scratch, you follow a thought process to give practical execution to your idea and for that, you need strength, wisdom, power, courage, inspiration, and guidance.
This book is not only for entrepreneur or marketer instead it’s for everyone who loves to develop themselves to achieve heights in life. It has tons of practical knowledge on leadership; easy to put into practice in your life and career. Read this book and charismatically feel the change inside you.

The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why?
Answer:
- Radical Leap by Steve Farber
- Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway
- Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
- Killing Marketing by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose
- Waiting for your Cat to Bark by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg
- The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Player

My Years with General Motors
The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time

Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know

Security Analysis
Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust
I read this book after completing my exposition of overcompensation, how a stressor or a random event causes an increase in strength, in excess of what is needed, like a redundancy. I was also looking for evidence of convex reaction to stressor, or the effect of a mathematical property called Jensen's inequality in domains and found it exposed here (in other words, why a combination low dose (most of the time) and high dose (rarely) beats medium dose all the time. The authors presents the evidence for the phenomenon in the following: 1) acute stressors cum recovery beat both absence of stressors and chronic ones (this includes thermal variations); 2) stressors make one stronger (post traumatic growth); 3) risk management is mediated by the deep structures in us, not rational decision-making; 4) winning causes an increase in strength (the latter are more complicated effects of convexity/Jensen's Inequality).
Great book. I ignored the connection to financial markets while reading it. But I learned that when under stress, one should seek the familiar.
Bravo!

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup

The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime

Principles for Success

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Goals: Setting and Achieving Them on Schedule
Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success

When Panic Attacks
Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why?
Answer:
I know this is sounds self-serving but I’d recommended both of my books, the soon to be released,- “Niche Down: How to Become Legendary by Being Different”
- Harper Collins’ “instant classic,” “Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets”
- The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker
- The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber
- Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
- Back from the Dead, by Bill Walton
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace
Maverick is Semler's earlier book, which goes into the full details of how he took over Semco from his father, fired over half of the executive team, diversified the business and revolutionized the way an organization could be run.
I especially enjoy how Semler challenges some deeply ingrained assumptions and beliefs about how business needs to be run. Things like whether growth is even a good thing, and how rules and policies can quickly snowball and grind companies to a halt. It has helped us to reach one of our most powerful phrases we use at Buffer, as an often used alternative to policies: use your best judgement.

Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue
Question: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path?
Answer:
- Rework, Getting real and Remote - The combo from Fried and DHH.
- Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso
- From Impossible To Inevitable by Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin
- How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
- Content Machine by Dan Norris
- Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
- Contagious by Jonah Berger

Think and Grow Rich
I do goal-setting. The first time I read about this was in Napoleon Hill's 'Think and Grow Rich,' I was 16 years old.
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

The Three-Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation

The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months
Question: What books would you recommend to young people to be prepared for the future workplaces?
Answer: So many! So many by Seth Godin (Linchpin, The Icarus Deception, Purple Cow) Essentialism by Greg McKeown, Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Choice by Og Mandino, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey, No More Dreaded Mondays and 48 Days To The Work You Love by Dan Miller, The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran, Will It Fly by Pat Flynn, The Traveler's Gift by Andy Andrews, QBQ by John Miller, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Wow, there are so many more, but that’s a start.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
My next book for A Year of Books is The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation.
I'm very interested in what causes innovation -- what kinds of people, questions and environments. This book explores that question by looking at Bell Labs, which was one of the most innovative labs in history.
As an aside, I loved The Three-Body Problem and highly recommend it. If you're interested in Chinese history, virtual reality and science fiction -- I'm three for three! -- then you'll enjoy this book. I'm going to try to fit in the sequel before the end of the year as well.

The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking
Currently reading a fascinating book about the brain science of creativity, The Net & the Butterfly
It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work
The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don’t
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs
Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture: What the World’s Wildest Trade Show Can Tell Us About the Future of Entertainment
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2013
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Guerrilla Marketing

Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

No Bull: My Life In and Out of Markets
As a speculator I learned to take the best from books and ideas without arguments (many readers seem to be training to be shallow critics)--good insights are hard to come by. One does not find these in the writings of a journalist. There are some things personal to the author that might be uninteresting to some, but I take the package. The man is one of the greatest traders in history. There are a few jewels in there.
The man did it. I'd rather listen to him than read better written but hollow prose from some journalist-writer.

Open: An Autobiography
I don’t read “business books”. I may read books which were classified as “Business”, “Leadership”, etc; but, if I do, I do so in spite of the category they’ve been deemed to belong to, not because of it.
I generally split books into three main categories. Here are the titles –sorry, but I simply can’t pick just one– that currently hold the top spots in each:
[...]
Biography/Memoir: Andre Agassi’s and J. R. Moehringer’s “Open“; Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love“; and Salman Rushdie’s “Joseph Anton“.
7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why?
Answer:
- Radical Leap by Steve Farber
- Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway
- Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
- Killing Marketing by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose
- Waiting for your Cat to Bark by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg
- The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath

Growing Up Fast: How New Agile Practices Can Move Marketing And Innovation Past The Old Business Stalemates
Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight: The John Hinde Butlin’s Photographs
- Tibor, Tibor Kalman
- Chip Kidd Book One, Chip Kidd
- Once Upon a Time, Slim Aarons
- Our True Intent is for Your Delight, Martin Parr

You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn
The longer I look at architecture, the more I appreciate the genius of Louis Kahn, the designer of the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, the Salk Institute in La Jolla and the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth. He was miraculously capable of creating bold, uncompromising spaces that are at once completely original and utterly comfortable. This book exposes the man and his work in a way that illuminates both.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
This book is written by the founder of Pixar and is about his experience building a culture that fosters creativity.
His theory is that people are fundamentally creative, but many forces stand in the way of people being able to do their best work.
I love reading first-hand accounts about how people build great companies like Pixar and nurture innovation and creativity. This should be inspiring to anyone looking to do the same, and hopefully there will be lessons we can apply to connecting the world!

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Author Steven Johnson argues in his 2010 book that innovation comes from the collision of ideas. This can happen when an individual working in isolation builds off years of existing knowledge to fuel his insights, or it can happen much more quickly when several creative types bounce ideas off each other in a community like Silicon Valley.
This theory is one of the reasons why Hsieh decided to invest $350 million of his own money in 2010 into the Downtown Project, which is building a community of entrepreneurs in Zappos' neighborhood.

The Great Game of Business: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company
Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Yes! 50 Secrets from the Power of Persuasion

Rework

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Tiger Woods
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies
Like Charlie Munger once said: “I’ve long believed that a certain system - which almost any intelligent person can learn - works way better than the systems most people use [to understand the world]. What you need is a latticework of mental models in your head. And, with that system, things gradually fit together in a way that enhances cognition. Just as multiple factors shape every system, multiple mental models from a variety of disciplines are necessary to understand that system. You can read this book to start building a latticework of mental models in your head.
The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving
The Minto Pyramid Principle: For would-be consultants, a (very dry) book on how to write effectively for business.
The Art of Selling to the Affluent: How to Attract, Service, and Retain Wealthy Customers and Clients for Life
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

Blue Ocean Strategy
The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million
Question: What books do you recommend for people starting out or just resources? What are the ones that you go to?
Answer: First book that I think of is Mark Roberge's book, Sales Acceleration Formula. Mark came from an engineering background and really thought about things mathematically, and not just from like a sales dude sleezy car sales perspective. That's the first one and it's really good. And it also talks a lot about who are your first hires for your sales organization, how do you incentivize them, ultimate sales machine.

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Steve Jobs

The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers
It questioned the delusions of business books and the pseudoscience that some use. It reminded me that the advice given in business books may not necessarily be right for you, your team, your business or the current situation.
