I'm an avid reader and have been since a young age.
Over the past couple of years, I have ramped up this habit of reading and focussed specifically on nonfiction books.
In addition to reading, I also love working on my personal development as I feel there's always room for improvement and growth in our lives.
While this list will be in no particular order, I definitely want to point out that each and every one of these books has impacted me immensely and there are multiple lessons that I now apply to my life that I attribute to these books.
Now, this is by no means an exhaustive list as there are so many amazing books I have read over the past couple of years that it's quite impossible to narrow it down to just 5, but these are just some of the ones that I stand out from the rest.
The 4 Hour Work Week By Tim Ferriss
I read this book back in 2013 and it completely changed my perspective on life, retirement, work, and productivity.
The 4-hour workweek is all about working smarter, not harder.
There are many productivity principles introduced in the book including Pareto's 80/20 principle, which you can apply to your busy life to start working smarter so that you can spend the rest of your time doing the things you enjoy.
This book also introduced me to the idea of micro-entrepreneurship or side hustles, a term coined by Tim Ferriss that refers to people who are running their own businesses that are not dependent on physical location but on using the internet.
Another thing the book introduced me to was the concept of mini-retirements.
Most people believe in the deferred life plan which is the idea that we work hard for 40-50 years, save up enough money so we can quit working for the next 10-20 years, and then do whatever we want and enjoy our life then.
Granted we even reach that stage. As morbid as it sounds, no one knows their expiration date so why wait for a 'someday' that you don't know you will reach?
The 4-hour workweek is based on the idea that you can actually enjoy retirement much sooner at a much younger age when you actually have the energy to enjoy it by taking mini-retirements throughout your life.
The whole premise is that starting a side hustle that is location-independent can allow you to travel and enjoy mini-retirements all the while making an income online.
Tim also outlines how you can use automation, geo arbitrage, and outsourcing to reduce the time it takes to run those side hustles and yet still make plenty of money to fund your travel and mini-retirements.
Overall this book is a must-read and it's definitely one of my top 5 favourite books.
Atomic Habits By James Clear
I love this book so much and there are so many nuggets and wisdom in those pages I found myself highlighting most of the book (that rarely happens)!
But the reason why I love Atomic Habits so much is that it hones in on the most important and fundamental thing that makes up who we are, our habits!
According to research done by Wendy Wood at the University of Southern California:
40-45% of our daily behaviours are habits.
So if we want to change, improve or grow in any way we must learn how to change our habits because in life we don't get what we want we get our habits.
We must learn how to create good habits that will eventually become part of who we are and the way we live our lives.
This book is packed with so much knowledge that it would be impossible to cover everything here but 1 of the 3 important lessons I learned from Atomic Habits is James's 4 Laws of Behaviour Change, this framework simplifies the process of creating good habits and breaking bad ones.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to develop better habits in their life whether it be for health, wealth, relationships, or anything else.
Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind, By T Harv Eker
Once you get past the gimmicky title you will find an abundance of wisdom in this book.
Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind highlights the power of our subconscious mind or our mindset, which has a massive impact on everything that we do in our lives.
Most people go around with their subconscious programmed to be broke and poor and repeat this cycle again and again throughout their lives.
They walk around acting like the victim without ever taking the initiative to improve and grow.
But when we take the time to work on our mindset we can make sure it is empowering us to achieve our goals and dreams rather than sabotaging our success. We must take full responsibility for our goals and dreams as no one else will come and execute them for us.
Another great lesson I learned from this book was T Harv Eker's Jars Money Management System which I have used for the past 4 years to automate my finances.
Better Than Before By Gretchen Rubin
Better Than Before It is a compilation of multiple strategies you can experiment with to build better habits in your life.
What I love about this book is that unlike most other self growth books Gretchen gives you multiple strategies to experiment with to change your habits.
She understands that we are all different and learn and grow in different ways, and because one size DOES NOT fit all the only way we can succeed at changing our habits and behaviours is by knowing what works for us.
My biggest takeaway from this book is Gretchen's 4 Tendencies Personality Framework which I used to analyse myself to see which category I fell into, turns out I'm an obliger which is one of the largest of all the tendencies.
Once I knew my tendency I could then use the strategies relevant to me from the book and disregard the ones that didn't help me build better habits.
It's also a great companion book to James Clear's Atomic Habits.
The Millionaire Fastlane By MJ Demarco
Again this book may sound gimmicky from the title and it may even put you off from reading it, I know I was when I was first recommended it by one of my mentors.
I'm so happy that I beat the bullet and gave it a read because it's a brilliant book and I would highly recommend it to you guys to give it a read if you haven't already done so.
The Millionaire Fastlane's main premise is the 3 roadmaps that most of us follow when it comes to our finances, education, and time.
These are the sidewalk, the slow lane, and the fast lane.
The people on the sidewalk road map are all about living for today. They may not necessarily be poor but they are 1 disaster or emergency away from financial difficulty.
They generally live paycheque to paycheque because they spend every penny that comes in on gadgets, fashion, new toys, entertainment, and having a good time. They love spending money and may even have outstanding debts. These are the FOMO bunch!
The people on the slowlane roadmap are the total opposite, they are all about sacrificing today for tomorrow. They skip the latte's, they cut out the coupons, they penny-pinch and scrimp and save to make sure they have a decent retirement.
They sacrifice the best years of their life for an uncertain future where "someday" they will finally loosen up and enjoy themselves. This is great but unfortunately, the slowlane road map takes ages and there's no guarantee that they'll even reach the magic pot of retirement at the end (as mentioned above, no one knows their expiration date).
Even if they do finally reach that magical pot of gold at 65 (or what ever the retirement age is now!) to enjoy the fruits of their labour they'll probably be bald, in a wheelchair, have arthritis in both knees or just not have the exuberant energy they had in their younger years.
The Fastlane road map is all about owning your own business or side hustles so that you can dictate how much you earn so that you can retire early. Early enough to actually enjoy it too.
Rather than working all your life for the promise of a good few years in the end.
The Fastlane is all about switching from being a consumer to becoming a creator, creating value for people in the form of products and services or content that they would gladly exchange money for.
Then being able to use those financial resources to travel, and enjoy doing the things you want to at an age where you have the energy, similar to the mini retirement concept shared in The 4 Hour Work Week.
If you haven't read the above books I highly recommend you check them out.