My Favorite Books of 2021

I'm an avid reader and in 2017 I started sharing the books that I have read in that calendar year. Every year since then this has been my most opened email and my most clicked social media post. Frankly, this experience has taught me 2 things. First, business people know they need to keep learning. Second, they rarely do what they know they should.

Here is a quick reminder. Reading is vital if you want to increase your odds of success. In 2021, the theme of the books I picked up was clear. The books centered around taking intelligent action. With that in mind here is a quick rundown of the books. Here is a quick summary of my top books and then the list of the others I managed to read.

1. How to Decide By Annie Duke
This book was a great follow-up to Thinking in Bets. Making good decisions doesn't have to be a series of endless guesswork. Annie Duke has taken the time to really describe the best process to make the best decision. Probably the simplest concept was once again being reminded that the quality of a decision is determined by the process used to reach it, not the outcome it produces. Best of all you control the process used to decide and you always have the option of changing that process.

2. The Power of Bad By John Tierney
A book on negativity may not sound like fun, but for the past 25 years, I have been actively teaching people to use negative words and stories to help their prospects decide about fixing issues. More importantly, this book provides tools to prevent our natural bias to accept bad news from forcing us into bad decisions.

3. The Motivation Myth By Jeff Haden
The idea behind this book is simple. Motivation is something you can build up in yourself by succeeding. The point gets driven home, again and again, motivation and the feeling of success are the results of action not the cause of it. If you choose to let feelings control you the odds are stacked heavily against your success.

4. Beyond Order By Jordan B. Peterson
The idea behind Jordan Peterson’s first book was pretty simple, get your life in order. The idea behind this book is harder. Don’t let order overwhelm your life. This balancing of order and chaos is what makes life happen and allows us to grow and reach our potential.

5. Who Not How By Dan Sullivan
Learning how to ask the right questions about your goals is simple stuff if you copy from somebody else. Dan Sullivan takes goals and asks a better question. Who can do this for me? Sometimes you need to do it yourself, often you can find or hire somebody willing to do the work for you.

Here are the other books I read ranked in the order I liked them

6. Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter By Curtis 50 Cent Jackson
7. Everything is F*cked By Mark Manson
8. Talking to Strangers By Malcolm Gladwell
9. The High 5 Habit By Mel Robbins
10. I Will Teach You to Be Rich By Ramit Sethi
11. Sanity By Gary John Bishop
12. Noise By Daniel Kahneman
13. The Art of Possibility By Rosamund Stone Zander
14. Relentless By Tim S. Grover
15. Risk By Stanley McChrystal
16. The Compound Effect By Darren Hardy

I hope this list is useful for you and I hope that you take the time to read it this year. Finally, I have a request that you send me titles of books you have read that I may have missed.