Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series)

Jocelyn K. Glei

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

The pace of productivity and how to master your creative routine

How to Worry Less about Money (School of Life)

John Armstrong

“This book is about worries. It’s not about money troubles. There’s a crucial difference.

Troubles are urgent. They ask for direct action. … By contrast, worries often say more about the worrier than about the world.

[…]

So, addressing money WORRIES should be quite different from dealing with money TROUBLES. To address our worries we have to give attention to the pattern of thinking (ideology) and to the scheme of values (culture) as these are played out in our won individual, private existences.”

Fantastic, essential read:

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

Debbie Millman

“Maybe the modern version of introspection is the sum total of all those highly individualized choices that we make about the material content of our lives.”

Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, Dan Pink, and other cultural mavens on how and why we define ourselves through what we consume, be it the books we read or the brands we buy – a must-read.

Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology

Caroline Paul & Wendy MacNaughton

“You can never know anyone as completely as you want. But that’s okay, love is better.”

A spectacular illustrated meditation on love, loss, and what it means to be human:

Don’t Go Back to School: A Handbook for Learning Anything

Kio Stark

A wonderful manifesto for fueling the internal engine of lifelong learning

Einstein on Peace

Albert Einstein

“Every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise.”

Einstein and Freud’s little-known correspondence on violence, peace, and human nature

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Daniel H. Pink

“The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table: Pay people enough so that they’re not thinking about money and they’re thinking about the work. Once you do that, it turns out there are three factors that the science shows lead to better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.”

Fantastic read

A Natural History Of Love

Diane Ackerman

“What a small word we use for an idea so immense and powerful it has altered the flow of history, calmed monsters, kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn, turned tough guys to mush, consoled the enslaved, driven strong women mad, glorified the humble, fueled national scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made mincemeat of kings. How can love’s spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable? If we search for the source of the word, we find a history vague and confusing, stretching back to the Sanskrit lubhyati (“he desires”). I’m sure the etymology rambles back much farther than that, to a one-syllable word heavy as a heartbeat. Love is an ancient delirium, a desire older than civilization, with taproots stretching deep into dark and mysterious days.”

A natural history of love:

How to Find Fulfilling Work (The School of Life)

Roman Krznaric

Fantastic read on the art-science of “allowing the various petals of our identity to fully unfold.”

How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

Wendy Moore

How an 18th-century bachelor enlisted Rousseau’s teachings in Frankensteining his better-ever half.

The Joy of Sexus: Lust, Love, and Longing in the Ancient World

Vicki León

“Mouse dung, applied as a liniment, was a favorite anti-aphrodisiac. So was rue boiled with rose oil and aloes. Drinking wine in which a mullet fish had drowned and sipping male urine in which a lizard had expired both had their loyal adherents.”

Fascinating excerpt on ancient aphrodisiacs and anti-aphrodisiacs

Martine’s Hand-Book of Etiquette, and Guide to True Politeness (Classic Reprint)

Arthur Martine

“In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.”

A timeless and timelier than ever 1866 guide to the art of conversation:

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

Adam Grant

Givers, takers, and matchers – which are you? The surprising science of success:

The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble

Karl De Schweinitz

“Living has yet to be generally recognized as one of the arts.” A 1924 guide to life:

Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self

Jessica Grogan

“Abraham Maslow … once asked himself in his journal how he would define the [humanistic psychology] movement in one sentence. … It is, he wrote, ‘a move away from knowledge of things and lifeless objects as basis for all philosophy, economics, science, politics, etc. (because this has failed to help with the basic human problem) toward a centering upon human needs & fulfillment & aspirations as the fundamental basis from which to derive all social institutions, philosophy, ethics, etc. I might use also for more sophisticated & hep people that it is a resacralizing of science, society, the person, etc.”

How Abraham Maslow and his humanistic psychology shaped the modern self.