Sometimes it’s a lecture. Sometimes it’s a particular teacher’s words. Sometimes it’s a lesson from a parent or a friend or even a life experience that explodes your conception of what’s possible in the world or what’s possible in you. And sometimes it’s a book (or ten) that changes how you think forever.
Speaking from experience, we think that this list of ten books by influential writers and thinkers in every field from psychology to economics just might change how you think about the world, work, other people and yourself.
Reads That Will Change Your Ideas of the World
Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance
In this book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb cites real-world examples to whip the veil of certainty from our eyes and explains that life is mostly governed by chance. Read this for an enlightened view of life as non-linear and not always fair.
The Wisdom Of Crowds
James Surowiecki in this book summons examples from popular culture, psychology and biology, and more to illustrate this idea’s implications on how we vote, decide, do business and move through the world.
Books That Transform Your Thought on Works
Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die
In this book, Chip & Dan Heath explore why some ideas stick and others don’t and how you can make yours more velcro than slip ‘n’ slide.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future
Bestselling author, Daniel Pink takes you on a journey that details the capacities of the two hemispheres and why appreciation for the right side with all its inveterate skills in design, empathy and humour, is growing in this book.
Weird Ideas That Work: How To Build A Creative Company
Stanford professor, Robert I. Sutton offers insight on the nature of innovation and experimentation, failure and creative freedom. It will blow up everything you thought you knew about creativity and offers ways to put more innovation back into your business via expectation setting, hiring choices and strategies for dealing with both failure and success.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
This great book by Daniel Pink, Drive teaches you about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, what influences each sort and how you can build awareness of intrinsic motivation to improve your productivity and inspire others in kind.
Reads That Adjust Your Opinions of Other People
Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking
In Quiet, writer and researcher, Susan Cain reveals the difference between introverts and extroverts, how the “extroversion ideal” of the last 150 years has transformed the workplace into an extrovert’s dream, and how the talent of the two personality types can be combined for a stunning degree of success. Read this to get in touch with your inner introvert and learn how to honour it in others.
Nudge: Improving Decision About Health, Wealth And Happiness
Thaler, leading behavioural economist and advisor to Barack Obama, shows how nudges or subtle changes in context that make it more difficult to make a poor decision, can help us achieve our goals.
Books That Change How You Perceive Yourself
Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential
Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford, teaches us about how to identify our mindset, confront our own attitudes and ideas and develop a growth mindset to realize our potential to the fullest. Read it to have your idea about who you are and your own potential changed forever.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion
The Righteous Mind exposes how it is emotion and intuition, not reason, that drive moral judgment, showing us how understanding the moral foundations on which our interests are based can benefit us in decision making.
Photo Credit: Rollingout.com
About the Writer: Osakwe Richard is an avid follower of tech news and developments around the globe and a Scrabble aficionado.