This a list of some of the books that I have impacted me over my life.

Productivity

Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

Cal newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy 1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

Cal Newport, Deep Work

Digital minimalism definitively does not reject the innovations of the internet age, but instead rejects the way so many people currently engage with these tools.

Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism

If you want to master your schedule, increase your efficiency and output, and create more margin in your life for the things you care about, you’ve got to learn how to focus.

Michael Hyatt, Free to Focus

You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it “done.”

David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything–a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps–the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.

Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

I came to the conclusion that, even in life, unless I’m responding with my whole self—unless, in fact, I’m willing to be changed by you—I’m probably not really listening. But if I do listen—openly, naïvely, and innocently—there’s a chance, possibly the only chance, that a true dialogue and real communication will take place between us.

Alan Alda, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating

A great team doesn’t mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists.

Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Stewardship / Finance

Tithing isn’t really giving—it’s returning. It is bringing back to the Lord what is already His. Thus, the second principle of multiplication is that finances over and above the tithe must be shared if they are to multiply.

Robert Morris, The Blessed Life

Materialism takes a good thing that God gives us and makes it an ultimate thing. It attaches our self-worth to our net worth. It actually stunts and even destroys our spiritual lives. It wrenches our focus away from God and places it on objects. It blinds us to the curses of wealth. And it invariably ends in futility.

Robert Morris, Beyond Blessed: God’s Perfect Plan to Overcome All Financial Stress

Fiction

“you were already more beautiful than anything I dared to dream. In our years apart, my imaginings did their best to improve on you perfection. At night, your face was forever behind my eyes. And now I see that that vision who kept me company in my loneliness was a hag compared to the beauty now before me.” –Westley

Enough about my beauty.” Buttercup said. “Everybody always talks about how beautiful I am. I’ve got a mind, Westley. Talk about that.” 

William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy