Top Productivity books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Productivity books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Productivity

Understanding the concepts of Productivity starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Zen to Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System

Zen To Done is a simple system to get you more organized and productive, and keep your life saner and less stressed, with a set of habits. ZTD teaches you: * The key habits needed to be productive, organized, and simplified... and no more than that. * How to implement these key habits... tips on forming a habit. * How to organize these habits into a simple system that will keep everything in y…

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Atomic Habits

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a comprehensive, practical guide on how to change your habits and get 1% better every day. Using a framework called the Four Laws of Behavior Change, Atomic Habits teaches readers a simple set of rules for creating good habits and breaking bad ones.

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey provides a transformative guide for personal and professional success. It emphasizes proactive thinking, prioritization, effective communication, collaboration, and personal growth.

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23 Anti-Procrastination Habits: How to Stop Being Lazy and Get Results in Your Life S. J. Scott

In the book "23 Anti-Procrastination Habits", you will discover a catalog of ideas to help you overcome procrastination on a daily basis. Whereas many books provide a simple list of tips, you'll learn why a specific strategy works, what limiting belief it eliminates and how it can be immediately applied to your life.

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The Checklist Manifesto

What is The Checklist Manifesto about? Drawing from his experience as a general surgeon, Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto (2009) reveals startling evidence on how using a simple checklist can significantly reduce human error in complex professions such as aviation, engineering and medicine.

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Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.

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Additional Productivity Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Productivity, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

Free to Focus

"Free to Focus" by Michael Hyatt is a productivity book that helps readers identify and eliminate distractions in order to focus on meaningful work. It offers practical advice and tools for achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in both work and life.

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Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a personal productivity system developed by David Allen and published in a book of the same name. GTD is described as a time management system. Allen states "there is an inverse relationship between things on your mind and those things getting done".

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The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy

Chris Bailey turned down lucrative job offers to pursue a lifelong dream—to spend a year performing a deep dive experiment into the pursuit of productivity, a subject he had been enamored with since he was a teenager. After obtaining his business degree, he created a blog to chronicle a year-long series of productivity experiments he conducted on himself, where he also continued his research a…

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The 80/20 Principle

The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. In other words, a small percentage of causes have an outsized effect. This concept is important to understand because it can help you identify which initiatives to prioritize so you can make the most impact.

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Work Less, Do More: Designing the 4-Day Week Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

A must read for anyone interested in the 4-day week' - Heejung Chung, professor at the University of Kent and author of The Flexibility Paradox'This invaluable book offers a clear way we don't need to burn ourselves out, we can work less and get more done' - Rebecca Seal, author of How To Work Alone (And Not Lose Your Mind)The 4-day week is no longer just an idea. Following successful trials i…

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Eat that frog

Eating that frog means tackling your most challenging task—and it's also the one that can have the greatest positive impact on your life. Productivity and time management coach Brian Tracy shows you how to organize each day so you can zero in on these critical tasks and accomplish them efficiently and effectively.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

Augment your Productivity books

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After 2 decades in Tech, leading software engineering teams at both Google, Microsoft, and studying coaching at Stanford, I would love to give back to the community, and spread my mentorship and coaching help to more engineers. Transforming someone's career and helping others unlock their true potentials, has been one …

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Started my career in aerospace as a systems engineer before converting to product management at Google. Over my time at NASA, Google, Uber, and others I've built a successful toolkit of approaches to diverse and complicated product problems. I specialize in mentoring career transitions into product management and converting teams …

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💼 Davide is a Software Engineer @Microsoft and a top-tier mentor for anyone aspiring to break into the big tech industry, scale up their startups, acquire new technical skills, or wish to collaborate on innovative projects. With a rich background as both a Product Manager and Software Engineer, Davide brings …

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I help creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs build real brands, market better, create great content, and turn their knowledge into more income. If you’re done overthinking and ready to get clear, get paid, and stay consistent, you’re in the right place. I’ve spent over a decade running a top-ranked branding agency, …

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With 12+ years across Amazon, startups, and high-growth industries, I’ve built programs, scaled marketplaces, and led global teams. At Amazon, I hired and built a team of 8 members from scratch (conducting 120+ interviews), launched 20+ projects across Europe to reduce customer returns and improve brand protection, tripled SaaS revenue …

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Do you feel overlooked? Do you believe you could perform at a higher level if you were given the opportunity? And yet, you are surrounded by incompetent managers who have been promoted above their capabilities? Nothing frustrates me more than this situation. To think they're not seeing your potential, that …

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