I’ve been reading a lot lately, and I was thinking I could talk about 9 books I recommend to this day, and start reviewing some of my current reads in future blog posts.

This was a stat I took from Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod: “Reading just 10 pages a day will average 3,650 pages a year, which equates to approximately eighteen 200-page personal development/self-improvement books!”

This gave me a lot of perspective. 18 books a year is pretty impressive and can seem like a stretch goal with all the other things you have to manage in life. But when you break it down to daily reading, it’s really not that hard! Reading 10 pages a day is very manageable when you think about it – after 10-20 minutes of focused reading per day, you’ll be able to make massive improvements in personal development. If you keep up this habit, you’ll be able to read double the amount of books on this list this year.

The order of this list of books isn’t by preference, but rather it is the order in which I read the books. I read #1-3 before I started nomading (they were definitely books that jumpstarted my journey), #4-6 were read during my 2 years of traveling, and #6-9 were read after I came back to the bay area.

So without further ado, here are 9 books I recommend:

Here are 9 Books I Recommend

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki

If you know me, you’ll know I’m always advocating Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. After my Europe trip, I picked up a ton of books and this one really changed my life.

This book provides financial fundamentals and demonstrates a bigger picture view of how you should look at your income, assets, liabilities, expenses, and ultimately…your life! I think I’ve always had this concept engrained in my mind of saving and investing, but this book kind of categorizes the purchases you make, the daily expenses in your life, and the things you own that can appreciate in value. And it gives you a bigger picture idea of making money work for you instead of the other way around, and the importance of cash flow and how it can be more favorable over building net worth (if you had to choose). It also talks about how wealthy people continually reinvest into assets.

It really pushed me off my ass to work towards a lifestyle change of location independence and ultimately financial independence.

2. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss gave me a better understanding of how smart thinking and extreme hustle can pave the way for a “4-hour workweek”. I love that the book created actionable steps in how you can change your lifestyle. He talks about steps you can take to declutter and remove busy work. It was eye-opening to understand that you’re not supposed to do all the manual labor for each part of your business, and that it is important to automate and hire out if you want to take your business to the next level as well as free up time for yourself. I think this is one of Tim Ferriss’ strong points, in that he’s really trying to give you actionable tips that you can implement yourself. I also like that he provided his own story – his ups and his downs and how he transformed his business to be quite hands-off.

This book gave me more of an understanding of what it means to be a digital nomad and to be location independent. It changed my way of thinking and helped me see my life more clearly, and it gave me understanding of all the opportunity that’s actually available out there.

3. The Power of Broke by Daymond John

The Power of Broke by Daymond John provided a bunch of anecdotes to drive a few important points home when it comes to starting your own business without much to start with. He talks about a few now-successful business owners, who had gone through the worst of situations, were totally broke, but used those dark times to come up with creative solutions to succeed. Rather than fear adversity, these successful entrepreneurs used these tough situations to create motivation (with a lot of it stemming from fear of failure). And it also talks about how there will be times where you have to do all the things you don’t want to do to get you from point A to point B.

I ended up getting a picture with Daymond John at a book signing at a conference. He didn’t seem that excited to be there, but whatever, haha. Later he put me in a collage on Instagram to promote his book, so that was cool!

4. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle was sort of a spiritual awakening for me. It is a difficult read I must say, and to be honest I think it needs to be reread multiple times to really engrain. The entire book discusses “ego” and how it is “egoic” of people to attach to a specific identity for themselves. We tend to attach to what we think of ourselves and what we think others think of us, based on how we were raised, where we’re from, our gender, race, opinions, perspectives, experiences, what other people taught us, and more. We create binaries of what we think is right or wrong, what is good or bad, but they’re not exactly reality. If you think bigger picture – who is the conscious being aware that we are thinking and feeling? Tolle believes there is a secondary layer of awareness. It’s easy to think that all our thoughts define us and who we are. But instead, Tolle advocates that thinking is just another necessary function of the human form, like breathing and eating. The book is very complex, so I’m still in the process of rereading the book and have taken a lot of notes and added many highlights. I would say it is a life changing read, if you allow yourself to try accepting such teachings.

5. No Excuses! by Brian Tracy

I read this on a cruise from Hong Kong to Taiwan. I wanted to see what they had to offer at their cruise library and picked out this book, No Excuses! by Brian Tracy. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up taking 3 pages of notes on it and pulled up this document in Word recently. The learnings are still great to this day. What I love about it is not only does it talk about success in the business/entrepreneurial side of things, it also mentioned success in other domains including health, relationships, and family. One of the biggest things that stuck with me is its system of prioritization. Essentially, you mark A for the most important items that will have consequences if you don’t do them, B for the pretty important things with mild consequences for not doing them, C for the nice to do’s that won’t have consequences, D for delegate, and E for eliminate (that is, eliminate all the tasks that don’t help you with your goals). This type of prioritization makes it really easy to understand what you have to do next, as if you haven’t done the A items, you shouldn’t do the B items and same with C’s.

6. The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan was actually a recommendation from Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. This book goes a bit further on focus and basically talks about the benefits with choosing only ONE item to accomplish, and ONE goal in each domain of your life to accomplish. I try to create a mix between No Excuses! and The ONE Thing when it comes to task prioritization.

Your highest level of productivity starts at the beginning of the day and depletes as you continue doing other tasks. Therefore, you want to focus on the most important tasks in the beginning. And if you focus on the one thing that you identify will push you to the next level, you’re more likely to succeed.

7. Attached by Amir Levine

This is a different type of book. Attached by Amir Levine explores relationships and how the dating dynamics work between two types of people with different attachment styles. I thought it would provide extremely obvious information, but it turned out to provide interesting material on how to choose the right partner and how to filter in certain ways.

8. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

This is a more recent read of mine, and I discussed the book in more detail in this post. Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod is a great book about how building a morning ritual can help create the self improvement you need to set the tone for the rest of the day. The idea is you wake up an hour earlier to knock out the “SAVERS” practices, AKA Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing. The thing is when you try to fit in that self improvement at other times in the day it’s just so much easier to fall off track. But if you knock it out right away, you know what you’re doing each morning before everything else interferes. And you wake up with intention rather than with dread that you have to get up early and start the day.

9. Callings by Gregg Michael Levoy

Callings by Gregg Michael Levoy is actually another difficult read, and I’m only halfway through. But something I generally deal with is facing difficult decisions and trying to figure out what is the right way to go. This book talks about different signs to figure out your callings. I thought it was a useful book to discern whether you’re following your heart or your mind and the right path to follow.

Final Thoughts

These 9 books changed my life – some more than others, but each dropped different perspectives that I ended up applying to my life one way or another. I’m trying to read more and more books with the hope that I take away at least one piece of knowledge that broadens my perspectives on life, adjusts my mentality, or changes the way I do things. If you have any recommendations on books let me know in the comments below!