If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here.

💡 The Big Idea: These are the 8 Best Productivity Books from 2024

I read a lot of books.

Almost all of them fall into the self-help or personal development genre. Many of them are for the Bookworm podcast I do with my friend Cory Hixson, where we talk about a different productivity book every 2 weeks, but a lot of others I read just because I enjoy learning new things and wrestling with big ideas.

Altogether, I read 40 of these books this year. In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share what I consider to be the eight best books of 2024.

All of these books are new and were released within the last year. So, these aren’t the best books I have read; these are the cream of the crop for the productivity books that were released in 2024.

I’ve read all of these personally from cover to cover, and I have mind map notes for each book in the list. You can download the notes at the bottom of the newsletter.

Here’s the list:

#8: Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman​

Another great book from Oliver Burkeman, the author of Four Thousand Weeks (one of my favorite books of all time) and my introduction to the concept of memento mori (which I liked so much I actually added it to my Obsidian Daily Note). This book is a little different in that it’s formatted as a one-month daily reader, which is great for someone who wants to digest the message in bite-size bits (but not great for the Bookworm podcast).

There are some really great ideas in here, including the concept of viewing your read-it-later pile as a river, not a bucket (which actually inspired a whole new reading workflow for me that I wrote about here). His witty, light-hearted style is a breath of fresh air for the productivity or self-help genre.

#7: Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday​

Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors, and this latest book in his Stoic virtues series might just be his best book yet. This is the third book in the series and covers the virtue of justice. Interestingly, Ryan mentioned that he thought this book would sell the least but has so far sold the most of any book in the series.

I love how this book is formatted into short, concise chapters that focus on a single idea related to justice. Ryan is a great writer and a phenomenal storyteller, and he sprinkles in lots of historical anecdotes from people whose lives illustrate the virtues he’s writing about.

Not a lot of action items here, but definitely a lot to chew on.

#6: Never Play it Safe by Chase Jarvis​

This is a new book by Chase Jarvis, the author of Creative Calling (which I really enjoyed). Chase has had an interesting journey, which adds a lot of validity to his message, IMHO. Not everyone is going to love this book since he basically says to stop conforming to society’s standards and do your own thing. Still, personally, I think this is something a lot of people (including me a couple of years ago) need to hear.

I really like Chase’s writing style, and I feel like we’re kindred spirits in a lot of ways. For example, he talks in this book about the difference between a map and a compass — something I write and talk about all the time 😂 I’ve never met him, but I feel like we would be friends.

If you want a book to help you think differently about your future, this is it. Lots of great advice and practical tips for empowering people to go and design the life they want to live.

#5: Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal​

Technically, this book was published just before 2024 (December 28th, 2023). But it’s so good that I couldn’t let a couple of days keep me from adding it to this list.

Ali Abdaal is a doctor-turned YouTuber (and Bookworm listener!) who has a huge channel and talks a lot about productivity and systems. What’s unique about this book is that it doesn’t give you a formula to follow. Instead, it tries to get you to think about what your work could be like if it was fun. He includes a bunch of “experiments” that you can run to find what works for you, but he’s not going to tell you, “Just follow this system.”

Which is a very good thing IMHO 😂

I have to admit I was a little skeptical based on the title, but this book is very good. It’s not your standard productivity book, and there are a lot of good ideas in here that just might transform the way you work.

#4: Good Work by Paul Millerd​

Paul Millerd’s previous book (The Pathless Path) played a large part in my decision to quit my job and go independent as a full-time creator.

I’ve been slightly mad at him ever since 😂 At least until the LifeHQ launch, which happened right before I read this one.

For context, the LifeHQ launch was a tipping point for both me and my creator business. That was really the first time I felt confident that I was going to make it. Prior to that, it was easy to get excited about Paul’s message, but it always came with a bit of skepticism about whether it would really work for me.

Having gone through the process now, I believe now more than ever that he’s right on the money. But even if you don’t want to walk away from your day job, this is a great book about doing work that really matters. Life is more than cranking widgets, and this book will help you infuse your day-to-day with meaning and purpose — but it will likely challenge your status quo first.

#3: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport​

I love pretty much everything Cal Newport does, including The Deep Life podcast that I really got into this year.

But I was not a huge fan of this book when I first read it.

I thought it was good, but I think I undervalued some of the ideas he shares in here when I read it. The more distance I get from it, the more I realize the impact this book had on me.

The book can be summarized in a simple formula: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality. Cal is a great storyteller and shares some great narratives alongside his usual in-depth research on the topic as a university professor. But there’s a lot of detail and nuance here as he unpacks those slow productivity principles, like the pull vs. push idea for work tasks that has the potential to revolutionize the way teams work together.

This book wasn’t quite what I expected, but I do think it’s very important, and just about anyone could benefit from reading it.

#2: A System for Writing by Bob Doto​

This book was the biggest surprise for me in 2024. I was familiar with the idea of zettelkasten, but it never really clicked for me, and honestly, I kind of wrote it off. It seemed to me like zettelkasten was an overly complex way for people to pump out boring writing.

But Bob is a good writer, and he addresses this argument directly in the book. He even mentions that Niklas Luhmann (the creator of the zettelkasten method) is praised for his productivity, not his quality of writing 😂

Fortunately, Bob explains clearly and concisely that there’s more to writing than just spewing words. More importantly, he gives practical examples of how you can use the principles of zettelkasten to improve both the quantity and quality of your writing.

For PKM nerds, this is a must-read. Even if you’ve completely written off zettelkasten as not for you, there are a lot of gold nuggets here that I’m confident will help make you a better writer.

My Best Book of 2024: Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick​

I suggested this book to Cory for Bookworm because he wanted to read a book on AI, but honestly, I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. Most books on AI are either too old to be relevant for the current AI moment we’re in, or they’re too tactical, IMHO, and try to explain how to use technology that will be completely different by next week.

But this book is neither. Instead, it’s a philosophical manual for how we should approach AI from someone who truly understands not only where we’re at from a technical standpoint but how we should approach the tools available to us.

Most of the conversation about AI that I hear online drives me nuts because it tends to be towards one of two extremes. Either people think, “AI is taking over and coming for our jobs!” or “It’s garbage and will never do anything truly useful.” Every time I hear one of these perspectives, I want to yell at my podcast player because it’s clear the person talking needs to read this book 😂

AI is something we need to pay attention to (it’s not going away any time soon), but it’s also not something we should be afraid of. Ethan Mollick does a great job in this book of explaining how to stay curious and discover the ways that AI can augment our current productivity and creativity workflows. I wholeheartedly believe this is the blueprint if you want to leverage AI better, and it should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the topic better.

In many ways, 2024 was the year of AI. And this is the single book you should read on the topic.

😎 Something Cool: Obsidian 1.8’s Web Viewer Plugin

It’s been a while since Obsidian released a new core plugin (I think the last one was Obsidian Canvas), but the Web Viewer in version 1.8 is worth the wait. On the tin, it basically just lets you open web pages as tabs inside of your Obsidian vault. But workflow-wise, this is pretty cool for a couple of reasons:

1. If you have an external link in a note, you can open it alongside the note itself. I like to create notes for all the Bookworm episodes with the audio file embedded and all of the links from the show notes. This allows me to view the links in those episodes without having to open the page in my browser.
2. If you have links in tasks (i.e. links to Notion for shared tasks), you can now complete the task inside of Obsidian. I use links quite a bit in my tasks, and this means I don’t have to switch apps (and open the door to potential distractions).
3. If you find a page you want to clip to your vault, you can save these web pages easily. The settings for the plugin let you set a destination folder (i.e., Saved), then just select the Save to Vault option from the More options menu to save a Markdown version of the page.

The only annoying thing is that you have to log in to your websites again inside of Obsidian. But just like any other web browser, it saves your session in the cache, so you don’t have to do it every time you open the app.

Version 1.8 is currently available for Catalyst supporters but not to the general public (though I’m sure it will be soon). You can see what else in 1.8 via the release notes, and find out more about becoming a Catalyst supporter here.

📚 Book Notes From the 8 Best Books of 2024

I listed several great books above, so rather than pick a single book for this section, I figured I’d share links to every book I mentioned 🙂

Merry Christmas 🎄

• ​Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick​
• ​A System for Writing by Bob Doto​
• ​Slow Productivity by Cal Newport​
• ​Good Work by Paul Millerd​
• ​Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal​
• ​Never Play it Safe by Chase Jarvis​
• ​Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday​
• ​Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman​

And if you want to download ALL of the book notes, I zipped them all up for you here.

— Mike