A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
📚 The Best Books I Read in 2025
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Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: My 5 best books from 2025.This year, I read 38 books. Almost all of them were non-fiction and fall into the self-help or personal development genre. Many of them were for the Bookworm podcast I do with my friend Cory Hixson where we talk about a different productivity book every two weeks, but a lot of others I read just because I enjoy learning new things and wrestling with big ideas. In this newsletter, I want to share my 5 best books from 2025. These are all books that were published this year, and I’m going to share my ranking in reverse order, starting with number 5 and working my way up to number 1. All of these books were covered for Bookworm this year as well, so I've added podcast links for each if you want to dive deeper. #5: Sketch Your Mind by Zsolt ViczianThis self-published book is also one of the more recent books I’ve read, and it’s written by the developer of the Excalidraw and ExcaliBrain plugins for Obsidian. While I don’t follow the exact system Zsolt outlines here, I do think this book is a great resource for getting you to think about how visual thinking might be able to help you get more out of your notes and ideas. I’m not quite ready to embrace visual zettelkasten just yet, but even so, this book is a great primer for using visual thinking tools to help you look at things from different angles. Zsolt also has a YouTube channel and runs a visual thinking workshop if you really want to dive deep into topic of visual thinking. #4: Time Anxiety by Chris GuillebeauChris was the person behind the World Domination Summit conference back in the day and runs a blog called the art of non-conformity, so I knew this would be an interesting book that approached the topic of time management from a bit of a different angle. The main argument of the book is that time management is an illusion since time keeps advancing whether we use it or not, so what we should focus on is making the most of our energy and attention instead. It’s a bit of a contrarian take in the productivity space, but I like his approach and think this is a good book for those who are a little bit tired of the traditional productivity advice. #3: Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan HolidayThis is the fourth book in his Stoic virtues series, and it just might be my favorite. This one is obviously on the topic of wisdom, and in typical Ryan Holiday style has a bunch of tiny chapters that weave historical storytelling with philosophical discussion in a masterful way that is both insightful and inspirational. I’m not a huge fan of Stoicism, but I still really enjoyed this book and think anyone who is interested in PKM or sensemaking in general will really enjoy this one. #2: The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil BloomI loved this book when I read it earlier this year. It does a great job of describing the different types of wealth and giving you tactics for helping you optimize your life for more of what really matters. A lot of self-help books tend to focus on being more successful and making more money, and this book is a breath of fresh air that helps you understand what really matters. I did a whole video on this book for my YouTube channel, but the short version is that I’m very much in agreement with him that money isn’t the only thing that matters, and I think he does a great job making a very compelling argument for designing the kind of life you want to live. #1: Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le CunffThis book is amazing. I love how it finds the balance between binary goal setting, which tends to create this pass/fail mindset, and habit formation, which can feel like a major commitment whenever you try to create a new habit. With the tiny experiment metaphor, it eliminates the pressure since you’re just committing to doing this thing for a short period and seeing what comes of it. Again, I did a whole video on this book here, but the bottom line is that this is a brilliant book that everyone should read. BTW, if you want to download my notes from all of these books (plus over 200 others), you can download all my personal book notes in a single Obsidian vault here. — Mike |
Practical PKM
A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Subtraction Beats Addition. As 2025 comes to a close, it's natural to reflect on the year and set intentions for what changes you're going to make. Most people set intentions like, "I'm going to lose 15 pounds," "I'm going to write my book," or "I'm going to finally start my side hustle." It's human nature to think that if we just did something additional, then our situation would change for the better....
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Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Some Great Gift Ideas for Tough-to-Shop-for Nerds. Every year, I get invited by Chuck Joiner to be a guest on one of his MacVoices Holiday Gift Guide episodes. He does several rounds each year, and each round has four guests who each make four picks. By the end, there is a long list of great tech gift ideas. But I always feel a little out of place since I always end up picking at least one analog item....