Another hopefully long and beautiful summer is coming up, and my intention is to spend a lot of it productively: reading. Preferably in a hammock. If you feel the same, here comes my new list of book recommendations about decision-making and goal achievement.

Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler (2017). Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. I’ve always enjoyed Dan Ariely’s self-deprecating sense of humor, and in this collaboration he found a great match in Jeff Kreisler. Even though I was familiar with most of the concepts they discuss, this book not only kept me entertained, but also highlighted very clearly (and sometimes painfully) the irrationalities around money that I still allow into my life. Read a sample here.

Chris Guillebeau (2017). Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days. A practical step-by-step guide of how to create and launch a profitable part-time business. You can look into it here. Chris Guillebeau’s approach is very much no-nonsense, no fluff, no jargon – from brainstorming, shaping and selecting ideas, to launching, tracking and refining your game. While some steps would likely take more than his suggested hour per day, and while I’m not confident that I would have the discipline to follow all his steps in sequence, I do think it would make sense to do just that.

Bryan Dik and Ryan Duffy (2012). Make Your Job a Calling: How the Psychology of Vocation Can Change Your Life at Work. This book explores the powerful idea that almost any kind of occupation can offer any one of us a sense of purpose and thereby satisfaction. The authors define the idea of calling (both from a spiritual and secular perspective), review research on and provide tips for finding a calling at all stages of work and life. They also point out some dangers of pursuing a higher purpose. Here’s a preview.

Greg McKeown (2014). Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Sure, we all know the importance of prioritizing and focusing, but here Greg McKeown reminds us that living and working as an “essentialist” requires sacrifices. It requires a willingness to give up a lot to gain something of much more value. The author shows how to apply this concept in work as well as leisure and family life, with a special focus on leadership. Mostly through my clients, I know there are too many high-achieving professionals at the verge of burn-out with too many tasks to juggle. For their sake, I hope the message of this book will be heard and will find the necessary traction in our organizations. Check out the beginning here.

Glenn Livingston (2014). Never Binge Again: Reprogram Yourself to Think Like a Permanently Thin Person. Stop Overeating and Binge Eating and Stick to the Food Plan of Your Choice! While I usually recommend books that are based more on data and science, this one is different: its arguments use simple examples that are nonetheless convincing. It makes us realize there are plenty of rules we are perfectly capable of following, where we don’t think of our will-power as limited. For example: I never eat food from a stranger’s plate in a restaurant; I never shoplift; I never pick a fight with strangers. Why, then, do I think that I am powerless over certain food choices in certain situations? Powerless to say NO to the free cookies on a tray, or to the unsupervised half-empty box of donuts? According to this book, it is a simple matter of getting total clarity of what you truly want, and what you don’t want (e.g., when, and it what situations, you want to eat certain types of food), putting those rules into writing, and then sticking to them. Because you know you want to, and you know you can. Friendly rules, but no more permission to screw up, ever again.
(“Trigger foods”? We’re not guns. It’s just a metaphor, and perhaps not such a helpful one, I’ve come to think. There is no actual trigger that has the power to release an uncontrollable sequence of actions in us. At any moment, we can – and will – change our behavior, based on new information and our new preferences. So we just need to get our preferences straight.)
Here’s a preview, but it’s actually a free e-book anyway. Written by a coach, it accordingly comes with some promotion of his coaching. Read it for the message, not if you’re looking for a literary masterpiece.

Laurence Gonzales (2004). Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
I’m not sure how long this book had been lying on our coffee table when I heard it was the 2018 winner of the Eric Hoffer Award Montaigne Medal. I admit this was the reason I picked it up again this year with renewed interest. I found it for the most part a captivating read, although sometimes frustrating with lots of names in personal stories, which were chopped up across chapters – starting, stopping and taking up again later with no transitions, punishing me for skipping earlier parts. (That may be my problem – I resent non-fiction that forces me to read it as if it were a novel.) More importantly: I took issue with the oversimplified message of “mind over matter”, which I find cynical in the light of those who didn’t survive. Many of his conclusions also suffer from quite literal “survival bias” – not a pun, but a serious problem in his reasoning, although with this topic admittedly a difficult one to avoid. At the very least it should be acknowledged as a limitation. That said, I did learn some interesting lessons about dangers in unexpected places and how to (not) face them. Start reading here.

Brad Borkan and David Hirzel (2017). When Your Life Depends on It: Extreme Decision Making Lessons from the Antarctic.
Also a book about decision-making in extreme life-and-death situations, this one takes a more systematic approach, and offers more substantial and original content, despite being based on an older history: it takes us back to the very first expeditions of early explorer teams to the Antarctic in the early 1900’s. The authors analyze the decisions made by several competing teams and discuss fascinating questions about leadership, as well as followership, under these extreme conditions. Look into it here.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR