Skip to content

15 Incredible Books to Read in 2026

2022-12-13 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 25:18 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books and reading (also: Work and career, Mindset, motivation and happiness, Productivity and time, YouTube, writing online and creators, Business and entrepreneurship, Relationships and personal life) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Lesson from a book, His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali goes through the 15 best books he read this year, from The Pathless Path, The 3 Alarms and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to $100M Offers and Sapiens, then the novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and his reread of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — How many books he reads and the 15 best of this year

  • ★★ Ali reads around 50 to 100 books a year and says books have been the single biggest factor in growing his business to seven figures, quitting his job as a doctor and his personal development. — 00:00:00

00:00:17 — The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd

  • ★★★ Ali recommends Paul Millerd's The Pathless Path to anyone unsure whether the default path of a corporate job or a traditional field such as medicine, law, banking or consulting is really for them. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ The Pathless Path is probably the book Ali has gifted most this year (2022); he keeps about 10 copies to give to visitors unsure about their job or what to do. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Paul Millerd (quoted): The Pathless Path questions the widespread idea that who we are is what we do, as when people answer the question "what do you do?" with their job title. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ When he left medicine last year (2021), Ali struggled to let go of his identity as a doctor; reading The Pathless Path genuinely helped him think differently about his career and his life. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Someday Is Today by Matthew Dicks

  • ★★ Ali recommends Matthew Dicks's Someday Is Today to anyone with creative dreams, such as writing a book or starting a podcast, a YouTube channel or a business, who feels the timing is not quite right. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Matthew Dicks's books, Someday Is Today and Storyworthy (Ali's favourite book of 2020), look like productivity or self-help books, Ali says, but are full of fantastic stories and general life lessons. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ali considers Matthew Dicks a bit of a mentor and has had a few coaching sessions with him, in which Dicks helped him with his book. — 00:01:57
  • ★ Ali values learning from Matthew Dicks, a man in his fifties with children, whose perspective differs completely from the entrepreneur bros in their twenties Ali normally speaks to. — 00:02:20

00:02:37 — Beyond Wealth by Alexander Green

  • ★★ Alexander Green (quoted): In Beyond Wealth, Alexander Green, whose whole career has been in investment advice and financial writing, writes that money is never an end, only a means to an end. — 00:02:49
  • ★★ Reading Beyond Wealth made Ali try to appreciate arts, culture, history, philosophy and politics more, and he says appreciating them can potentially make him happier. (hedged) — 00:03:45
  • ★★ Ali recommends Alexander Green's Beyond Wealth to anyone who wants a rich life but feels society's obsession with chasing more and more money may not be right. — 00:04:27
  • ★★ Following Eric Partaker's The 3 Alarms, Ali has three alarms on his phone, at 9:00, 5:00 and 6:30, that remind him which identity he wants to hold at those times. — 00:04:56
  • ★★★ Since reading The 3 Alarms a few months ago, Ali keeps an ideal week in his calendar, a picture of what he wants his week to look like, which he finds super helpful for being intentional. — 00:04:56

00:04:57 — The Three Alarms by Eric Partaker: the alarms, the ideal week and the weekly review

  • ★★ Some weeks Ali reviews his week, using the method Eric Partaker describes in The 3 Alarms. — 00:05:44
  • ★★ Ali thinks many people over-index on wealth, career and success and neglect health and relationships; he likes that The 3 Alarms encourages an almost businesslike, intentional approach to health and relationships. — 00:05:44

00:06:25 — The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicholas Cole

  • ★★★ Nicolas Cole's The Art and Business of Online Writing is the book Ali most often recommends to people who want to make a career or money as an internet creator, through writing, podcasting or video. — 00:06:27
  • ★★ Nicolas Cole was a pro World of Warcraft gamer at about 17, could not make a living from it, discovered writing on the internet and now makes seven figures plus a year from online writing, Ali says. — 00:06:54 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ Ali met Nicolas Cole in person for the first time yesterday (12 December 2022); Cole has featured on Ali's Deep Dive podcast. — 00:06:54 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has been around for decades and sold over 40 million copies, Ali says. — 00:07:24

00:07:32 — The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

  • ★★ Ali had read summaries of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and found nothing interesting in them; reading Stephen Covey's stories in the book itself blew him away. — 00:08:20
  • ★★ To Ali's surprise, a remarkably large part of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is about emotional intelligence and empathetic communication. — 00:08:42
  • ★★★ Ali calls The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People probably the single best self-help book he has ever read, and says anyone who likes the genre has to read it. (hedged) — 00:09:12

00:09:35 — Scorecard Marketing by Daniel Priestley

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley (quoted): Daniel Priestley's Scorecard Marketing argues that everything in a business is downstream of lead generation. — 00:09:41
  • ★★ Ali's business has started using ScoreApp, Daniel Priestley's software, and Ali thinks it will invest or has already invested in it; Ali and Priestley are now friends. (hedged) — 00:09:41
  • ★★★ Marketing has been a weakness of Ali's; after reading Scorecard Marketing and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing he feels more levelled up and is actively reading more on marketing to improve his business skills. — 00:10:10
  • ★★ William MacAskill (quoted): Will MacAskill's What We Owe the Future argues for longtermism: we should care about the lives of people who are not yet alive. — 00:10:39
  • ★★ Ali does not 100% agree with everything in What We Owe the Future and finds it particularly interesting in light of the Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX affair. — 00:10:39

00:10:45 — What We Owe the Future by Will MacAskill

  • ★★ What We Owe the Future levelled up Ali's understanding of philosophy and of what moral philosophers think about, such as stagnation and moral change. — 00:11:08
  • ★★ Ali interviewed Will MacAskill on his Deep Dive podcast, he thinks before reading What We Owe the Future, which he read when it came out. (hedged) — 00:11:38 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ What We Owe the Future gets a little dense in places, Ali says, and its audiobook in particular is good for getting through the density. — 00:12:07 · Audible

00:12:34 — The Go-Giver

  • ★★ The Go-Giver, a very short business fable Ali listened to on Audible, changed the way he thinks about business, life and relationships with people. — 00:13:03 · Audible
  • ★★ The key model of The Go-Giver, as Ali puts it, is to be more and more giving and to give without expecting something in return. — 00:13:28

00:13:43 — The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman

  • ★★ Ali usually reads or listens to a guest's book before interviewing them on his podcast, and if he likes someone's book his team often reaches out to the author for an interview. — 00:13:52 · Deep Dive, Audible
  • ★★ Ali first read Richard Wiseman's The Luck Factor at about 16, when he was getting into close-up magic and personal development and reading blogs like Lifehacker. — 00:13:52
  • ★★ Ali's team reached out to Richard Wiseman, a magician and psychologist, and Ali's podcast interview with him about luck is now live. — 00:14:22 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Richard Wiseman (quoted): In The Luck Factor, Richard Wiseman argues that people who consider themselves lucky seem to have better lives: happier, less stressed, more resilient and more productive. — 00:14:22
  • ★★★ Richard Wiseman (quoted): Richard Wiseman argues in The Luck Factor that we can change our approach and mindset to become luckier. — 00:14:51
  • ★★ Ali will soon film a Book Club episode summarising The Luck Factor. — 00:14:51 · Book Club
  • ★★ Ali recommends The Luck Factor, especially to anyone who considers themselves unlucky, for its practical tips on increasing serendipity. — 00:15:20

00:15:49 — The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

  • ★★ Ali picked up David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man, which he calls controversial, because the YouTuber Hamza kept recommending it. — 00:15:49
  • ★ David Deida (quoted): The Way of the Superior Man's back cover says that a man's presence, his depth of awareness, is his most valuable asset. — 00:16:19

00:17:00 — Sponsor read for Heights

  • ★★ Ali expected The Way of the Superior Man to be a pickup-artist type book but found it interesting, and thinks readers of any demographic will too. — 00:17:00

00:18:57 — $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi

  • ★★★ For anyone starting or running a business, Ali calls Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers required reading. — 00:18:57
  • ★★ As soon as he started listening to $100M Offers, Ali sent it to everyone on his team, saying they should follow it step by step for every product they make from now on. — 00:19:35

00:19:59 — Sapiens

  • ★★ Partly after reading Beyond Wealth, Ali decided this year (2022) to get more into history, which is why he finally listened to Sapiens. — 00:20:04
  • ★★ Ali has found museums a waste of time, and thinks that is because he lacks the historical context to appreciate them and archaeological sites. — 00:20:37
  • ★★ Ali knows about 50 people who started Sapiens but could not finish it because it feels dense; that is why he recommends the audiobook, which you can listen to passively. — 00:21:06 · Audible

00:21:34 — The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

  • ★★ Ali found Michael Singer's The Surrender Experiment, a spiritual memoir, so gripping, especially its first half, that he went for walks to listen to more of it instead of working or filming. — 00:22:17
  • ★★ Ali recommends the novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which Grace Beverley recommended to him when she was on his podcast; he listened to it as an audiobook. — 00:22:17

00:22:33 — The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

00:23:16 — Bonus: rereading the Stormlight Archive and where to start with Brandon Sanderson

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali reads mostly on Kindle and Audible; he ordered the physical books for this video and likes having physical copies of books he likes. — creator comment · Kindle, Audible

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: $100M Offers · Beyond Wealth · Sapiens · Scorecard Marketing · Someday Is Today · The 3 Alarms · The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People · The Art and Business of Online Writing · The Go-Giver · The Luck Factor · The Pathless Path · The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo · The Stormlight Archive · The Surrender Experiment · The Way of the Superior Man · What We Owe the Future

Also: People: Adam Grant · Alex Hormozi · Alexander Green · Brandon Sanderson · Daniel Priestley · David Deida · Eric Partaker · Grace Beverley · Hamza · Matthew Dicks · Michael Singer · Nicolas Cole · Paul Millerd · Richard Wiseman · Sam Bankman-Fried · Stephen Covey · Stephen Fry · Tim Ferriss · Tony Robbins · William MacAskill

Projects: Book Club · Deep Dive

Works: Cosmere · Harry Potter (book series) · How to Win Friends and Influence People · Mistborn · Oathbringer · Rhythm of War · Storyworthy · The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Final Empire · The Way of Kings · Words of Radiance

Organizations: FTX · Lifehacker · ScoreApp

Concepts: lead generation · longtermism · Trident calendar system · weekly review

Products: Audible · Kindle · World of Warcraft

Also centred on $100M Offers: 9 Business Lessons - How I Made $1.6m in 30 Days

Also centred on Scorecard Marketing: I Asked 15 Experts For Life Advice. Here's What I Learned.

Also centred on Someday Is Today: My Top 5 Books On Entrepreneurship 📚 #shorts · Why We Should Use Our Time More Intentionally #shorts · 7 Things I Wish I Knew About Productivity Earlier

Also centred on The 3 Alarms: I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to

Also centred on The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Make Money Writing Online ✍️ · How to Make $10,000/Month Writing Online

Also centred on The Go-Giver: The 5 Laws of Success 🚀

Also centred on The Luck Factor: How to Become Luckier - An Evidence-Based Guide

Also centred on The Pathless Path: How to figure out what to do with your life #shorts · This book made me quit my job

Also centred on What We Owe the Future: The Best Book I've Ever Read about Morality

Replies to

← Previous: Elon Musk's 6 rules for productivity #shorts · Next → Why Jeff Bezos still washes his dishes #shorts