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19 Books to Transform Your 2026

2024-12-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 22:13 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books and reading · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Lesson from a book, His own numbers, Family, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali's annual list of the best books he read this year, in four categories: productivity and performance, business and entrepreneurship, health and wellbeing including spirituality, and fantasy fiction, from Getting Things Done and Traction to Outlive and Brandon Sanderson.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The four categories of this year's best books

  • ★★ Ali calls David Allen's Getting Things Done an absolute classic of productivity; he has read it three or four times and reread it this year (2024), when getting married, moving country and growing his business made life hectic. — 00:00:00

00:00:09 — Productivity and performance: Getting Things Done, Good Work, Rest, Slow Productivity and Feel-Good Productivity

  • ★★ Ali finds Getting Things Done a boring read, but says its few game-changing principles, applied with your own productivity system, give a lot of value. — 00:00:40
  • ★ Paul Millerd, author of The Pathless Path, quit a prestigious, well-paid career in management consulting to become a writer, making a lot less money. — 00:00:40
  • ★★ Books about people who left the beaten path give Ali a sense of permission; the social models around us, such as friends, family and colleagues, often push us down a particular path. — 00:01:09
  • ★★★ If your work is not lighting you up, Ali recommends Paul Millerd's The Pathless Path and Good Work: they give no answers, but questions, prompts and anecdotes for working out how to find good work. — 00:01:38
  • ★ Ali says Pang's Rest explains the default mode network and how resting stimulates creativity, with a section, four hours, on the optimal amount of time to focus for. — 00:02:07
  • ★★ Ali recommends Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's Rest because people who care about productivity and personal development easily fixate on work and underappreciate rest. — 00:02:37
  • ★★ Ali likes Cal Newport's Slow Productivity, with its three rules (do fewer things at once, work at a natural pace, obsess over quality) and its stories of Galileo, Isaac Newton and Jane Austen. — 00:03:06 · Cal Newport
  • ★★★ Ali says Slow Productivity has been one of the most impactful books for him, changing how he approaches goal setting, task and project management, and getting things done. — 00:03:29
  • ★★ Ali's thesis in his book Feel-Good Productivity: to be more productive and creative and less stressed, focus on the positive emotions work generates; any boring task can be made a little more enjoyable. — 00:03:59 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), feel-good productivity (concept)

00:04:28 — Business and entrepreneurship: Ready, Fire, Aim and his business's revenue

  • ★★ Ali says Michael Masterson's Ready, Fire, Aim splits entrepreneurship into phases by yearly revenue: zero to one million dollars, one to ten million, ten to fifty and fifty to a hundred. (hedged) — 00:04:28
  • ★★★ Ali's business makes about $4–6 million a year in revenue, varying by year; Ready, Fire, Aim gave him novel ideas on breaking the $10-million-a-year growth threshold. — 00:04:57

00:05:15 — Sponsor read for Trading 212

00:06:25 — Traction, The Goal, Death by Meeting, Million Dollar Weekend and the Steve Jobs biography

  • ★★★ Ali calls Gino Wickman's Traction, which he has read many times, pretty much essential reading for a business of at least three people, but not for smaller or earlier-stage businesses. — 00:06:25
  • ★★★ Ali's business has gone back and forth on the Traction methodology for years; rereading Traction this year (2024), he realised many of its mistakes of the last two years could have been avoided by sticking to the method. — 00:06:59
  • ★★ Ali recommends Eliyahu Goldratt's The Goal: told as a fable, it drives home the theory of constraints, which he calls ridiculously important when running a business. — 00:07:28
  • ★ Ali says The Goal has been out for a long time and has sold over 10 million copies. — 00:07:28
  • ★★ Ali loves Patrick Lencioni's business books, such as Death by Meeting, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive and The Advantage: boring-sounding on the surface, but really good. — 00:07:58
  • ★ Ali finds Patrick Lencioni's way of introducing business concepts through the story of a business owner a super nice way to learn. — 00:08:27
  • ★★ Ali calls Death by Meeting required reading for anyone who leads or attends meetings at work. — 00:08:27
  • ★★ Ali speaks to loads of people who want to start businesses, and says basically none of them actually take action on it. — 00:08:56
  • ★★★ To anyone who actually wants to start a business rather than just read about it forever, Ali 100% recommends Noah Kagan's Million Dollar Weekend, which helps you take action. — 00:09:25 · Noah Kagan
  • ★★ Ali listened to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs this year (2024): from the early days of Apple there is a lot to learn from Steve Jobs about how to do business and how not to. — 00:09:54 · Apple

00:10:22 — Health and wellbeing including spirituality: Outlive, The Power of Now, The Anxious Generation, Spiritual Enlightenment and The Comfort Crisis

  • ★★ Ali calls Peter Attia's Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity an absolutely enormous and really good book. — 00:10:24
  • ★★★ Ali turned 30 and got married this year (2024), and his wife is pregnant with their first child; for the first time he is thinking about how to live a long and healthy life. — 00:11:19
  • ★★ From his time on the care of the elderly ward, Ali says people who age unhealthily have a far worse quality of life; little can be done about ageing itself, but a lot to stay able to climb stairs and carry shopping. — 00:11:49
  • ★★ Ali says people into spirituality will get a lot from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and others probably won't, though it might be a gateway into it. — 00:12:28
  • ★★ Before he was into spirituality, Ali tried The Power of Now and did not get it; then he started meditating, did an ayahuasca retreat and got more into spirituality. — 00:12:28
  • ★★★ Ali preferred The Surrender Experiment and A New Earth as gateways into spirituality, finally got The Power of Now on rereading it this year (2024), and points high achievers who don't get spirituality to The Surrender Experiment first. — 00:12:57
  • ★★ A man Ali met said that at 19, after about five years of clinical depression and multiple suicide attempts, reading The Power of Now cured his depression; Ali calls this an anecdote and does not say the book will cure anyone's depression. — 00:14:02 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali absolutely loves Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation, which explained a lot about his and his friends' experiences. — 00:14:31
  • ★★ Ali, born in 1994 and a millennial, says there really does seem to be an epidemic of mental illness among Gen Z, born 1997 onwards, many of whom he works with and is friends with. — 00:15:01 · Mental health
  • ★★ Ali says Jonathan Haidt argues compellingly that the rise in mental illness among Gen Z is not just a case of mental illness being destigmatised. — 00:15:28 · Mental health
  • ★★★ Ali says Jonathan Haidt traces the epidemic of mental illness to a handful of major causes, the primary culprit being social media and the harm of apps like Instagram on teenagers. — 00:15:57 · Instagram, Mental health
  • ★★★ Jonathan Haidt (quoted): Jonathan Haidt writes that between 2010 and 2015 American teens' social lives moved largely onto smartphones, and that this great rewiring of childhood is the single largest reason for the wave of adolescent mental illness. — 00:16:19 · United States
  • ★★ Jonathan Haidt (quoted): Jonathan Haidt writes that the wave of anxiety, depression and self-harm hit girls harder than boys and preteen girls hardest, with the same pattern in the UK, Canada, other Anglosphere countries and the five Nordic nations. — 00:16:48 · United Kingdom
  • ★★ Ali recommends The Anxious Generation to anyone interested in the topic, who knows people with mental health issues, has children or uses social media in any way. — 00:17:17 · Mental health
  • ★★ Ali recommends Jed McKenna's Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing to those who have read other spiritual books or practise yoga or meditation; it is probably not for those who never dabbled in spirituality. — 00:17:46
  • ★ Ali's wife absolutely hates Jed McKenna's book and the way he writes; Ali loves its aggressive, contrarian tone. — 00:18:45
  • ★★ Ali, still reading Michael Easter's The Comfort Crisis, says its thesis is that we should seek out discomfort much more; he felt called out, as his life is riddled with comfort. — 00:18:45
  • ★★ On the recommendation of a friend called Ollie (as heard), Ali read the first two books of Keigo Higashino's Detective Galileo murder mysteries and is reading the third; he calls them really good. — 00:19:30

00:19:39 — Fantasy fiction: the Detective Galileo series and Brandon Sanderson

  • ★ Ali describes The Devotion of Suspect X as a murder mystery meets physics and maths, with a physics teacher and a maths teacher who are both geniuses. — 00:20:13
  • ★★ This year (2024) Ali read Brandon Sanderson's Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and The Sunlit Man, and is reading Wind and Truth, book five of the Stormlight Archive. — 00:20:36 · Brandon Sanderson, The Stormlight Archive
  • ★★★ Ali, who recommends Brandon Sanderson to everyone he meets, says newcomers to Sanderson should start with The Final Empire, book one of the Mistborn trilogy. — 00:21:05 · Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn
  • ★★ Ali calls the Mistborn series a good introduction to the Cosmere, Brandon Sanderson's shared world, which he likens to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. — 00:21:05 · Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson
  • ★★ Ali has been absolutely obsessed with Brandon Sanderson for about eight years and does not see that changing. — 00:21:05 · Brandon Sanderson

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Brandon Sanderson · Death by Meeting · Getting Things Done · Good Work · Million Dollar Weekend · Outlive · Ready, Fire, Aim · Rest · Slow Productivity · Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing · Steve Jobs (book) · The Anxious Generation · The Comfort Crisis · The Devotion of Suspect X · The Goal · The Power of Now · Traction (book)

Also: People: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang · Cal Newport · David Allen · Eckhart Tolle · Eliyahu Goldratt · Galileo Galilei · Gino Wickman · Isaac Newton · Izzy Sealey · Jane Austen · Jed McKenna · Jonathan Haidt · Keigo Higashino · Michael Easter · Michael Masterson · Michael Singer · Noah Kagan · Patrick Lencioni · Paul Millerd · Peter Attia · Steve Jobs (entrepreneur) · Steve Wozniak · Walter Isaacson

Works: A New Earth · Cosmere · Detective Galileo · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Mistborn · The Advantage · The Final Empire · The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive · The Pathless Path · The Stormlight Archive · The Sunlit Man · The Surrender Experiment · Tress of the Emerald Sea · Wind and Truth · Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Organizations: Apple · Instagram · Marvel

Concepts: Alzheimer's disease · cardiovascular disease · default mode network · depression · Entrepreneurial Operating System · feel-good productivity (concept) · Gen Z · Geriatric medicine · meditation · Mental health · social media · spirituality · theory of constraints

Places: Canada · United Kingdom · United States

Products: Audible · Kindle

Also centred on Getting Things Done: The 5 Key Principles of Productivity

Also centred on Million Dollar Weekend: How to Start Your First Business in 48 Hours · My honest advice to someone who wants passive income

Also centred on Ready, Fire, Aim: How I Built a New $1m Business in 12 Months

Also centred on Slow Productivity: How I Manage My Time Without Burning Out

Also centred on Traction (book): 15 Books To Read to Change Your Life

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