THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

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My 2024 Book List

Last year I started tracking all the books I read as part of an annual review process, where I decide 1-3 books each quarter I’m going to reread.

I outlined this concept in TLE #56 - read it here

Below is my updated list of books read in 2024, categorized by type, along with some highlights (Note some of these books might have been read in late 2023).

Personal Development & Productivity

• The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

• Deep Work - Cal Newport

• Essentialism - Greg McKeown

• The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

• Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself - Joe Dispenza

• Do Hard Things - Steve Magness

Health & Wellness

• The Comfort Crisis - Michael Easter

• Outlive - Peter Attila

• Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker

Business & Leadership

• Traction - Gino Wickman

• Get a Grip - Mike Paton & Gino Wickman

• The Coaching Habit - Michael Bungay Stanier

• The Dichotomy of Leadership - Leif Babin & Jocko Wilink

• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive - Patrick Lencione

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencione

• Buy then Build - Walker Deibel

• Pick up the Phone and Sell - Alex Goldfayn

Mindset & Philosophy

• The Tao of Seneca (30% completed)

• The Untethered Soul - Michael Singer

• The Way of the Superior Man - David Deida

• Die with Zero - Bill Perkins

• When Good Men Get Angry - Bill Perkins

• Shine - Gino Wickman and Rob Dube

• Never Finished - David Goggins

• The Molecule of More - Daniel Lieberman

Wealth & Entrepreneurship

• How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis

Fiction & Storytelling

• The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson

• The Cold Millions - Jess Walter

• Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr

• American Gods - Neil Gaiman

• Stories of Your Life - Ted Chiang

• Storyworthy - Matthew Dicks

Books I reread

• Essentialism - Greg McKeown

• Traction - Gino Wickman

• The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencione

• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive - Patrick Lencione

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Eric Jorgenson

General thoughts - in no particular order:

• The War of Art one of the must reads on this list - I waited years before actually reading it for some reason, which was a mistake. It’s a short book too - just a few hours on audio

• Joe Dispenza’s work is fascinating, and when I read his book “Breaking the Habit of being Yourself” it hit me hard. I wanted to dive deeper into his meditation style, but if I’m being honest with myself - I wasn’t ready to commit 45-60 minutes to meditation. That still scares me. At some point I want to though.

• The three Wellness books I read felt profound because all three were completely aligned with my values towards wellness. I’m sure I could look back at many great books on wellness, but I’d be hard pressed to find three better ones to pull together for an overall philosophy on wellness

• Business books - read Patrick Lencione’s books. Seriously - I always loved them, but now that I’ve been coaching leadership teams for awhile - these books completely change them when they get assigned at the right time.

• Although I read some kind of fiction most evenings, my fiction list looks light based on looking at the overall list - That’s because I listen to non-fiction and read fiction, so I can simply get through more non-fiction in a week because of driving and doing all the things I do in a given day that allows listening to books. Despite that, I LOVED all the fiction I read in the past year and feel it’s important for my brain to have a regular dose of fiction. These past few months I’ve overindexed in fiction because I’m on book two of the Stormlight Archives (Way of Kings is book one) - it’s a fantasy series that’s so addicting I need to force myself to stop reading it.

• If you’re looking for some purpose in your life - I’d highly recommend The Almanac of Naval - it’s so good.

• Essentialism was my highest impact book of the year. I plan on rereading it again in a few months. I want to work on the concepts in that book until I can truly call myself an Essentialist.

• Last thought - I love reading so much. A love of reading means you’ll never be bored :)

Talk to you next week,

Mike