Top five books for better time management and habit forming

With the spring season approaching many of us are slowly waking up from the winter slumber. Early spring’s sunshine has these rays full of energy which just makes us want to do something. But do what exactly? Read more? Start exercising outside? Start sprouting microgreens? However big or small the goal you want to achieve is, you may feel stuck even prior to beginning. Here are some books which may help you manage your time, create or re-create your habits and motivate you on how to spend your time well. 

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg 

In this book Duhigg  focuses on more topics, one of them is what he calls the “habit loop” which consists of three elements: a cue, a routine, and a reward. It also revolves around addictive habits and teaches you how to replace them with new ones. This book has spent over three years on the New York Times bestseller lists and over 5 million copies were sold worldwide. It is rated with 4,1 stars out of 5 by Goodreads’ users, you can read their reviews here. If you have some bad habits which are taking too much time out of your life, such as screen addiction, this book can help you with transforming this addictive habit and replacing it with something from which you can actually prosper.  

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

As the title suggests this book is all about checklists both in your daily and professional life. In the book Gawande explores how to get the most out of the checklists. If you want to be more proper and effective and save yourself valuable time and energy go read this book and develop checklists you can use for your everyday tasks that will save you time and bring structure to your daily life. If you are not sure if this is the right fit for what you are looking for you can read people’s reviews on Goodreads who have rated this 4 stars out of 5 here.

Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters by David Kadavy

The author of this book decided to take a different approach to productivity – instead of focusing on how to get the most out of your time you can read on how to get the most out of your mind. As many other self-help books it focuses on time management but this time for a specific audience – on people who work in creative industries. Kadavy tries to give you a starting point for the process which you will adjust based on your specific needs offering several concepts you can try which are summarised at the end of the book. The readers on the Goodreads website were also highly thinking of this book awarding it similarly as our last two tips with 4 starts. You can read the reviews here.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

If you are serious about getting your life sorted and fight endless distractions and all that you have tried up until this point failed, look no further than Burkemans book.

The author is fully aware of how such techniques can backfire so he decided to take the work of philosophers, psychologists and even spiritual teachers to guide you into how to use you four thousand weeks that you have on earth for your best benefit. You can read more about this book in this New York Times article for instance. 

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

In this book the author also works with the claim that you are not a problem but your badly created habits are and in order to improve your day to day life you have to change the system of how your habits work. Clear based his work on the insight from biology, psychology, and neuroscience based on which he created a guide for forming “good habits”. This book is a right fit for you if you want to create more time for new habits and you feel that you need to fight a lack of motivation and willpower. You can look into more information about this book, once again, on Goodreads, where readers gave it almost a 4,4 star rating (and that’s a lot for a self help book!).

Whichever techniques you decide to try, consider AppBlock as your helping hand. With our Scheduled Blocking feature or a Quick Block feature you can easily remove distracting and time-consuming apps from your day-to-day life. 

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