The post Top 6 books to help you be the best version of yourself appeared first on Bestselfology.
]]>~ Joseph Addison
2017 is nearly upon us and what better way to start the New Year than with a pile of sparkly new books to plough through. If you are looking for ways to be the best version of yourself, this list is a great collection of books that will help you do that. Enjoy them, savour them, don’t just read them, live them.
1) Productivity Ninja, Graham Allcott
If enhanced productivity is what you are trying to achieve, this is your book. Its jam packed full of practical suggestions and ideas and is written in a really easy to read style.
The book explores how to work smarter, not harder, how to beat procrastination, make the most of your time and how to manage all the inputs and outputs in your life, including a great chapter on how to get your inbox to zero. It is full of great easily implementable ideas meaning that you can easily incorporate the suggestions into your life.
2) Deep Work, Cal Newport
Do you ever feel you spend a lot of time operating at quite a shallow level, flitting from one thing to another and never getting into the flow of a task or activity. Deep Work explores what you need to do, to get into that flow state and truly work at a deep level. It is split into two parts, part one explores the importance of Deep Work and part two outlines strategies for implementing it into your life.
There is lots of research that is easy to understand and follow which helps you to understand the science and importance of Deep Work. Then there are many great ideas and actionable items to help implement these ideas.
3) The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo
If you are living with too much clutter in your life this book will support you on your journey to become clutter free. Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo helps to transform the way you see your possessions. As well as offering practical advice for cleaning out your home and storing your stuff effectively, the book focuses more on the philosophy of owning things. It teaches you both how to organise your things as well as learning how to let go of them.
Kondo’s “KonMari” method is quite extreme, and although the book is written in an easy to read way, some of the advice is quite out there. If you can just go with it, you find a desire to want to get started on the decluttering mission immediately after finishing the book.
4) Zero Waste Home, Bea Johnson
If you want to do you bit for the environment and live a zero waste lifestyle, or at least make a step in that direction, this is the book for you. Bea Johnson write about how she transforms her life by reducing the family waste to one litre per year.
The advice at times is quite extreme, but it is also a very practical step by step guide that you can learn from. It provides tools and tips to move towards a zero waste lifestyle and live a more simple existence. It also helps to shatter some common misconceptions associated with the Zero Waste lifestyle, and shows how waste-free living can be stylish and lead to health benefits as well as saving time and money.
5) Better than Before, Gretchen Rubin
Better Than Before details the latest research of how to develop good habits and how to break bad ones. Gretchen Rubin developed the Habit Tendency Framework for this book, which is a quiz that helps you find your own habit tendency. There are four distinctive types based on how people respond to inner and outer expectations. Upholders, Questioners, Obligers and Rebels. Rubin explains the characteristics of each tendency and how it influences habit formation.
It is filled with simple and easy to implement tools to help improve your own habits. The focus is on how to minimise the need for willpower and to get your habits running on autopilot as quickly as possible.
6) I know how she does it, Laura Vanderkam
If you find balancing work, social and family life challenging, this book gives loads of practical advice on how to manage it effectively. Laura Vanderkam claims that you can in fact ‘have it all’. She focuses on the fact that we all have the same 168 hours every week, and looks at how people have managed to use those hours effectively to give them everything they want in their lives.
This book is for anyone who says ‘I don’t have time for that‘ It will help you understand how to create time for the things that are important to you and how to use the hours available to you as effectively as possible.
She shares the time-logs from a range of women who have successful careers and still make time for their families and friends, for sleep and exercise, and for themselves. Based on her learnings from studying the patterns and outcomes of those time-logs, she provides practical advice for anyone who wants to thrive at both work and life.
So there you have it. Some of my favorite books across a range of topics. Go study them and implement them into your life.
Remember that ideas and thoughts that you act on and translate into reality are the keys to success and progressing on the journey of becoming the best version of yourself.
If you make some time each day to read you will be amazed at how quickly you mange to get through the books. Each If each one gives you one or two suggestions of how to enhance your life, over time that builds up to big improvements.
I’d love to hear what books you would recommend, as I am always looking for great books to add to my reading list.
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]]>The post 7 helpful hacks that will help you read more books appeared first on Bestselfology.
]]>~ Joseph Addison
Reading is one of my favourite pastimes. Getting immersed in a good book where everything else falls away and all you are focused on are the words on the page, is such a great feeling. Reading brings with it so many benefits, it helps improve your vocabulary, it can relax you, it provides you with new information, it can give you a glimpse into other cultures and learn about history and other times and places.
In addition to these benefits of reading a good book, it’s possible that the subject you read about can help you learn and develop as a person.
So far this year I have read 26 books. I often get asked by people how I find the time to read so much, when I have such a busy life, so I’ve shared my tips with you on how to read so much:
1. Read at every opportunity, here are some of the places I read:
Having the kindle app on my phone helps with this, as it means I always have my latest book with me to pull out anytime I find myself with 5 minutes spare.
Many people share with me that they feel they don’t have enough time to read, but they will sit down each evening watching their favourite TV show or their latest box set. This is less of a matter of not having time and more of a matter of prioritizing something else over reading. If you want to read more, reduce the amount of TV you watch and replace it with reading.
3. Stop reading books you don’t like
If you are always reading books that are very interesting to you, you will find them much easier to read. If you start reading a book and you are not enjoying it, stop reading it. This can be quite difficult to do, but there is no point reading books that are not enjoyable for you.
4. Skim over any sections that are not interesting / relevant to you
If you read non fiction books, you may want to miss a section. I recently read a great book which I loved, but one of the sections was about how to manage your kids, of which I don’t have any. I decided to skip over this section as at the moment it is not relevant to me, and enjoy the rest of the book.
5. Listen to audio books
If it is difficult to read, then listen instead. Download an audio book and listen to it in the car, when you are running, in bed, or any other time you get some time to yourself.
Don’t get tempted to do something else other than read. If you are going to read, move away from all distractions, so you focus on the reading. If you are reading on a device that is connected to the internet it can be wise to disconnect so you are not tempted by distractions.
7. Break it down into small chunks
It can sometimes seem overwhelming to complete a book especially if it quite thick. Try thinking of it in another way. If you have a book of 200 pages, if you read just 10 pages a day, you will finish the book in 20 days. Set yourself a goal of trying to read just 10 pages a day. If you can’t even manage that, trying going for just 5 pages.
Please click here for my YouTube Page which contains reviews of some of my favourite books. Let me know in the comments below if you have any additional tips of how to read more.
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]]>The post Zero Waste Lifestyle appeared first on Bestselfology.
]]>A good friend of mine recently sent me a book called Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. This was a really great book that I would highly recommend. Bea Johnson takes it to the extremes, but the book is highly practical and makes you think about different things you can adopt in your lifestyle.
To see the full review please click here.
I’d love to hear your views on the book if you have read it, or any thoughts on zero waste in general.
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]]>The post Continuous learning: A Complete Guide appeared first on Bestselfology.
]]>I have listed all the things that you can do to support continuous learning:
1) Read as many books as you can
Make a list of all the books you’d like to read, there are some great ones out there. Get recommendations from friends and on personal development blogs. Don’t just read the book, implement the ideas you read about. Click here to access Bestselfology’s You Tube site where you can find some great book recommendations.
2) Ask for feedback
‘We all need people who will give us feedback, that’s how we improve’
Bill Gates
Receiving feedback helps you to become more self aware and you should encourage it. Listen to the feedback and act on it.
3) Get a mentor
You can enroll on a formal mentor programme, but as Sheryl Sandberg says in her book ‘Lean In’ some of the best mentoring comes from people you meet and form a relationship with and ask for help from. Either way, having someone who can offer you advice and guidance can be critical for your development.
4) Spend time with inspiring people
You can learn so much from those around you. If you spend time with inspirational people, they will not only help motivate you, you can also learn from them and how they approach things.
5) Create a development plan
To be able to grow and develop it can be beneficial to create a development plan detailing the specific areas you are working on.
6) Create dedicated thinking time
It can help to dedicate a good amount of time to personal development. If you are busy, this is something that can take a back seat, so allocating specific time can be beneficial.
7) Challenge yourself
Set yourself challenges to stretch yourself and learn. 30 day challenges are an excellent way to develop over a short amount of time.
8) Write morning pages
Morning Pages come from Julia Camerons book The Artists Way, they are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. Cameron explains that there is no wrong way to do morning pages, it is just about capturing everything that pops into your mind, for your eyes only. They provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. They can help you with your development as they help you focus your thoughts and explore.
9) Stop watching TV
Depending on the sort of programmes you are watching, you might find you are not learning much from watching TV, that your time could be much better spent on other activities.
10) Read personal development articles
You can subscribe to personal development blogs and read up on personal development ideas to give you inspiration for your own development.
I’d love to hear your comments about personal development and continuous learning in the section below.
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]]>The post Book recommendation – The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin appeared first on Bestselfology.
]]>This is the first in a series of book recommendations where I have read a book that has really inspired me. This one is Gretchen Rubins ‘The Happiness Project’.
The Happiness Project is a year long project that Gretchen undertook to identify what would make her more happy, splitting that down into 12 different areas, each month she discovered how she could implement new techniques to achieve a happier life.
I’d love to hear from you if you have read it and what you thought. What changes did you make as a result?
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