Ten performance-enhancing books for the summer
Whether you are staycationing at home or braving the form-filling and COVID-testing requirements of international travel, the holiday season represents a chance to recharge batteries and get stuck into a good book. Here are a selection that I have recommended most frequently to clients over the last year, with a deliberate focus on books that are easy and enjoyable to read as well being useful and thought-provoking.
"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you" - Mortimer J. Adler.
Habits are behaviours that are performed so regularly that they eventually become automatic, requiring little effort or input from the brain. Each individual performance of a habit can feel quite small and insignificant, but when repeated regularly, their effects compound into very powerful changes, either for good or bad.
Sustainable habit formation underpins almost everything I work on with my coaching clients, whether taking people from couch potato to runner, improving focus & concentration in the workplace, reducing alcohol consumption or building a daily walk into a busy work schedule to allow for relaxation and contemplation.
James Clear explains the anatomy of habit formation and shows how making a habit as easy, satisfying and attractive as possible makes it much more likely to become a change for good.
Time is arguably our most precious commodity, yet most people feel like they have either far too little of it or no control over it. Laura Vanderkam's solution is that time freedom comes from tracking how you actually spend your time and then planning thoughtfully to maximise the most meaningful and enjoyable aspects of your life.
That includes a ruthless focus on extricating yourself from things that consume time without adding real value to you, as well as learning to linger and savour the pleasant moments rather than rushing on to the next item on your "To Do" list.
I often ask my people "what would you do if I gave you an extra hour in the day?" as the answer is usually very revealing. This book can help you to make that extra hour a genuine possibility rather than a distant dream.
Journalist Isabel Hardman has suffered from severe depression and anxiety but credits much of her improved health to the restorative power of the great outdoors. As well as a very powerful personal story in its own right, The Natural Health Service also explores a range of activities such as gardening, walking, cycling, cold water swimming, running and horse riding and their positive impact on mental health.
Many people were almost forced to discover the positive value of nature and outdoor activity during lockdown and this book may encourage you to make this a permanent feature of your life, rather than just a temporary response to an unprecedented period of restriction. I try to do as many of my coaching sessions as possible walking with clients in London's parks or along the river and the feedback on this element of it is universally positive. I find it helps people to take a calm and reflective step back to think about their lives, in addition to being mentally and physically restorative.
Many of us only truly appreciated how much our friends matter to us when we were deprived of seeing them during lockdown. Psychologist Robin Dunbar is best known for the concept of?Dunbar's number: the idea that human brains can only maintain cohesive social groups of up to 150 people. More than this and the group starts to break down or ceases to function well. This number was observed in the size of settlements in the Middle Ages, the structuring of armies into companies of this magnitude, the numbers at a typical wedding and even Christmas card lists.
In fact, your friendships are?a series of concentric circles, spreading out from 1 or 2 "intimates" (a best friend, spouse or both) to 5 "close friends" (who would give you emotional, physical or financial help without question if you needed it - your shoulders to cry on). The next layer of 15 "best friends", which includes the two smaller layers, will tend to make up your everyday social network for dinners out or pub visits. This is followed by 50 (note the pleasing scaling factor of around 3x each time) that you might invite to a birthday party and then 150 for "once in a lifetime" events such as weddings.
His book explores friendship in all its variety, from the importance of geographic proximity to the differences in how men & women maintain friendship (one through talking, the other through shared activities). He also examines the power of bonding through laughter, singing, dancing & storytelling and the dynamics of social conversations and how they work best.
Quite often an early question I ask a client is "when did you last see your best friend(s)?" as that is usually one of the first things that goes when someone is working too hard. Every single one so far has enjoyed reigniting such relationships and seen a substantial positive impact on their wellbeing.
5. Deep Work and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
Distraction has become endemic in the modern world and I have seen numerous people unable to prevent themselves from being distracted by Bloomberg screens, social media, emails, phone notifications and beeping smartwatches. Consequently, the ability to focus deeply and singularly on one topic is becoming lost. Yet US professor Cal Newport argues that this sort of "deep work" is the most valuable commodity in a knowledge-based economy where shallow work can easily be replicated by AI and machine learning.
Reading "Deep Work" will help you to think about how to schedule your time and shape your working environment in order to facilitate undistracted concentration and thought. It should also encourage you to work more intensively over shorter periods, thereby freeing up time for other enjoyable activities and some cognitive respite without reducing your productivity - surely the Holy Grail for many executives. With many heading back to full or part-time office life in September, now is a great time to think about how you can best achieve this.
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Newport takes this idea a stage deeper in "Digital Minimalism" to focus specifically on technology. He provides a practical guide on how to withstand the addictive attractions of many digital applications and reduce the mental exhaustion associated with them. In his words, a digital minimalist is someone who can hold an extended conversation without constantly checking their phone, enjoy an experience without having to document every one on social media and who has developed high quality leisure activities that fill their time valuably and reduce the need for digital fidgeting. I suspect that almost every adult and many children could benefit from moving in this direction and Newport does well to make his suggested steps easy rather than dauntingly difficult.
The book on sleep that people normally recommend is Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep and it is a great read if you want to get deep into the science of sleep and how it affects you physically and mentally. However, if your aim is purely to sleep better then Dr Michael Mosley's Fast Asleep is a short, very practical and more accessible alternative.
An insomnia sufferer himself, he examines how to determine if you are getting enough sleep and the basic principles of good sleep hygiene. He then goes into detail on how a Mediterranean diet can enhance your sleep (along with many other benefits), as can the development of a healthy and diverse range of bacteria in your gut microbiome. Other topics covered include sleep supplements, naps, shift work and Sleep Restriction Therapy (where you limit the amount of time in bed in an effort to spend more of that time actually asleep rather than getting frustrated about lying awake).
I will confess now that I have tried learning to meditate on several occasions and failed to get it to work for me. Yet the science behind the positive benefits of meditation is very strong and I know many people for whom it plays a vital role in their day-to-day welfare and sustainability.
This is a down-to-earth short book on the benefits of meditation and how to make it work for you, far removed from some of the more spiritual, hippy-ish titles out there. So it may be a more approachable and enjoyable entry point for the busy professional looking for ways to bring greater calm and rest to both mind and body.
Compare the mobility and flexibility of a middle-aged man or woman with the ease of movement of any young child. There was a time in all our lives when we could move well, but sitting hunched over a PC or laptop for 9-10 hours a day, perhaps exacerbated by a sedentary commute and a couple of hours of TV watching on the sofa, has significantly impaired this vital ability for many people.
Roger Frampton is a movement coach and "Stretch" provides a short daily programme of simple movements for spine, shoulder and hips that will help to counteract the negative effects of endless Zoom calls and low-grade home office chairs. It can also help you to realise that mobility is just as important an element of physical health as "fitness" and that you are much better off developing some repeatable preventative habits than waiting for something to go wrong and then hoping the physio can sort it out. On top of this, I now find that 10-15 minutes of stretching before bedtime is actually a very pleasant and relaxing way (almost a meditative one) to wind my day down.
Rahul Jandial is not just a highly regarded brain surgeon but also a beautiful storyteller. His accounts of some of the procedures he has performed are wonderfully detailed to read and spine-tingling at times, but also a clever way of explaining how the brain works and indeed how it sometimes malfunctions.
Within this thread, he interlaces some very practical advice on what you can do on a daily basis to improve your "neuro-fitness", your brain's ability to function effectively, based very much on what has significant scientific research behind it. He looks at brain training apps, nutrition, the full cocktail of legal and illegal drugs, head injuries and concussion, sleep, meditation and how the brain ages. It is a fascinating overview of our most important organ, one whose functioning has tended to be steeped in mystery.
What do you think about when you are out for a run? Do you lose yourself in your favourite playlist on Spotify or dream of that house in the country? Or work through a list of chores and "To Do"s that always seems to get longer rather than shorter? Maybe you just empty your mind completely, monitor your split times on Strava and pound ever harder in search of that elusive personal best time.
Shane Benzie's view is that you should think about running while you are running, that running is a skill and a technique that can be improved and mastered. He doesn't call it "mindful running" but that is very much what it amounts to.
Benzie?is a British running and movement coach and "The Lost Art of Running" tracks his journey through the high altitudes of Kenya, the deserts of Morocco, the Amazon jungle and elsewhere. The athletes he works with on his travels are often undertaking some truly astonishing endurances races, such as the 250km, seven-day?Marathon des Sables or the 268 mile winter trek across the Peak District and the Pennines known as?the Spine Race.?
But this is not just a book for serious athletes, it is a clever mix of engaging narrative and a very practical manifesto to improve anyone's running technique and make it more natural, covering posture, breathing, foot placement and using the natural spring within our bodies that everyone has but not everyone utilises! This brings the added advantages of enhanced efficiency and performance (the benefits of which are amplified many times over in the ultra races he describes in the book) but also reduced susceptibility to injury.
If you have come across books on any of these subjects or related areas that you have found useful or valuable, do let me know by email at [email protected] or add them to the comments section here.
Bestselling author of The Success Code (HQ, Harper Collins), social scientist, chair of governors at South Hampstead High School, former chair at Harris Academy Tottenham.
3 年Five I’ve already devoured, the other five are going to the top of my TBR list, thanks for the recommendations.
EU Equity Sales at Morgan Stanley
3 年Suddenly I want to read 7-8 of those. I’ll let you know how I get on (in c.2-3yrs time)!
Member of the Investment Committee - Motability Foundation.
3 年Thanks Steve. I have read six of these books. I would also highlight Cal Newport as an excellent author who simplifies concepts/ideas to keep grounded and focused in a fast moving tech obsessed world.
Thank you Steve. Have not read or come across most of these but will get on to them!