Welcome to my bookshelf
The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma
If you are looking for just one book that might help you achieve a heroic transformation of your creativity, this is it. I have no trouble waking up at 5am but Robin Sharma’s book was an eye opener in understanding that what I do in that first hour of embracing a new day is what determines what I can potentially achieve or not. The book is replete with pearls of wisdom that will give you a GCA or gargantuan competitive advantage in life. A few examples: being masterful, inspirational and fearless are all inside jobs; an addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production; concentrate monomaniacally on creating great days and they will stack into a gorgeous life. Importantly, I learnt that the evangelistic mission of great leaders is the elevation of others.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
I was on a super relaxed beach holiday in the Maldives when I first read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. From start to finish it felt like she was speaking to me one on one. It was such a deeply personal call to action. She was urging me to be brave enough to bring the jewels buried deeply inside of me to the world. She was pleading me to ignore the voice of my inner critic and to fearlessly create. It got my creative juices supercharged. Elizabeth set me on fire! Should I write a book? Should I start sketching again? Maybe it was time to launch my podcast? What followed was useful and practical advice on how to courageously and devotedly live a creative life fully of passion and joy.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
If you’re ready to break old habits and build new ones, you’ve found the book that will help you make it happen. James Clear makes a convincing case in this book for how habits are compound interest for self-improvement and that success is the product of daily habits. It reminds me of the parable of the bamboo tree and the fern and how deceptive initial growth can be. The fern shows outward growth much faster but it is the bamboo tree that grows its roots silently for years before one day suddenly shooting up and soaring high above the fern. My favourite line from his book: the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.
Own the Room by Jen Su and Maignan Wilkins.
We tend to forget how critical communication (both verbal and written) is to professional and personal success. I picked this book up quite early in my career when browsing at Kinokuniya, my favourite bookshop in Singapore. It convinced me on how important it is to be self-aware of how I am connecting with others in way that demonstrates my value and uniqueness. This book provided a handy guide to hone in on and develop your Signature Voice which will enable you to Own the Room. A great reference for building leadership presence from the inside out.
Wise Guy by Guy Kawasaki
Nothing can beat the lessons learnt from real life experience. This is why I thoroughly enjoyed “Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life” by Guy Kawasaki. Guy is one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic names having worked at Apple, co-founded many companies, advised several others and currently Chief Evangelist of Canva, an online graphic-design tool. Guy shares his life story through a series of stories and food for thought in chapters titled Immigration, Education, Inspiration, Apple, Business, Values, Parenting, Sports, LOL, Skills and Ohana. He also has a recommended reading list which I highly recommend!
Scramble by Marty Neumier
I am a huge fan of Marty's books because he has the amazingly ability to simplify abstract concepts. I had the honour of reading an early draft and I absolutely loved the easy flowing narrative in storytelling form that packed in so many important concepts about business and brand strategy. Readers follow the journey of a young CEO, David Stone, of a hospitality company and how he must turnaround his failing company or lose his job. The powerful tools at the centre of the story are the five Qs of strategy and the five Ps of design thinking. These make up the basic principles of agile strategy--a faster, more collaborative approach to building a brand. Almost every business today must reinvent or risk irrelevance. SCRAMBLE will provide much inspiration for thinking about your reboot.
52 Red Pills by Eika and Siddharth Banerjee
This book is the perfect read before the start of the New Year. It will encourage you to start your own hyper-learning journey and bring a whole lot more curiosity to your life. A reflective conversation between the couple on a New Year’s Eve led them to embark on studying a broad range of 52 topics for an intense and focused period of one week each for a whole year. The wonderfully inspiring book is the outcome of their research which was a combination of primary and secondary research with Eika focusing on ancient knowledge on the topic and Sid on the latest research papers and both interviewing any experts they could access.
This is the perfect time of the year to create your own 52RedPills Learning Journey. It could be themes you are interested in, skills you want to pick up, new experiences you want to have. Some of the most fascinating chapters from the book are: Inside a Polymath’s Mind, Hacking Martial Arts, Start a Movement, The Science Behind Indian Festivals, Germany is the New Ancient India and Be (Super) Interesting,
Drive by Daniel Pink
My role as a mother and a leader has one big thing in common: the need to motivate my team and my daughters in order to help them grow. I greatly enjoyed Daniel Pink’s Drive as it gave me so many concepts to better understand that the carrots and sticks paradigm is dead and what is required to be nurtured today is intrinsic motivation. Pink calls it the new operating system for the 21st century. This is because creative thinking and innovation are critical competencies that need to be developed and these are diminished and sometimes even crushed by the traditional system. Motivation 3.0, which is intrinsically driven, is based on a tripod of mastery, autonomy and purpose. Pink draws on science to convince us that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive but our third drive – our deep-seated desire to direct our own loves, to extend and expand our abilities and to live a life of purpose.
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Are you looking for an escape hatch from contemporary anxiety? An antidote to the rhetoric of growth? Trying to desperately resist the attention economy? This is your book! I love Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” because it flies in the face of all the productivity books that have been all the rage. Jenny so eloquently makes us realise that attention is the most precious resource we have; yet our account is overdrawn.
Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee.
“Joy is the most basic building block of happiness, and this mesmerizing book reveals where to find it -- and how to create it. Ingrid Fetell Lee’s blockbuster debut will open your eyes to all the places where joy is hiding in plain sight.” Adam Grant
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
“Success in any field, but especially in business is about working with people, not against them.” Sage advice from Keith Ferrazi of Never Eat Alone, an excellent book with a plethora of ideas on relationship building.
The idea that stuck with me the most from his book: you must build your network long before you need it.
How to Read a Book by
Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Who knew that there is a proven way to read books in a way that actually increases your intelligence! Pick up “How to read a book”, a classic guide by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. How you approach books will never be the same again.