Summer reading for the type-A personality
As an overachiever who doesn’t do well with heat, I like my summer reading breezy, but not mindless (I reserve that for air travel.) For me, that means stuff that I can dip into easily a bit at a time and still learn from — think “bathroom reading”, only useful.
The Personal MBA (by Josh Kaufman) crams an entire biz-school education into one remarkably well-written book, covering all of the major concepts in brief, while providing best-of resources for further educating yourself in your areas of interest. Get an overview now, and choose your business-improvement projects (and reading) for fall! Similarly…
100 Best Business Books of All Time (by Jack Covert & Todd Sattersten) sketches out the main takeaways of the best of the biz-book canon in short, enjoyable summary reviews, broken out by category (e.g. enhancing creativity, operating a business efficiently, being more productive). I ended up adding a good 15 books to my own “to read” pile after finishing this one!
The Happiness Project (by Gretchen Rubin) chronicles the adventures of the author (who is, full disclosure, a friend) as she applied reason to the question of how to become a happier person, turning her life into a year-long science project. Wonderful writing and plenty of fun, easy experiments to try out yourself.
Improv Wisdom (by Patricia Ryan Madson) shows you how applying the rules of improv can enhance your life and your creativity. As an old improviser myself, I swear: it really does work, but it never feels like work. And it’s a fun-to-read book, to boot.
The Career Clinic: 8 Simple Rules for Finding Work You Love (by Maureen Anderson) collects the stories of several dozen people who found their way to new (and sometimes unusual) lines of work via circuitous routes. Fascinating and compulsively readable, it’s also really inspiring in times of great upheaval, like the one we’re living through now.
Colleen Wainwright is looking forward to bringing her breezy (but not mindless!) talk on marketing to several ASMP chapters this coming year, and getting a whole lot more reading done on airplanes.
3 Responses to 'Summer reading for the type-A personality'
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Once again, Coleen, I want to thank you for including Improv Wisdom in your list. Your continued support is helping the book live in the world. I appreciate it every time you mention it. Thanks for being such a good friend. Have a great summer1
[...] ASMP’s Strictly Business Blog :: My latest piece is all about summer reading for people who have issues with summer reading. Hello, Type-As! I’m looking at you! [...]
Thanks for this. I got “The Personal MBA” from the library based on this blog post. Thanks! It’s an incredibly useful book. Highly recommended.