5 Books To Enhance Your Career
If you want to know how to excel in your chosen profession, read these 5 books.
How many people in the world have jobs instead of careers? How many people in the world never reach their full potential in their careers? Often a lack of progress and result in one’s career is not due to a lack of want, but rather a lack of information.
The importance of the right information for anything, not only your career, is so much more important in this day and age. The general blueprint for an exceptional career is laid out in various resources, but very rarely are these resources taken advantage of.
So here are 5 books that will enhance your career, and when applied, will make it exceptional:
#1: Mastery (Robert Greene)
Insightful, informative, and instructive, Mastery is a manual for anyone that wants to achieve mastery over any given field or domain. In my opinion, this is THE best book that will help anyone achieve great success in their careers, as the concepts found in the book is transferable to any industry.
In this book, Robert Greene explores what the greats in their respective fields, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, the Wright Brothers, Mozart, and Charles Darwin, did for their domain of competence and how they obtained the success they achieved. Mastery is a psychological analysis of the minds and the habits of history’s highest performers and history’s greatest minds, and it gives us a detailed process on how to achieve mastery over any field.
The book explores the mechanism of how to build up the skills you need for a great career as well the stages one must pass in succession in order to achieve mastery. Easy to understand and follow, as well as highly entertaining through the various stories within its pages, this book is a must for anyone that wants to reach the heights of career success.
#2: Principles (Ray Dalio)
In my opinion, this book is more so for those that are in a management role or is able to control the processes within their company. Ray Dalio in this book takes a very straightforward, to-do approach with his advice, with alot of emphasis on optimizing workflow processes, or what he calls “the machine”.
One of the main themes of the book that Ray Dalio mentions alot are the concepts of “radical honesty” and “radical transparency”, which are in my opinion, excellent principles to stand for within the office. The advice Ray Dalio gives is broken down into how to manage people, how to optimize workflow, and how to evolve not only as an employee, but as a person.
The book is broken down into three sections: Life Principles, Work Principles, and a section where he details how he started Bridgewater, which is his hedge fund management company. Each section gives great insight on how one can excel in their career and eventually become an excellent manager within their industry.
#3: High Performance Habits (Brendon Burchard)
The very best in their industry has a certain set of skills, routines and habits they adhere to, and in this impactful book by Brendon Burchard, he goes into what the very best do day in and day out. This book is one I would recommend to anyone that wants to move further in their career. Easy-to-read and straight to the point, this book is a must for any high performer.
The sets of habits contained in this book are broken down into six core principles: Clarity, Energy, Necessity, Productivity Influence, Courage. For anyone to perform well in their chosen profession, all six must be present in not only their professional life, but their personal life.
Brendon Burchard also outlines three traps people fall into that kills high performance: Superiority, Dissatisfaction, and Neglect. He explains not only how to avoid the three traps, but how to capitalize on the six principles of high performance to build more effective habits and become better at our profession.
#4: The 5 Essential People Skills (Dale Carnegie Training)
Many professional, particularly those from highly technical fields, focus solely on developing their technical skills and neglect their ability to work with others, whether it is colleagues or clients. That is why I believe The 5 Essential People Skills by Dale Carnegie Training, is an essential read for knowing how to navigate office politics and command influence at your place of work.
Upon reading this book, I discovered that the main theme of the book is assertiveness. How to assert yourself among others and in your own life. It is argued that assertiveness is the key to effective communication with others.
Different communication mindsets and strategies are explained in this book. The ley takeaway is that effective communication is essential if one wants to progress in their career, as every profession involves working with others in some way, shape or form. This book will help solidify the social skills one needs in the workplace and present such ideas as an exact science.
#5: The Dichotomy of Leadership (Jocko Willink, Leif Babin)
Leadership is not an easy skill to master, whether it is being a leader of a team or a leader of oneself. However, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin break down in this book, The Dichotomy of Leadership, how the best leaders must have balance in their approach in order to achieve the best results from themselves and those they lead.
Each chapter explains an aspect of leadership where there is a dichotomy alongside it. For example, one chapter is titled “Aggressive, not Reckless”, which explains how one should always look to move forward and make progress, but not at such a pace that they are set up to fail or where one is not prepared. The book is full of such dichotomies and balances, all of which are key principles for all effective leaders to adhere by.
Leadership is important in any role, not just if you are in a management position. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin also indirectly makes the case that one should be a leader of their own life, professionally and personally. In that way, they will become more effective leaders in the workplace.
To excel in your career, or in anything, one must not only have the desire for excellence and success, but also the right information and resources for it. One must be educated on what to do, and how to do it. Career enhancement is a science, and there has been proven principles on how to excel in one’s career. These books outline some blueprints one can follow to have amazing career success.
What other books do you know of that helps enhance your career?
