Reading fiction comes naturally for many people – it’s something everyone grows up with, but with non-fiction there are many who just stay away. Sometimes, non-fiction is perceived as being boring, hefty, or tiresome, or indeed, it doesn’t read as well as fiction. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As with fiction, there can be good non-fiction and there can be bad non-fiction. At Anywhere Working, we’ve compiled you a little reading list showcasing a few of our favourite non-fiction titles to get you started.
These were all chosen because they’ve helped us in some way with our flexible working routines.
Jonah Lehrer – Imagine: How creativity works
This is a really interesting book that we’ve already written a blog post about in the past, so won’t go too much detail, but suffice to say the book is brilliant. Lehrer has analysed how creativity works and some of the results are fascinating. For example, brainstorming doesn’t work, getting drunk can make you more creative, and living in other countries helps you understand and analyse problems better.
A great read for flexible workers and for fun anyway.
Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers
This book has become somewhat of a classic in recent years along side titles such as Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics. Outliers, as its subtitle indicates, is ‘The story of success’ and it follows the backgrounds of people with successful lives.
It makes for a fascinating read and there are countless moments where it feels like a light bulb has just been switched on, as you say to yourself ‘of course.’ When The Times reviewed it they said that you won’t ever think about success in the same way again, and that hits the nail on the head.
Eric Rises – The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
This one’s going to be useful to anyone whose flexible working is through starting their own business, but a really good read even if you’re not. The praise given to The Lean Startup on the dust jacket comes from all over – including from staff at Intuit, Tivo, Netscape and the FT.
The Lean Startup helps you deal with the problems you may face as your business starts up and for that reason there’s advice in here that’s invaluable to everyone.
David Allen – Getting Things Done
Regular readers may know that we gave this book a small nod when talking about productivity a while ago, but the whole book really is deserving of a read. Getting Things Done is widely heralded as one of the greatest productivity books and methods ever.
For flexible workers, having a great productivity system is essential, and as far as productivity methods go, they don’t get much better than this.
What are your favourite non-fiction books that have helped you with flexible working? These are a few of our favourites, but what do you consider essential reading that we might have missed?
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