Top 10 books that will help you grow— Magic Pills for 2021!

9 min readFeb 23, 2021

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”
― Walt Disney

We often try to find answers to the problems and questions in our life at the wrong places. We hold onto those problems for a long time till we make mistakes and then start our quest for solutions.

Just imagine the amount of time we waste on these things and the self-doubt we create in our minds for ourselves. Our own thoughts are barriers in our path to success.

The special place to find all your answers is — BOOKS. There is an enormous amount of wisdom, knowledge, and wealth in books. From self-help, Psychology, and Life to Science, Management, and personal growth — You name it, and there is a great book available on every problem.

So, let’s not waste time. Here are the magic pills for 2021📚

1️⃣ Tool of Titans by Tim Ferris

“ When 99% of people doubt you, you are either gravely wrong or about to make history”

One of the best books I have come across this year — Tools of Titans. Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek and host of the best podcast “The Tim Ferriss Show”.

He has hosted many great people on his podcast. And this book is a collection of all the wisdom from great entrepreneurs, thinkers, writers, athletes, and creators. It is very practical in nature. As he calls it — It is a compendium of recipes for high performance. Start reading it now!

How do I read? — I open any section (Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise) and start reading it. If I get bored, I move on to the next chapter or section. It is that flexible to read and absorb.

Take notes, revisit and apply all those things in your life.

2️⃣ Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin

“The secret to being successful in any field is getting very interested in it… I could force myself to be fairly good in a lot of things, but I couldn’t excel in anything in which I didn’t have an intense interest”

Seeking wisdom is the result of Bevelin’s learning about attaining wisdom. Some roads lead to unhappiness. An understanding of how and why we can “die” should help us avoid them.

We can’t eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking.

It is a great book that focuses on “Why do we behave as we do?, What do we want out of life? What interferes with our goals?

From understanding our brain and how it functions to understanding how great people make decisions. It is really worth a read!

3️⃣ The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

“Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job; it’s not by going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.”

Naval Ravikant is an Indian-American entrepreneur and investor. He is very well known in Silicon Valley. I am a fan of Naval Ravikant. His knowledge of different subjects from science & technology to spirituality is a treat to read and listen to.

This book is a collection of all the talks, threads, essays, shows he has done. Eric Jorgenson has done a wonderful job of curating all his wisdom in a structural manner and with context. It is a guide to wealth and happiness. And the interesting thing is — the book is free.

You can read/download it here.

4️⃣ Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.”

Negotiation is a life skill. We all do negotiations all the time in our daily life. As he said in the book, “ In my short stay I realized that without a deep understanding of human psychology, without the acceptance that we are all crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven animals, all the raw intelligence and mathematical logic in the world is little help in the fraught, shifting interplay of two people negotiating.

The book is divided into ten chapters explaining various tools and concepts of negotiation with a story. It also gives a practical guide on how to apply those things in real life.

From former FBI top international hostage negotiator to now author, speaker, and businessman, he is teaching all tested approaches of negotiation to all of us through this book. If you want to be a great negotiator, pick this book asap!

5️⃣ ‘Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini

“Often we don’t realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.”

A self-described “sucker” for sales tactics, Robert Cialdini was every salesman’s dream prospect, and he wanted to know why. To find out, Dr. Cialdini, a social psychologist, worked undercover in fields like sales, PR, advertising, and fund-raising to discover what actually makes people comply with the demands of others.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is the summary of what he learned. It is one of the best books for every marketing student out there and people in general. It teaches us to persuade others with the help of science and makes us aware of how we get persuaded by others.

This book has helped me understand how marketers influence our buying decisions and how and why we make certain buying decisions. The book is divided into 6 fundamentals of persuasion — The principle of Reciprocation, Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, and Scarcity.

6️⃣ The CEO Factory by Sudhir Sitapati

“It’s easy to talk values when there is nothing at stake, but sticking to it when the business is under deep decline due to a state not functioning is unique to HUL.”

The brands by Hindustan Unilever (HUL) dominates the everyday life of an Indian. To name a few: Lifebuoy, Dove, Ponds, Lakme, Bru, Horlicks. Even if the average Indian doesn’t know much about HUL, he surely uses one of their brands daily.

This book is a goldmine for all management graduates. Specifically, those who are of any kind associated with — ‘Marketing’. The book gives you a ton of insights into how HUL has built the biggest FMCG brands in the country. What principles, tools, and frameworks HUL uses to run its business. I think someone might get a different idea about this book by reading its title, but it is much more than how HUL has given the most number of CEOs in the country.

It bridges the gap between all theoretical MBA knowledge to practical business knowledge. There are many ‘Aha” moments in the book. If HUL comes up with an MBA in the future — They would give all top management institutes in the country a run for their money!

7️⃣ Stories at Work by Indranil Chakraborty

“We all get stories. No matter what our experience in the organization is, no matter what our education levels are, and how deep our industry understanding is, we all get stories. The fact that we don’t use complex words and abstract jargon when telling stories only helps.”

We are all made up of stories. Every human being receives and sends information in form of stories. The stories are all around us. I wanted to learn the art of storytelling. I started searching for books that can help me learn business storytelling. If you love stories and you want to use this art in your professional career, then this is the best book you can get in the Indian context.

The powerful stories stay with us forever. The author draws many references and tells powerful stories that will stay with us and teach us how to tell stories. It teaches you how to start thinking in a structured way about stories.

Storytelling in business is different from telling stories to friends in a bar. It needs to be based on facts. Stories at Work will teach you how to wrap your stories in context and deliver them in a way that grabs your audience’s attention.

8️⃣ The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton

“It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”

“The Choice Factory” by Richard Shotton won the “BBH’s world cup of advertising books”. The book will help you understand the 25 behavioral biases that influence what we buy.

The author deep dives into the typical daily decision-making of consumers and investigates in the context of psychological behavior. The book gives practical insights into how to solve the biggest marketing challenges faced by companies today.

Each chapter contains a small introduction about mental bias, its example studies, and its application. The book will help you understand how and why we buy things. It is a new marketing and advertising essential.

9️⃣ Atomic Habits by James Clear

“Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

Why you should read this book?

If you want to build good habits and extract the power of compounding to get the most out of your life then you should definitely pick this book. For example — How just 1% small change can lead to a significant outcome, calling out your bad habits can initiate change, and many others.

The book is a step-by-step guide to build good habits and break bad ones. ‘Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.’ is the philosophy of this book.

It will help you in — Build a system for getting 1% better every day, Break bad habits and stick to good ones, Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower, Avoid the common mistakes most people make when changing habits, and how to apply all great ideas in real life.

🔟 Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

“A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment…For imagination sets the goal ‘picture’ which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of ‘will,’ as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.”

Maxwell Maltz was ahead of his time and he was 71 years old when the first edition of this book was published in 1960. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz is the only self-help book you need. It is considered as a bible of self-help.

Maltz was a plastic surgeon and while practicing he saw an increase in the self-esteem of people who had removed some unwanted features on their faces surgically. He realized two things,

A good self-image is the core of a good life
There is something deeper going on with regard to self-image over correcting a physical feature

The book covers topics like visualization, flow state, meditation, and mindfulness long before they were in the mainstream. The central theme of the book is — how we see and what we think of ourselves. Our self-image is the key to our personality and behavior.

You should definitely read this book.

Yayy…

You made it till here. You are really a Curious soul!

You deserve a bonus. So, here is the best video I have watched that helped me understand how our mind works and what we can do to get the best out of it.