Part 3 in the series (Out of 3)
Hey there! If you’re reading this, chances are that you’ve ventured into the exciting world of freelancing or are considering taking the leap. A few months back, I dived into reading about freelancing and there was too much content out there to help all the freelancers get better at their business. ‘The Freelance Way’ by Robert Vlach is such an insightful read into the subject and based on the book, we’ve come up with a comprehensive reading list that will help you expedite your freelance journey to the next level.
All of the books we’re about to dive into are mentioned in the book, “The Freelance Way.” These 35 books cover a spectrum of topics essential to develop soft as well as technical skills for freelancers. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been freelancing for years, this reading list has something to offer to everybody.
For your reference, here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2 in the series:
- Part 1 – Reading List Inspired by Robert Vlach’s ‘The Freelance Way’
- Part 2 – Reading List Inspired by Robert Vlach’s ‘The Freelance Way’
So, grab your favorite reading nook and brew a cup of coffee because I can’t wait to share these reads with you. Ready? Let’s go!
21. Spark by John Ratey
Do you want to: Supercharge your thinking? Beat stress? Reverse ageing? Lift your mood? Fight memory loss? Sharpen your intellect? The answer is simple – get up and move! We all know that exercise is good for the body. But did you know that it can transform your mind? This new scientific revolution will teach you how to boost brain cells, protect yourself against mental illness and dementia, and ensure success in exams and the workplace. Follow the SPARK! training regimen and build your brain to its peak performance. This book will change the way you think about exercise – and, for that matter, the way you think.
22. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
A compelling mediation on the power of running and a fascinating insight into the life of this internationally bestselling writer. A perfect reading companion for runners.
In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing.
Equal parts travelogue, training log and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and settings ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston.
By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, this is a must-read for fans of this masterful yet private writer as well as for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running.
23. Deep Work by Cal Newport
‘Deep work’ is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Coined by author and professor Cal Newport on his popular blog Study Hacks, deep work will make you better at what you do, let you achieve more in less time and provide the sense of true fulfilment that comes from the mastery of a skill. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive economy.
And yet most people, whether knowledge workers in noisy open-plan offices or creatives struggling to sharpen their vision, have lost the ability to go deep – spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realising there’s a better way.
A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories — from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air — and surprising suggestions, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored.
Put simply: developing and cultivating a deep work practice is one of the best decisions you can make in an increasingly distracted world and this book will point the way.
24. The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan – there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.
This step-by step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches:
* How Tim went from $40,000 dollars per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per MONTH and 4 hours per week
* How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
* How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
* How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
* How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent ‘mini-retirements’.
25. Focus by Leo Babauta
At the heart of this simple book lies the key to many of the struggles we face these days, from being productive and achieving our goals, to getting healthy and fit in the face of fast food and inactivity, to finding simplicity and peace amidst chaos and confusion. That key is itself simple: focus. Our ability to focus will allow us to create in ways that perhaps we haven’t in years. It’ll allow us to slow down and find peace of mind. It’ll allow us to simplify and focus on less-on the essential things, the things that matter most.
26. Zen to Done by Leo Babauta
Zen To Done (ZTD) is a system that is at once simple, and powerful, and will help you develop the habits that keep all of your tasks and projects organized, that keep your workday simple and structured, that keep your desk and email inbox clean and clear, and that keep you doing what you need to do, without distractions. This book was written for those who want to get their lives organized and actually execute the things on their to-do list by changing existing habits.And let me say that changing your habits is possible. Using the habit-changing techniques I describe in this book, I have made many habit changes: I quit smoking, started running, started eating healthier, completed a marathon, doubled my income and got my finances in order, have almost eliminated my debt now, completed a triathlon, lost more than 20 pounds, and started a successful blog, and more. Read this book. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish with this productivity system.
27. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
Do you find yourself endlessly scrolling through social media or the news while your anxiety rises? Are you feeling frazzled after a long day of endless video calls?
In this timely book, professor Cal Newport shows us how to pair back digital distractions and live a more meaningful life with less technology.
By following a ‘digital declutter’ process, you’ll learn to:
– Rethink your relationship with social media
– Prioritize ‘high bandwidth’ conversations over low quality text chains
– Rediscover the pleasures of the offline world
Take back control from your devices and find calm amongst the chaos with Digital Minimalism.
28. Getting Things Done by David Allen (Revised B-Format)
Is your workload overwhelming? Does it just keep mounting up while your stress levels reach fever pitch? In Getting Things Done David Allen teaches you how to keep a clear head, relax and organise your thoughts while implementing the methods that he has introduced at organisations like Microsoft, Lockheed and the US Department of Justice: Learn the ‘do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it’ principle to empty your in-tray. Handle e-mail, paperwork and unexpected demands in a system of self-management. Plan and progress projects. Reassess goals and stay focused. Apply the two minute rule when deciding what to do now and what to defer. Overcome feelings of anxiety and being overwhelmed. With clear and specific methods and advice, David Allen’s tried and trusted formula for business efficiency could transform the way you operate and your experience of work.
Since it was first published in David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business titles of its era, and the book on personal organisation. ‘GTD’ has become shorthand for an entire way of approaching the professional and personal tasks everyone faces in life, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organisational tools, seminars, and offshoots.
29. Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs – in companies of all sizes – a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
30. The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
A New York Times bestseller, Atul Gawande shows what the simple idea of the checklist reveals about the complexity of our lives and how we can deal with it. The modern world has given us stupendous know-how, yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry–in almost every realm of organized activity. The reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people–consistently, correctly, safely. We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail. Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist. In riveting stories, he reveals what checklists can do, what they can’t, and how they could bring about striking improvements in a variety of fields, from medicine and disaster recovery to professions and businesses of all kinds. And the insights are making a difference. Already, a simple surgical checklist from the World Health Organization designed by following the ideas described here has been adopted in more than twenty countries as a standard for care and has been heralded as the biggest clinical invention in thirty years.
31. Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
In this warm, insightful portrait of the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, we see the wisdom, humour and curiosity of Richard Feynman through a series of conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynman’s life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism.
Over a period of years, Feynman’s conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.
32. Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher
Since it was first published in 1981 Getting to Yes has become a central book in the Business Canon: the key text on the psychology of negotiation. Its message of “principled negotiations”–Finding acceptable compromise by determining which needs are fixed and which are flexible for negotiating parties–has influenced generations of businesspeople, lawyers, educators and anyone who has sought to achieve a win-win situation in arriving at an agreement. It has sold over 8 million copies worldwide in 30 languages, and since it was first published by Penguin in 1991 (a reissue of the original addition with Bruce Patton as additional coauthor) has sold over 2.5 million copies–which places it as the #10 bestselling title overall in Penguin Books, and #3 bestselling nonfiction title overall. We have recently relicensed the rights to Getting to Yes, and will be doing a new revised edition–a 30th anniversary of the original publication and 20th of the Penguin edition. The authors will be bringing the book up to date with new material and a assessment of the legacy and achievement of Getting to Yes after three decades.
33. Irresistible by Adam Alter
Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction—an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.
In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today’s products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.
By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.
34. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
In his New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon showed readers how to unlock their creativity by “stealing” from the community of other movers and shakers. Now, in an even more forward-thinking and necessary book, he shows how to take that critical next step on a creative journey—getting known.
Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery—let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive.
In chapters such as You Don’t Have to Be a Genius; Share Something Small Every Day; and Stick Around, Kleon creates a user’s manual for embracing the communal nature of creativity— what he calls the “ecology of talent.” From broader life lessons about work (you can’t find your voice if you don’t use it) to the etiquette of sharing—and the dangers of oversharing—to the practicalities of Internet life (build a good domain name; give credit when credit is due), it’s an inspiring manifesto for succeeding as any kind of artist or entrepreneur in the digital age.
35. Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
An inspiring guide to creativity in the digital age, Steal Like an Artist presents ten transformative principles to help readers discover their artistic side and build a more creative life. Its positive message, graphic look, and illustrations, exercises, and examples put readers directly in touch with their artistic side. We learn how to embrace influence, follow interests wherever they take us, forget old clichés like writing about what you know-instead, write the book that you want to read, make the movie you want to watch. And above all, how to find the space you need to be wild and daring in your imagination and your work. In his Afterword, Kleon discusses the book’s influence and how “stealing” has been misunderstood-providing a unique, personal perspective on a book that’s touched so many over the past decade.
You’ve come to the end of this post. As usual, it’s always a joy to bring you these tiny bits of joy and productivity. Hi, I am Ritika and I talk about work-life productivity, books and coffee. To stay connected, drop by this blog whenever you need a boost of inspiration! Until next time, signing off —
