Part 1 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.
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!
1. Influence by Robert Cialdini
Robert Cialdini, seminal expert in the fields of influence and persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. Using memorable stories and relatable examples, Robert Cialdini makes this crucially important subject surprisingly easy. With Cialdini as a guide, you don’t have to be a scientist to learn how to use this Science. You’ll learn Cialdini’s universal principles of influence, including new research and new uses so you can become an even more skilled persuader, and just as importantly, you’ll learn how to defend yourself against unethical influence attempts. You may think you know these principles, but without understanding their intricacies, you may be ceding their power to someone else. Cialdini’s principles of persuasion: reciprocation commitment and consistency social proof liking authority scarcity unity, the newest principle for this edition understanding and applying the principles ethically is cost-free and deceptively easy. Backed by Dr. Cialdini’s 35 years of evidence-based, peer-reviewed scientific research including a three-year field study on what leads people to change. Influence is a comprehensive guide to using these principles to move others in your direction.
2. A History Of Freedom by Rufus Fears (Not available in India)
It can be argued that one simple idea – the concept of freedom – has been the driving force of Western civilization and may be the most influential intellectual force the world has ever known. But what is freedom, exactly? These 36 engaging lectures tell the dramatic story of freedom from ancient Greece to our own day, exploring a concept so close to us we may never have considered it with the thoroughness it deserves.
In exploring what freedom meant to Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and other great historical figures, you’ll probe a range of provocative issues related to a concept we in the 21st century sometimes take for granted. What does it take to be free, to have and to hold liberty? What role do the liberal arts and the world of the intellect play in the life of a free society or a free individual? How should we understand the relationship among freedom, religion, and morality?
With Professor Fears guiding and informing your thinking, you explore the birth of the idea of freedom in Greece and the story of the world’s first democracy; the status and meaning of freedom in both the Roman Republic and the Empire; the role of Christianity in that flowering of freedom, and the Christian view of the true meaning of human liberation; the debates about freedom that informed the framing and ratification of the United States Constitution; its awful testing on the battlefields of the Civil War; the struggles of free peoples against domestic injustices and foreign dictatorships during the 20th century; and the questions about freedom we still face today.
3. Future Crimes by Marc Goodman
Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flipside. Criminals are often the earliest, and most innovative, adopters of technology and modern times have led to modern crimes. Today’s criminals are stealing identities, draining online bank-accounts and wiping out computer servers. It’s disturbingly easy to activate baby cam monitors to spy on families, pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt, and thieves are analyzing your social media in order to determine the best time for a home invasion.
Meanwhile, 3D printers produce AK-47s, terrorists can download the recipe for the Ebola virus, and drug cartels are building drones. This is just the beginning of the tsunami of technological threats coming our way. In Future Crimes, Marc Goodman rips open his database of hundreds of real cases to give us front-row access to these impending perils. Reading like a sci-fi thriller, but based in startling fact, Goodman raises tough questions about the expanding role of technology in our lives. Future Crimes is a call to action for better security measures worldwide, but most importantly, will empower readers to protect themselves against these looming technological threats – before it’s too late.
4. Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink
Widely acclaimed for its engaging style and provocative perspective, this book has helped thousands transform their working lives. Now including a 30-page resource guide that explains the basics of working for oneself.
It’s about fulfillment. A revolution is sweeping America. On its front lines are people fed up with unfulfilling jobs, dysfunctional workplaces, and dead-end careers. Meet today’s new economic icon: the free agent-men and women who are working for themselves. And meet your future.
It’s about freedom. Free agents are the marketing consultant down the street, the home-based “mompreneur,” the footloose technology contractor. Already 30 million strong, these 21st-century pioneers are creating lives with more meaning-and often more money. Free Agent Nation is your ticket to this world.
It’s about time. Now, you can discover:
- The kind of free agent you can be-“soloist,” “temp,” or “microbusiness”-and how to launch your new career.
- How to get the perks you once received from your boss: health insurance, office space, training, workplace togetherness, even water cooler gossip.
- Why the free agent economy is increasingly a woman’s world-and how women are flourishing in it.
- The transformation of retirement-how older workers are creating successful new businesses (and whole new lives) through the Internet.
5. Give and Take by Adam Grant
Everybody knows that hard work, luck and talent each plays a role in our working lives. In his landmark book, Adam Grant illuminates the importance of a fourth, increasingly critical factor – that the best way to get to the top is to focus on bringing others with you.Give and Take changes our fundamental understanding of why we succeed, offering a new model for our relationships with colleagues, clients and competitors. Using his own cutting-edge research as a professor at Wharton Business School, as well as success stories from Hollywood to history, Grant shows that nice guys need not finish last. He demonstrates how smart givers avoid becoming doormats, and why this kind of success has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organisations and communities.
6. The Art of Being Kind by Stefan Einhorn
The concept of kindness is sometimes linked to qualities such a stupidity, gullibility and timidity, but in ‘The Art Of Being Kind’ the word is given a new slant. Stefan Einhorn passionately believes that kindness is one of the finest things we can devote ourselves to, and is the single most important factor for success in our lives. If we strive to be kind to others, we simply cannot avoid doing ourselves good. In ‘The Art Of Being Kind,’ Einhorn describes what being kind involves, what can prevent us from being generous to others, examples of scientific research proving the benefits of benevolent behaviour, and sound and practical advice on how we can become kinder, and therefore more successful, in our everyday lives.
7. Remote by David Hanson
For too long our lives have been dominated by the ‘under one roof’ Industrial Revolution model of work. That era is now over. As remote working is becoming increasingly more flexible, there is no longer a reason for the daily roll call, of the need to be seen with your butt on your seat in the office. The technology and necessity to work remotely and to avoid the daily grind of commuting and meetings has finally come of age. Bestselling authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the masters of making it work at tech company 37signals.
Remote: Office Not Required combines eye-opening ideas with entertaining narrative. With its almost prescient content, the book will convince you that working remotely increases productivity and innovation, and it will also teach you how to get it right – whether you are a manager, working solo or one of a team. Chapters include: ‘Talent isn’t bound by the hubs’, ‘It’s the technology, stupid’, ‘When to type, when to talk’, ‘Stop managing the chairs’ and ‘The virtual water cooler’.
Brilliantly simple and refreshingly illuminating this is a call to action to end the tyranny of being shackled to the office.
8. The Freelancer’s Bible by Sara Horowitz
Amazingly, one-third of the American workforce is freelance—that’s 42 million people who have to wrestle with not just doing the work, but finding the work, then getting paid for the work, plus health care, taxes, setting up an office, marketing, and so on. Now help is here, and consultants, independent contractors, the self-employed, “solopreneurs,” and everyone else living a freelancer’s life will never be alone again but instead can be part of a strong and vibrant community.
Written by the authority on freelance working, Sara Horowitz, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and founder of the national Freelancers Union and, most recently, the Freelancers Insurance Company, The Freelancer’s Bible will help those new to freelancing learn the ropes, and will help those who’ve been freelancing for a while grow and expand. It’s the one-stop, all-encompassing guide to every practical detail and challenge of being a nimble, flexible, and successful freelancer: the three essentials of getting clients and the three most important ways to keep them happy. Five fee-setting strategies. Thirteen tactics for making it through a prolonged dry spell. Setting up a home office vs. renting space. The one-hour contract. A dozen negotiating dos and don’ts. Building and maintaining your reputation. Dealing with deadbeats. Health Insurance 101. Record-keeping and taxes. Productivity, including a quiz: “What Is Your Ideal Day?” Building a community. Subcontracting and other strategies for taking your freelancing career to the next level. Retirement plans, plans for saving for education, and how to achieve financial freedom.
9. The Richest Man Who Ever Lived by Greg Steinmetz
In the days when Columbus sailed the ocean and Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, a German banker named Jacob Fugger became the richest man in history.
Fugger lived in Germany at the turn of the sixteenth century, the grandson of a peasant. By the time he died, his fortune amounted to nearly two percent of European GDP. In an era when kings had unlimited power, Fugger dared to stare down heads of state and ask them to pay back their loans—with interest. It was this coolness and self-assurance, along with his inexhaustible ambition, that made him not only the richest man ever, but a force of history as well. Before Fugger came along it was illegal under church law to charge interest on loans, but he got the Pope to change that. He also helped trigger the Reformation and likely funded Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe. His creation of a news service gave him an information edge over his rivals and customers and earned Fugger a footnote in the history of journalism. And he took Austria’s Habsburg family from being second-tier sovereigns to rulers of the first empire where the sun never set.
“Enjoyable…readable and fast-paced” (The Wall Street Journal), The Richest Man Who Ever Lived is more than a tale about the most influential businessman of all time. It is a story about palace intrigue, knights in battle, family tragedy and triumph, and a violent clash between the one percent and everybody else. “The tale of Fugger’s aspiration, ruthlessness, and greed is riveting” (The Economist).
10. Your Deceptive Mind by Steven Novella (Not Available in India)
No skill is more important in today’s world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What’s more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever.
These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life. By immersing yourself in the science of cognitive biases and critical thinking, and by learning how to think about thinking (a practice known as metacognition), you’ll gain concrete lessons for doing so more critically, more intelligently, and more successfully.
The key to successful critical thinking lies in understanding the neuroscience behind how our thinking works – and goes wrong; avoiding common pitfalls and errors in thinking, such as logical fallacies and biases; and knowing how to distinguish good science from pseudoscience. Professor Novella tackles these issues and more, exploring how the (often unfamiliar) ways in which our brains are hardwired can distract and prevent us from getting to the truth of a particular matter.
Along the way, he provides you with a critical toolbox that you can use to better assess the quality of information. Even though the world is becoming more and more saturated information, you can take the initiative and become better prepared to make sense of it all with this intriguing course.
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 —
