2015 was a good year for reading. It was also one of the most challenging year I have had so far. From changing houses 3 times, finding a new job and moving thousands of miles away from home country, it was far from a “year on the couch”™. Quiet the contrary!

But don’t most busy people have the most time to do most of the things they want to?

At least that is the motivation for reading so many productivity books.

The process

Every year I setup a read-list for the next year. I also setup a “read-list-inbox”. All the recommendations I get throughout the year (from the books I am already reading, from other people, from blogposts, etc.) go into read-list-inbox. From the read-list-inbox I prioritize books and put them in read-list. The priority is based on what I want to learn in the year. I will write later on some learning themes I follow.

80% of my reading is thru audiobooks, 15% on the paperbacks and 5% on my laptop.

The ratings

Please note that these are not absolute ratings. These are my ratings and how I feel about the book and whether I found it useful, entertaining, mind-opening and recommend worthy to people who are similar to me. For example I have already read so much on personal discipline and productivity that I didn’t find anything new in “Eat that frog”. It may still be a nice book. Similarly, I find Nasem Talib’s tone a little over the top for my taste and hence I didn’t like Antifragile. It may have been a good book.

The books

From 3 books in 2013, 5 books in 2014, I was able to go thru 20+ books in 2015. 2016 looks promising and I hope to double that number while improving on the quality I extract from these books.

Here is the list of books I went thru in 2015.

★★★★★ (Books I love and highly recommend)

• Animal Farm
• The hard thing about hard things
• The innovators
• No excuses: Power of self discipline
• 7 habits of highly effective people
• As we may think

• Think like a freak: Authors of freakonomics offer to retrain your brain – Steven D. Levitt
• The Talent Code – Daniel Coyle
• The organized mind: Straight thinking in the age of information overload – Daniel J. Levitin
• Becoming Steve Jobs
• 4 hour work week
• The compound effect
• The whole brain child

• Essentialism
• How to fly a horse
• Smart cuts
• The billionaire boy

• Eat that frog
• How to win friends and influence people in the digital age

• Antifragile – things that gain from disorder
• Laravel application development blueprints

If you have read or are currently reading any of these books and want to have a discussion, feel free to find me on facebook or drop me an email at [zakishaheen-at-me-dot-com].