Sometimes in life it all just comes together and you’re in the zone. Your schedule, your time management, your energy management or bandwidth, and all of the elements of your life are moving in a united direction toward your goal. Similar to a whole-life version of what Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously coined as Flow – these moments are special. But what about when you aren’t? What are the practices you try to sustain when you are just not in that state of total alignment. That was something I set out to answer in 2022. My current position and general time in my career brings with it a schedule and workload that required increased attention and bandwidth. Regardless of how much I wish they weren’t, my energy and attention are finite resources – more finite than I wanted to admit. With that in mind, I came out of 2021 and into this last year with the goal to minimize my focus to maximize my output. Put differently, I tried to do less, better. One of the areas that lost some of my time in this realignment was my reading. This was hard for me as someone who both loves reading but also approaches most things as if it were a competitive sport…to include how much I read. But the journey provided some important lessons that I will carry with me into future times when I return to a more balanced alignment.
Author’s Note
This is my fifth year putting together a “year in books” list that shares my own reading. It’s equal parts accountability, vulnerability, and hope that others will do the same. By sharing what I’ve read, I am keeping myself accountable to broaden my perspective. What I read is a reflection of who I am, and there is something deeply personal in that. I love seeing what you all are reading and I hope my list helps someone on their journey.
Caveat: This is a list of books I chose to read. This is not a purposefully crafted list of the books you “should be reading.” This is not as much a reading list as it is me sharing with you what I read over the last year. I welcome disagreement. I only ask that you don’t take this list as an end-all collection. My reasons for reading any given book on the list varies. Many were intentional, some were recommended to me, some were gifted to me, and others…I just liked the cover art.
Instead of giving you all the lessons I learned from these books and a bunch of sentences that have “me” and “I” in them, (yes, I did write a version of this that sounded just like that…deleted it all) – let’s just get right to the list of my Top 5 book read this year.
The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer
Quit, Annie Duke
The No Asshole Rule, Robert Sutton
Partners in Command, Mark Perry
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
To see a whole list of all the books I read in 2022, check out my Goodreads page.
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Hopefully you find a book or two on here that inspire you to pick them up and give them a read. I look forward to seeing what you all read. As always, you can contact the entire editorial team here at thecompanyleader@gmail.com or tweet @thecompanyleader on Twitter. You can connect with me personally on what I am reading…and recommend what I should be reading…through my Goodreads page.
Check out my 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 lists – and our The Company Leader Reading List!
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