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.

In many ways, 2021 felt like a continuation of 2020. We entered with a deadly pandemic, national challenges, and a lot of personal struggles. As a nation, it might feel like we are exiting much the same. Individually, my hope is that you are not. Hopefully, you were able to accomplish some of your personal goals and professional development over the last year. I pray you found some mental and emotional peace. For me, part of that stillness comes through reading and reflecting. Below are the books I read in 2021, with a call-out of my top 10 books.