The 20 Best Personal Strategy Books to Read in 2023

Author	Book Title
1. Stephen R. Covey	The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2. Greg McKeown	Essentialism
3. Chip Heath and Dan Heath	Decisive
4. David Allen	Getting Things Done
5. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz	The Power of Full Engagement
6. Darren Hardy	The Compound Effect
7. Josh Waitzkin	The Art of Learning
8. Annie Duke	Thinking In Bets
9. David J. Schwartz	The Magic of Thinking Big
10. Hal Elrod	The Miracle Morning
11. Brian Tracy	Eat That Frog
12. Gary Keller	The ONE Thing
13. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi	Flow
14. Carol Dweck	Mindset
15. Roy Baumeister	Willpower
16. Charles Duhigg	The Power of Habit
17. Steven Pressfield	The War of Art
18. Tim Ferriss	The 4-Hour Workweek
19. Tony Robbins	Awaken the Giant Within
20. Cal Newport	Deep Work

 

Having a clear personal strategy is crucial to making the most of your life, career, and relationships. The right strategy helps you prioritize what matters most and align your daily choices with your long-term goals.

Books are a great way to get new perspectives and frameworks to improve your personal strategy. The best ones provide time-tested principles, case studies, and practical tactics you can apply to steer your life more intentionally.

Here are 20 of the top personal strategy books to help you optimize how you make decisions, set goals, manage time, build habits, and more.

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has shaped the personal leadership approach of millions since its first publication in 1989. Author Stephen R. Covey boils down research and real world examples into 7 key habits practiced by successful people.

Those habits include:

• Be proactive
• Begin with the end in mind
• Put first things first
• Think win-win
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the saw (self-renewal)

This book instills timeless principles around responsibility, integrity, and continual growth. It will help you become more disciplined, achieve greater goals, and find fulfillment.

The 7 habits also provide a strong foundation for improving personal strategy across all areas of life.

2. Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Essentialism teaches you how to regain control of your time and priorities by systematically doing less but better. Author Greg McKeown provides a disciplined framework for discerning the vital few priorities that really move the needle on your biggest goals.

His key tips include:

• Apply more selective criteria for what deserves your time and energy
• Eliminate the nonessential tasks that clutter your schedule
• Design routine thinking time to explore what’s essential for you
• Develop an “essential intent” to guide decisions and trade overload for purposeful focus.

Essentialism gives you the tools to cut through noise and distractions to make time for your most crucial priorities. It will help you focus your personal strategy.

3. Decisive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Decisive tackles head-on the common struggles people face when making big decisions in life due to uncertainty, ambiguity, and pressure. Authors Chip and Dan Heath synthesized research to outline four key principles that can remove these obstacles and help you make decisive choices.

Those decision-making principles are:

• Widen options – don’t get anchored on limited alternatives
• Reality-test your assumptions to avoid confirmation bias
• Attain distance from emotions clouding judgment
• Prepare to be wrong and commit to course correcting

This book will improve how you weigh complex personal decisions with clarity and wisdom. You’ll become a better strategist in navigating life’s biggest uncertainties.

4. Getting Things Done by David Allen

Do you feel disorganized, overwhelmed, and struggle to keep things from falling through the cracks? The productivity classic Getting Things Done by David Allen could be the solution.

Allen’s methodology gives you a clear system for tracking all your open loops and action items so you can follow through. Key elements include:

• Capturing anything and everything that’s potentially on your plate into a trusted system
• Clarifying next actions for each task for quick execution
• Regular reviews to clean up completed items and reprioritize
• Group similar tasks to optimize focus time

Getting Things Done reduces stress by giving you confidence you won’t overlook anything important. Implementing these habits will make you far more reliable and productive with your personal strategy.

5. The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

The Power of Full Engagement makes the case that managing your energy levels, not just your time, is essential to personal strategy. Authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz apply principles used by star athletes to executives.

Some key ideas in the book include:

• Balance stress and recovery to replenish mental/physical energy
• Ritualize renewal activities daily, weekly, and throughout the year
• Organize your life to spend time in the red-zone (high performance) and green-zone (rejuvenation)
• Align your calendar and environment to ideal energy levels for key tasks

This book will help you maximize your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy. You’ll be able to bring your best self to executing on your priorities.

6. The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

Small choices repeated over time lead to big results. That’s the core message of The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. He illustrates how effects compound both positively from good habits and negatively from bad habits.

Hardy provides strategies like:

• Focus on your daily decisions, not grand gestures
• Eliminate unhelpful routines bit-by-bit
• Measure progress to stay motivated
• Associate new habits with existing patterns
• Surround yourself with people reinforcing your goals

The Compound Effect will motivate you to see everyday choices as part of your long-term personal strategy. Tiny gains add up to enormous change.

7. The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

What habits and mindsets distinguish high achievers across disciplines? That’s what Josh Waitzkin sought to uncover after being both a chess prodigy and Tai Chi world champion.

In The Art of Learning, Waitzkin identified common principles like:

• Learning by incrementally tackling challenges just outside your comfort zone
• Studying your own performance and emotions during competition to expand your self-awareness
• Creatively channeling raw nervous energy into focused intensity
• Developing patience to make skill and mastery rewarding in itself

This book takes success lessons from the board and mat into any realm personal strategy. It will push you to turn learning itself into an artform.

8. Thinking In Bets by Annie Duke

Poker champion turned decision strategist Annie Duke believes getting comfortable with uncertainty and errors is essential to personal strategy. In Thinking in Bets, she outlines an approach of wagering little bits with testing assumptions.

Some of her key tips include:

• Embrace uncertainty – look for disconfirming evidence, not just confirming
• Detach ego from being right – focus on process, not outcome
• Make decisions with clear reasoning, then let them go
• Review results honestly to improve calibration of future bets

Thinking in Bets will make you a more nimble and resilient strategist. You’ll become less shaken by setbacks as you refine your approach.

9. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

The Magic of Thinking Big provides timeless and practical advice for building the confidence and mindset for major accomplishments. First published in 1959, author David J. Schwartz covers tips like:

• Dare to dream big without limits to open up possibilities
• Banish self-criticism and victim mentality by taking initiative
• Practice visualizing success and positive self-talk
• Feed your mind inspirational material daily
• Hang around fellow thinkers who energize you

While simple, these principles work. This book will expand your belief in your own potential and push you to set ambitious personal strategies.

10. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

The early hours of the day offer precious calm and focus to proactively work on your personal strategy before reactive demands pile on. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod provides a blueprint for optimizing your first hours awake.

Elrod recommends picking 1-2 practices from:

• Silence/prayer to ground yourself
• Affirmations to set intention for the day
• Visualization to get mental clarity
• Exercise to energize body and mind
• Reading for growth
• Journaling for self-discovery

Just waking up earlier without a plan leads to distraction and procrastination. The Miracle Morning gives you a simple but powerful routine to start executing on priorities first thing.

11. Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Getting your most important but disliked task done early leads to a huge boost in productivity. That’s the premise behind Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy.

He shares tips like:

• Prioritize your “frog” each day in the morning when you have the most willpower
• Break down big frogs into bite-sized pieces if needed
• Limit distractions until your frog is finished
• Reward yourself after frog completion

This book delivers excellent motivation and strategies for finally tackling your biggest personal priorities. You’ll get into the daily habit of “eating your frog.”

12. The ONE Thing by Gary Keller

The essence of executing on personal strategy is figuring out the single most important goal and action right now. That’s what The ONE Thing helps you determine. Authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan say you get the highest return by identifying your singular priority and going all in on that.

Some key ideas in the book include:

• Ask what one thing will make everything else easier if achieved?
• Eliminate almost everything else until that’s done
• Focus blocks of time solely on your ONE Thing
• Say no to anything conflicting with it

The ONE Thing forces clarity on what objective matters most for your bigger vision. You’ll develop extraordinary focus executing on it.

13. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Ever get so immersed in an activity that the world fades away? Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls that state of optimal engagement “flow.” His book Flow dives deep on the conditions, habits, and mindsets enabling you to regularly achieve flow.

Some of his key findings on getting in flow include:

• Match challenges closely to your current skills
• Minimize distractions and disruptions
• Set clear goals with immediate feedback
• Ignore self-consciousness and let go of outcomes
• Find intrinsically rewarding activities

This book points the way to designing work, hobbies, and learning to regularly achieve flow. You’ll boost performance while enjoying yourself.

14. Mindset by Carol Dweck

Stanford researcher Carol Dweck’s concept of growth vs. fixed mindsets has become highly influential. Her book Mindset explains how those with a growth mindset achieve more over time.

Growth mindset means believing your abilities can be developed continually through effort. Fixed mindset assumes talent is innate. Dweck’s research clearly shows how growth enables people to respond better to challenges and reach higher levels of achievement.

This book will help you cultivate a growth mindset for yourself. You’ll learn to see setbacks as opportunities to improve rather than failures, unlocking greater accomplishment of your personal strategies over time.

15. Willpower by Roy Baumeister

The ability to self-regulate is critical to personal strategy, but the reserves for it are limited. Psychology professor Roy Baumeister explores the realities of willpower in-depth in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.

Key insights from his experiments include:

• Willpower functions like a muscle – it fatigues quickly but grows over time
• Regularly overriding urges and temptations strengthens your self-control muscle
• Conservation of willpower boosts performance on priorities
• Healthy habits eliminate constant decision making

This book gives you an important advantage by revealing willpower’s limitations. You can then intentionally design your life to avoid depletion.

16. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

What role do habits play in achieving your goals? The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg examines the science behind exactly how habits form and change over time.

He covers basics like:

• Habits consist of a cue, routine, and reward
• Craving the reward drives habit performance
• New routines can be substituted if cue/reward stay
• Slow progression is key to habit change

Understanding habit mechanics gives you the power to gradually shape your routines and behaviors to execute on your priorities. The Power of Habit is essential for improving personal strategy.

17. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art captures the inner battle against resistance all creatives and achievers face pursuing meaningful work. Author Steven Pressfield personifies resistance as the force pushing against you realizing your potential.

Some principles in the book include:

• Resistance grows stronger the more important your ambitions
• Professionals push through resistance, amateurs get derailed
• Do the work for its own sake – detach from outcomes
• Finish projects to build confidence and momentum

This short powerful book will inspire you to fight resistance and win the war of art. You’ll be motivated to persist implementing your personal strategy when obstacles arise.

18. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Lifestyle design is a huge component of personal strategy. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss became a hit by promising just that – designing a life with more freedom and less work.

Ferriss shares tactics like:

• Eliminating time wasting activities
• Outsourcing tasks to free up time
• Batching similar tasks to optimize efficiency
• Escaping the mental prison of deferred happiness
• Testing lifestyle options before making drastic changes

While “4 hours” is an exaggeration for most, this book’s principles help you reimagine your work-life balance. You may decide your current personal strategy needs to prioritize more enjoyment.

19. Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins

Legendary speaker Tony Robbins has built fame on motivating people to take control of their lives and achieve their goals. Awaken the Giant Within distills his most powerful insights into personal strategy change.

Robbins covers core techniques like:

• Raising your standards by linking pain to poor habits and pleasure to desired habits
• Interrupting limiting patterns through interventions
• Modeling top performers to accelerate your growth
• Empowering beliefs and vocabulary anchored to your identity
• Unleashing your full energy by getting momentum

This book will jolt your system with high intensity inspiration and practical tools. You’ll gain conviction that realizing your biggest visions is within reach.

20. Deep Work by Cal Newport

The ability to focus without distraction is an increasingly rare and valuable asset for producing great work. That’s the argument Cal Newport makes in Deep Work for prioritizing long stretches of uninterrupted concentration.

He shares strategies like:

• Transitioning to remote or segmented work environments
• Establishing routines and rituals to sink into focus
• Blocking out chunks of time for deep work
• Eliminating distracting apps and notifications
• Scheduling focus time in advance and zealously protecting it

Deep work allows you to fully leverage your mental resources. This book will help you restructure your personal strategy around maximizing deep focus time.

Final Thoughts

The more intentional you can be about all aspects of your life and priorities, the more likely you are to succeed long-term. These books will strengthen your personal strategy skills and support designing a life you love. Pick one that resonates with your current needs and start reading it today!