Books I Wish I’d Read Before
Getting Everything Badly Wrong
A few books that might have saved me some time, money and embarrassment.
They won’t stop you making mistakes — but they might help you make better ones.
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Atomic Habits
James Clear
A practical reminder that small choices compound — for better or worse. It’s one of those books that makes change feel less dramatic and much more achievable.
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Because it takes something we all make unnecessarily complicated — changing our behaviour — and breaks it down into small, manageable steps. I liked the idea that you don’t need to reinvent yourself overnight; you just need to make slightly better choices often enough for them to add up. Which, in hindsight, would have been useful information several bad decisions ago.
The Dose Effect
TJ Power
A fascinating and very readable look at dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins — the chemical cocktail quietly influencing what we do, what we want and why we keep going back for more.
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Because it explains a surprising amount about why we behave the way we do, without making you feel like you’ve accidentally enrolled on a neuroscience degree. It also makes you realise that some of the things you thought were personality traits may actually be your brain enthusiastically chasing another tiny chemical reward. Which would have been useful to know before making several decisions that felt like excellent ideas at the time.
How to Win Friends ..
Dale Carnegie
Old-fashioned in places, obvious in others, and annoyingly useful throughout. At its heart, it’s really just about dealing with people properly — listening, showing interest and not behaving like the most important person in the room.
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Because so much of work, business and life comes down to people, and I’ve probably spent far too many years learning that the long way round.
A lot of the advice sounds simple once you read it. The irritating bit is realising how often you haven’t actually been doing it.
Beyond Belief
Nir Eyal
A really interesting look at how the beliefs we hold shape what we notice, what we attempt and, ultimately, what we achieve. The reassuring bit is that those beliefs aren’t necessarily facts — even when we’ve been treating them as such for years.
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Because it made me think about how many decisions we make based on assumptions we’ve never really questioned.
Sometimes the thing stopping us isn’t lack of ability, opportunity or effort. It’s simply a belief we picked up somewhere along the way and quietly promoted to the status of absolute truth.
Which is slightly annoying when you realise how many years you may have spent obeying something that was never actually a rule in the first place.