00:00:00If you don't think more deliberately this year, you're going to fall behind.
00:00:04Maybe not forever, but enough to matter.
00:00:072026 is moving fast, AI is accelerating, work is changing, attention is stretched thin,
00:00:13and the ideas that used to keep you steady aren't enough anymore.
00:00:17So this isn't a general reading list.
00:00:19These are 11 books you need to read in 2026 because they address the moment we're in right now.
00:00:27I'm not sharing books to save for later, I'm sharing the ones that help you think clearly,
00:00:31make better decisions, and stay human while everything else speeds up.
00:00:36Let's start with the one I give away more than any other.
00:00:40The Work of Art by Adam Moss.
00:00:43Look around, AI is flooding the world with images, words, and data,
00:00:47and that's quietly raising the bar on what counts as real work.
00:00:51If your thinking feels strained or your creative process feels harder, this book will make things easier.
00:00:57Adam Moss pulls back the curtain on how great work actually gets made.
00:01:01Not the myth of inspiration, but the reality of process.
00:01:05Each chapter, it's amazing, each chapter follows a single work by a major artist.
00:01:10People like Tony Kushner, Kara Walker, Twyla Tharp, and Sofia Coppola.
00:01:14From the first faint idea through drafts, dead ends, doubt, and revision.
00:01:19What emerges is a powerful pattern.
00:01:22Struggle is not evidence you're failing as an artist,
00:01:25it's evidence you're doing the work.
00:01:28Again and again, the real talents turn out to be persistence and patience.
00:01:33The willingness to stay with something long after the glamour has worn off.
00:01:37Now, doing meaningful work is one challenge, protecting yourself while you do it is another.
00:01:42Which brings us to book number two.
00:01:45Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab.
00:01:48Does the world feel more brittle to you?
00:01:51People less patient, more demanding, quicker to push past your limits?
00:01:55This book is about something many of us were never taught how to do.
00:01:59Setting clear, healthy limits with coworkers, family members, friends, even ourselves.
00:02:05Nedra makes an essential point early on.
00:02:07Boundaries aren't walls to keep people out.
00:02:10They're guidelines that show people how to be in a relationship with you.
00:02:14This book is part diagnosis, part skills training.
00:02:18She shows how unclear boundaries lead to burnout, resentment, and anxiety,
00:02:22and then offers practical scripts for saying no, asking for what you need,
00:02:27and following through when your limits are tested.
00:02:30The key insight, boundaries aren't about controlling others.
00:02:33They're about deciding what you will do.
00:02:35Boundaries help when the pressure is constant, but sometimes the pressure isn't gradual.
00:02:39It's sudden, which is the topic of The Other Side of Change by Maya Shankar.
00:02:45If you're expecting turbulence in your work or life, and aren't we all,
00:02:49you'll want this book by your side.
00:02:50The Other Side of Change is about what happens when life blows up your plans.
00:02:55Maya is a cognitive scientist, and she knows this personally.
00:02:59As a young woman, she had to let go of her long-held dream
00:03:02of becoming a professional violinist.
00:03:04Later, as she confronted the realities and anxieties of motherhood,
00:03:08she found herself struggling again, this time with who she thought she was supposed to be.
00:03:13Those experiences pushed her to study how people respond to unwanted change.
00:03:18Her conclusion is quietly radical.
00:03:21Often, the deepest suffering doesn't come from the disruption itself,
00:03:24but from clinging to an old identity, replaying unanswerable "why" questions,
00:03:30and trying to regain control where none exists.
00:03:33When change hits, loosen your grip on who you thought you had to be,
00:03:37and ask a better question, "What's possible now?"
00:03:41This book won't help you avoid upheaval.
00:03:43It will help you meet it, and maybe emerge wiser on the other side.
00:03:47That's what change asks of us as individuals,
00:03:49but many of us are also responsible for other people.
00:03:53"Inspire" by Adam Galinsky starts from a hard truth.
00:03:57Our world desperately needs better leaders.
00:04:00Not louder leaders, not tougher leaders, better ones.
00:04:03This is one of the best leadership books I've ever read, and that's saying something.
00:04:07Galinsky is a professor at Columbia Business School,
00:04:10and the book is rooted in a massive body of evidence,
00:04:13not vibes or slogans or crap like that.
00:04:16Galinsky's core insight is bracing.
00:04:19There are two kinds of leaders.
00:04:21Those who inspire, and those who infuriate.
00:04:24And most of us slide back and forth between those two, often without realizing it.
00:04:29What makes the difference isn't charisma.
00:04:32It's behavior. Small, repeatable choices.
00:04:35Here are some of the most powerful ones.
00:04:37Share credit early and often.
00:04:39Inspiring leaders spotlight others' contributions instead of hoarding praise.
00:04:44Take responsibility personally.
00:04:46When things go wrong, they don't deflect. They own it.
00:04:50Talk about the future in human terms.
00:04:52Vision isn't just strategy, it's also meaning.
00:04:56Challenge people because you believe in them.
00:04:58High standards inspire when they're paired with support.
00:05:02The mega insight? Inspiration isn't a personality trait.
00:05:06It's a set of choices, moment by moment.
00:05:10If the last book explains what's broken,
00:05:12this next one shows what to do about it.
00:05:15Strong Ground by Brene Brown.
00:05:17We're living in a moment when people sometimes often confuse leadership
00:05:20with bluster, certainty, or sheer force of personality.
00:05:25Strong Ground is Brene Brown's clear-eyed response to that confusion.
00:05:29Drawing on her work with more than 150,000 leaders across 45 countries,
00:05:34she argues that the real challenge right now isn't strategy or intelligence, it's steadiness.
00:05:41We're operating in levels of uncertainty that make people reactive, defensive, and disconnected.
00:05:46And the leaders who matter most are the ones who can stay grounded.
00:05:51They're capable of hard conversations, clear priorities, real accountability,
00:05:56and the humility to unlearn and relearn.
00:06:00I'll leave you with my favorite quotation in the entire book.
00:06:02It's from the soccer star Abby Wambach.
00:06:05"If you're not a leader on the bench, don't call yourself a leader on the field."
00:06:09In other words, leadership isn't a title, it's a way of showing up everywhere.
00:06:15Leadership like that looks strong from the outside,
00:06:17but it only works if something inside isn't quietly holding you back.
00:06:23Most of the limits holding us back aren't physical, they're psychological.
00:06:27And this book shows just how powerful and malleable those limits really are.
00:06:33In Beyond Belief, Nir Eyal makes a simple but unsettling argument.
00:06:37Beliefs aren't truths, they're tools.
00:06:41And the ones we carry quietly shape what we notice, how we feel, and what we do when things get hard.
00:06:48He draws on neuroscience and some striking case studies on placebo surgery, pain without anesthesia,
00:06:54experiments where animals persist 240 times longer once they believe rescue is possible.
00:07:01Nir shows that belief literally changes endurance, perception, and performance.
00:07:06He organizes the book around three forces.
00:07:08Attention, what you see.
00:07:10Anticipation, how you feel about the future.
00:07:13And agency, whether you believe your actions matter.
00:07:16Change those, and behavior follows.
00:07:19When you're stuck, don't ask, "What can't I do?"
00:07:21Ask, "What belief is quietly running the show, and is it still useful?"
00:07:28This is one of those books that quietly changes how you see yourself, and that's why it's uncomfortable.
00:07:34Inside the Box by David Epstein.
00:07:36David's newest book is just as good as his first two, and that's saying something.
00:07:42Inside the Box is a smart, deeply reported exploration of the power of constraints.
00:07:47We tend to believe we do our best work under conditions of wild, untrammeled freedom.
00:07:53But David shows that just as a picture needs a frame, we need some kind of container, a boundary, a limit, a box.
00:08:00Total freedom often paralyzes, while the right constraints unlock creativity, focus, and progress.
00:08:07David's argument isn't anti-freedom, it's pro-structure.
00:08:12The most original breakthroughs often come not from starting with nothing, but from working rigorously with something.
00:08:19Constraint isn't the enemy of creativity, it's the engine.
00:08:24I didn't expect this book to affect me as much as it did, but it changed how I approached decisions.
00:08:30The Progress Principle by Teresa Mabile and Stephen Kramer.
00:08:33When the ground feels so uneven, this book can help you find your footing.
00:08:39The Progress Principle is one of the most evidence-based and humane books ever written about work.
00:08:44Teresa and Stephen analyze nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from employees across multiple companies to answer a deceptively simple question.
00:08:54What actually motivates people at work?
00:08:56Their answer? It isn't perks, or pressure, or grand gestures, it's progress.
00:09:02Making progress in meaningful work, even small wins, turns out to be the single biggest driver of motivation, engagement, and positive emotion.
00:09:13If you're wondering how to apply any of this, the next book is Where It Gets Concrete.
00:09:17Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly.
00:09:19Excellent Advice for Living is a collection of aphorisms, short, deceptively simple statements that capture something true about how to live well.
00:09:27What makes this book special is that, seriously, you can open up almost any page and find a line that stops you, a sentence that reframes a problem, a reminder you didn't know you needed.
00:09:39So here we go. Here is page 48 and 49.
00:09:42Okay, how about this one?
00:09:43He says, "To quiet a crowd or a drunk, just whisper.
00:09:47When you lend something, pretend you are gifting.
00:09:51If it is returned, you'll be happy and surprised."
00:09:55Another one, "You are never too young to wonder, 'Why am I still doing this?'"
00:10:00And you need to have an excellent answer.
00:10:01Seriously, get this book, read a page at random, let one good sentence drive your next decision.
00:10:07A lot of advice is about how to live well, but sooner or later, the question becomes, what do you do with the money you earn while you're living that life?
00:10:15Rule Breaker Investing by David Gardner.
00:10:18I've been reading about markets and investing for a long time and this book genuinely made me rethink my own approach.
00:10:24David is the co-founder of The Motley Fool.
00:10:26He spent more than 30 years of beating the market by doing things that feel wrong in the moment, but his record is hard to ignore.
00:10:33About 21% annualized return over two decades versus roughly 9% for the S&P 500.
00:10:42David's most heretical rule is simple. Buy high and don't sell.
00:10:49He argues that the biggest mistake investors make isn't buying losers, it's selling winners too early.
00:10:54That's how a pick like Nvidia that he first recommended in 2005 went on to increase roughly 1,000 times despite stomach-churning volatility along the way.
00:11:09The deeper lesson is this. Investing isn't about clever timing, it's about patience, conviction, and compounding.
00:11:15The final book on this list isn't the most popular, but it may be the most important for what's ahead.
00:11:20The Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren Burger.
00:11:23As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful at dispensing answers, the real edge will go to people who can ask better questions.
00:11:31And to do that, this is the book to read.
00:11:34The Book of Beautiful Questions is a practical field guide to inquiry.
00:11:38Warren argues that in a complex, uncertain world, the smartest move often isn't to answer faster but to pause and question assumptions before charging ahead.
00:11:49A beautiful question, he says, is ambitious but actionable, one that reframes a problem and leads to meaningful change.
00:11:56Instead of theory, the book gives you questions you can use right away.
00:12:01Here are three of my favorites. Why do I believe what I believe? Would I rather be right or would I rather understand?
00:12:09What's the question I'm not asking that I should be?
00:12:13Listen, you don't need to read all 11 of these books. Start with one. Read it slowly. Let it change how you think.
00:12:19And if this video helped, please subscribe and tell me in the comments which book you're starting with.
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