How To Make 2020 Your Best Reading Year Yet

The new year is truly underway. I’ve held off publishing anything “habits” or “resolutions” articles to avoid the kind of people who set big goals purely for short-term dopamine hits. The New Year’s resolution setters have all abandoned their gym and library memberships by now, so let’s talk about how you can have your best reading year yet.

I’m assuming you’re going to want to keep or improve your reading habit this year. So I put together a list of 12 books that would really improve your year – if you read and apply them.

Life-changing book recommendations for every month of 2020

You might want to read one a month, or, if you’re feeling ambitious, reading one a week will result in some life-changing lessons by the end of March!

It’s difficult to structure these book recommendations into an ideal order because they will all enhance some important aspect of your life.

So pick your starting book depending on what area of your life you want to improve.

If you want to kick off the new year with some strong working habits, start with Deep Work.

Or you’re trying to start your own business, begin with The Millionaire Fastlane.

If I was working in a career and wanted to negotiate a pay rise, or was interested in starting at a new company, I’d start with Never Split The Difference (coupling it with the Chris Voss Negotiation MasterClass).

If you want to begin 2020 with a focus on the relationships in your life, learn about the 5 Love Languages.

As a bonus, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is always going to be relevant.

If you wanted to start the new year with feelings of more personal power, then opt for How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or 12 Rules for Life.

If you want to be better a better person and have long considered completing a virtue challenge (like the one Benjamin Franklin issued himself) and you’d like to work on acquiring better habits, choose Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to start.

If you want a new paradigm, a fresh operating system, with which to view the world, you can’t go wrong with my favourite book, Man’s Search for Meaning.

Or you might want to start with the slim but impactful Letters to a Young Poet or The Power of Now.

Those are my recommendations, and I think if you only read those books this year, you’d have a pretty great reading year.

Of course it would be amazing to read more than those!

Here’s wishing you success, health, wealth, love, and happiness in 2020!

Let me know your top recommended book for 2020 if you have one 🙂