The best books I’ve read so far in 2022

Being on parental leave has given me a new lease of life when it comes to reading. The daily grind had previously been my excuse for not reading as much as I wanted to, but the truth is there is always time in the day when you’ve established reading as a consistent habit.

This is a list and short summary of my favourite books so far from what I’ve read in 2022. I will add to this as the year progresses. As you’ll see it’s a bit of a mixture between education, personal development and parenting.

Atomic Habits (Clear, 2018)

This was the first book I read in 2022. I was at a talk where the presenter had recommended it, so it was fresh on my mind. I’m glad I started with this one, as it definitely set me up to be more productive during my time away from work.

It gave me a new perspective on how to approach setting and working towards your goals. Shifting your focus from the actual goal to the process or system of how you will achieve it via your day-to-day habits was quite powerful for me, especially given the proven impact of small but regular actions on someone’s outcomes.  I looked at all my habits and categorised them as positive or negative. I then thought about all the things I wanted to achieve in my life and produced a list of what regular habits will help me to achieve them.

Given I know these habits will get my closer to my goals, I just need to ensure I am doing them consistently to reap the rewards. This is where the habit tracking template comes in. It helps me to see which habits I am doing consistently and where I am going off track.

The Miracle Morning (Hal Erold, 2016)

As a typically busy parent, I’ve struggled to find time as much time as I would like to devote to my personal development over the last few years. In terms of work, I have been pretty good at taking on learning opportunities and going on some great training courses. However, more often than not, I’ve finished my day feeling like I haven’t had any time to organise myself, learn and reflect on my day-to-day experiences. For example, journaling is something I’ve struggled to do consistently – I have journal pages dated with months in between!

The Miracle Morning goes over some of the most effective personal development activities to establish into your daily routine, however there is one basic KEY message that will significantly improve your life.

For parents, this is probably the most important change you can make if you’re struggling to find time for personal growth. Once the kids are up there is no more ‘me time’…and in the evening, if you’re anything like me, the sofa’s calling is too tempting 😀

For most of 2022 I have been waking up between 6 – 7am, which gives me at least one hour before I hear footsteps in the corridor. In this hour I do a few things devoted to my growth including praying, journaling, reading, meditating, exercising etc.

It may need to be 5am if your children wake up at 6am or you need to commute to work early, but this is easily doable if you go to bed early. It will be painful for the first few days, but will be the most peaceful and fulfilling hour of your day 

You may miss a day here and there, but add ‘waking up at Xam’ to your habit tracker and you can catch yourself when you are going off track.

Think and Grow Rich (Hill, 1937)  + the workbook

This is regarded as one of the best personal development book of all time – the author’s aim was to analyse the most financially successful self-made individuals in the US and synthesis their common traits. I can’t believe I read it for the first time in 2022!

For a book written in 1937 I found it strikingly relatable and motivational. If you are (or plan to) embark on a passion driven project, then I recommend reading this book first or alongside the early stages of forming your project.

Some of the key things I benefitted from:

• It challenged me to think about my passions and what value I can and want to add to the world through a passion driven project.
• It pushed me to be specific about my goals in life, including financial ones.
• Realising the importance of visualising the person I want to become, which goes to the heart of what the author is trying to achieve – you need to change your thinking first before you can grow rich.
• Importance of being creative – you should not be rewarded for knowledge, but the value added that comes from it.
• Emphasising the importance of having a strong group or community to help you achieve your goals. You don’t need to know how to do something, you just need to know someone who does.
• Don’t be quick to change course after making decisions – persistence is a major factor in success.

I also found chapter 11 on sex transmutation both really insightful and slightly embarrassing read (in a fifty shades of grey type of way) – I do think this chapter is a must read for younger guys 😀

The Meaningful Money Handbook (Matthew, 2018)

I’ve been listening to Pete Matthew’s Meaning Money podcast and watching his youtube channel for many years now. He’s basically been the personal finance teacher I never had.

His book is something I revisited as I needed to do a bit of financial rejigging this year and it is a very good summary of all the things he talks about on these platforms.  

Pete has had a large impact on my own wealth building journey, and some the key messages from the book are engraved in my brain, including:

1. Protect yourself against risk / adverse events e.g. have the right level of life insurance if you have dependents, critical illness cover, having a will etc.
2. Paying yourself first through budgeting is the key to spending less than you earn and building wealth – the first place money should be exiting your salary is to yourself via a savings account (fixed amount), investment accounts, pension etc.
3. Never opt out of your workplace pension (in almost all cases) – I opted out of my workplace pension for the first few years of my career when I was desperately saving for a wedding, but it was a mistake!
4. The power of overpaying a mortgage – you will never truly appreciate a mortgage until you see an amortisation schedule! Small overpayments can be a guaranteed part of your investment strategy depending on the interest rate and what the investment world is looking like – hence what type of returns your money could otherwise be making.
5. Use a tried and tested strategy for your investments – in the age of the crypto and forex trading hype, there is a lot of value in using tried and tested investment strategies as the core part of building your wealth over time. Start off with less risky long-term investments such as passive multi-asset funds or broad equity index tracking funds. Once you have a solid base then you can explore investing in more risky things such as start-ups, crypto etc.

Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour (Gross, 2020)

A lot of fields within personal development are based on psychology – after all it is the science of mind and behaviour.

This is actually a popular and very accessible undergraduate textbook and I would highly recommend it. It’s a chunky beast, so an e-book may be the best option. Take a look at the contents page via the link above and you will see how interesting the chapters topics are – I still have a lot on my list to get through. I’ve typically used this book as a nice overview of a given topic, then transitioned into other books that provide more detail on the specific topic.

I’ve learned a huge amount from this book so far, including:

• What is personality and how do the big 5 personality traits influence your behaviours / outcomes – see my blog on this.
• The child development chapters are truly fascinating. I’ve learned how children begin to understand the world around them and how research has identified certain milestones of self-perception and other abilities. This has made me think a lot about parenting young children, especially when their cognitive and socio-emotional abilities haven’t developed to guide their behaviours.
• What is intelligence? This is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about from an education system perspective, given we teach, test and sort children within our system and this has a large influence on their futures outcomes. I learned about the finding of a general underlying intelligence factor (g-factor) that correlates with various mental abilities and which IQ tests seek to measure. Paired with this is research showing there are several primary mental abilities (numerical, verbal, inductive reasoning, memory etc.) which is another important way to think about intelligence.

Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (Oster, 2020)

As a data nerd and parent this book appealed to me for obvious reasons!

I found it a surprisingly well written and relatable book by Emily Oster (an American Economist), summarising evidence on a number of key topics in a really balanced way. It also changed my view on a few things.

Some of the key learning points for me:

• Although breast feeding is still the best thing to do if possible, we perhaps overstate what we know about the cognitive benefits of breast feeding, especially on long-term outcomes.
• Parenting styles have a big impact on a child’s outcomes – an authoritative style is the best approach.
• Smacking children is not an effective parenting method.
• There is a balance between a parent’s wellbeing and ability to parent, which should be factored in to decisions on things like sleep training young children. Although I’m no longer an advocate of ‘cry it out’ sleep strategies, I can sympathise and see there are situations where it can improve the overall wellbeing of the child.

Show your work: 10 Ways To Share Your Creativity And Get Discovered (Kleon, 2014)

This book was recommended by Ali Abdaal and I can see why. It has some very good points and recommendations, including:

• Own your passions and interests – don’t feel embarrassed about liking something.
• Get into a habit of documenting your life and experiences as it can add value to other people.
• The most important thing is starting to share your work – you don’t have to be an expert and it most likely won’t be great to start with, but it will improve over time which is the main point. Most people you regard as having great work started off producing something that was probably mediocre.
• The importance of telling a story to captivate your audience – the most engaging and memorable text you read tells a story well and draws out the key learning points in a way which will stay with you.
• You need to have an online presence where you can share your work – this will eventually become a portfolio that will do a lot of talking on your behalf.

Make it stick: the science of successful learning (Brown, 2014)

This is a book I wish I had read before I started University. It introduced me to the world of cognitive science and motivated me to write a blog on this topic, because I learned:

• There is actually a lot of research and evidence-based strategies on how we learn that can improve your educational attainment.
• Our working memory is pretty poor, which is why we need to memorise things such as our times tables into long-term memory to be able to recall it in a way that doesn’t take up any working memory. I never actually knew the real motivation behind memorising our times tables!
• Testing is such an important part of learning. It forces recall and paired with quick feedback can be a very effective learning tool. I’m not talking about high stakes tests here.
• People having different learning styles is a myth – we just have different learning preferences based on what we are actually trying to learn. Some things are better taught visually, via text etc. But there isn’t any evidence that this differs for different individuals.

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