5 Best Books for Time Management for Personal and Professional Growth

Time management is a crucial skill for both personal and professional success. The best books for time management can get you up on that. You'll be able to prioritize tasks, manage time efficiently and increase productivity in your day-to-day schedule.

Here, I’ve compiled a list of the best books on time management to help you. These books cover a variety of approaches to help you master the art of effective time management. These time management books will help you whether you want to manage your business better or improve your personal time management skills.

The Productivity Project, by Chris Bailey

The Productivity Project is one of the best time management books to read. It’s based on Chris’s year-long experiment with various productivity techniques to increase his productivity. This time management book covers a wide range of topics, including time management, attention management and energy management. And it’s a fresh, personal and entertaining exploration of how to be more productive. It has practical tips and tools based on research and personal experiences.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Busyness is no different from laziness when it doesn’t lead you to accomplish anything.

When someone says they “don’t have time” for something, what they’re really saying is that a task isn’t as important or attractive as whatever else they have on their plate.

Every lesson I learned fell into better management of one of three categories: my time, my attention, and my energy.

The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task itself.

The more you see yourself like a stranger, the more likely you are to give your future self the same workload that you would give a stranger, and the more likely you are to put things off to tomorrow—for your future self to do.

Drop the Ball, by Tiffany Dufu

Drop the Ball focuses on the concept of letting go of certain tasks to achieve a better work-life balance. In the book, Tiffany recounts how she learnt to re-evaluate expectations, shrink her to-do list, and meaningfully engage other’s assistance. It’s probably the best book for time management for business owners and startup founders. They can benefit from this book by learning how to delegate and prioritize tasks. It can be a good resource to help you achieve a better work-life balance and greater harmony in life.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

What you do is less important than the difference you make.

Just because you’re better at doing something doesn’t mean you doing it is the most productive use of your time.

Drop the Ball: to release unrealistic expectations of doing it all and engage others to achieve what matters most to us, deepening our relationships and enriching our lives.

Trying to meet impossible expectations will only continue to harm our physical and psychological well-being.

Women should stop apologizing, not because we do everything right, but because we need to understand that it is okay to do some things wrong.

Also Read: 31 Best Books for Business Owners and Startup Founders

168 Hours, by Laura Vanderkam

168 Hours is another best book on time management. It challenges the notion that we don't have enough time to achieve our goals. The book starts with the argument that we all have 168 hours in a week, and that we can live a more fulfilling life by managing them effectively. The book includes interviews of successful, happy people on how they allocate their time. It teaches you how to ensure there's time for the important stuff, so that if plans go wrong only the lesser priorities suffer.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

This is what happens when you treat your 168 hours as a blank slate. This is what happens when you fill them up only with things that deserve to be there. You build a life where you really can have it all.

You can choose how to spend your 168 hours, and you have more time than you think.”

Go back through your “List of 100 Dreams” and choose elements of a few to incorporate into your days.

We don’t think about how we want to spend our time, and so we spend massive amounts of time on things that give a slight amount of pleasure or feeling of accomplishment, but do little for our careers, our families, or our personal lives.

Though you will save many hours by seizing control of your calendar, and clearing away non-core-competency activities, in the long run, the best way to create more time is to actually get better at your professional craft.

Deep Work, by Cal Newport

Deep Work book is considered one of the most effective books about time management and productivity. It proposes the idea of doing “deep work,” i.e., do focused work free from all other distractions. Although it isn’t exactly a book for time management, it suggests ways to minimize distractions and produce high-quality work. He elaborates how taking a break from technology and using some alone-time can help you be more productive and efficient in work. It also has advice on managing distractions like email and social media.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive – no matter how skilled or talented you are.

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love – is the sum of what you focus on.

What we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore – plays in defining the quality of our life.

Two core abilities for thriving in the new economy 1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.

Also Read: 7 Best Books for Product Managers

Getting Things Done, by David Allen

Getting Things Done is a classic book on time management. It provides readers with a step-by-step process for organizing their work and personal lives using David’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method. It might be the best time management book for you to stay organized and focused on the most important tasks. The idea is to capture all the ideas and tasks that clutter your minds and break them down into actionable items.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.

When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it “done.”

Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.

What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly.

You can fool everyone else, but you can't fool your own mind.

Also Read: 7 Best Books for Anxiety to Find Calm

OK, those were all the famous books on time management. These are some of the best time management books to help you take care of your day effectively.

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