For the last two years I wrote blog posts (2017 & 2016) listing the books that I read in the past year and that I wanted to be reading in that specific year. As always, the past year I didn’t read all the books that I’ve listed out in the blog post as I discovered some new ones and changed my focus during the year. Also moving to another country (hi San Francisco!) made it tough to keep up with the goals I set for myself. So that’s why I didn’t make it to the goal to read 20+ books last year and had to leave it at 14.
So what will I (at least) be reading in 2018:
- Principles: Life and Work: This book is obviously hyped by Ray Dalio himself and with some help from his friend Tony Robbins but after watching his TED talk and reading a bit more about the work culture at BridgeWater Associates I’m intrigued to read more about this man.
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World: Who doesn’t want to focus on a day to day basis to produce the best work. Sometimes I’m really easily able to find this deep working zone, some days it’s trouble.
- 60-Minute Brand Strategist: The Essential Brand Book for Marketing Professionals: Having read a great book two years ago on building brand books it’s time to do more with this and refresh my memory on all the lovely brands that are out there in the world.
- Star Brands: A Brand Manager’s Guide to Build, Manage & Market Brands: Of course you want to learn from the things that the top brands in the world did right over the years.
- Currently Reading: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results: Focus + Passion are obviously the top answers on this. But it always keeps me intrigued to read more about this. I always finish these books within record time.
- High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way: Same as the above.
- Building Better Brands: A Comprehensive Guide to Brand Strategy and Identity Development: Building out an identity is something that always interested me, by helping out some startups at the moment on the side it gives me the ability to try some things to see how we can establish their brands and communicate their USP and brand message.
- Star Brands: Who doesn’t want to build a brand that is loved by many!?
- It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be: Duh!
- Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: Since joining Postmates I’m back at the believe that sprints might be a good thing. Already having read a ton about the design sprints at Google and other Silicon Valley companies I’m interested to read more into detail about the process.
- The Intelligent Investor: Wanting to read more about investing, this is apparently the good to book to start with to learn more.
- I need to pick more books… but I’m looking forward to read more about Marketing & Branding.
So what does this tell you? The guy wants to know more about branding in 2018 and is in desperate need for some cool new personal development books. Over the last year I read a lot of popular books (Elon Musk, High Output Management, etc.) that have provided me with a lot of inspiration on great managers + techniques. In 2018 I’d like to dive a bit more into brand building, although I have an SEO job most of what we think about everyday is building out the Postmates brand and luckily we get a ton of freedom to do that + in the end I remain a marketer.
As always, leave your recommendations in my Twitter feed (@MartijnSch) as I’d love to know from others what I should be reading and what you recommend should be on the list or removed from the list.