Check out our summer reading list below. Our selection aims to spark curiosity, inspire new perspectives and unlock potential.
The summer should offer some quiet time for reading. A holiday reading list should include books that are informative, entertaining and thought provoking. We’re including podcasts because they’re so flexible, they allow you to listen while doing other things.
Essential listening: Michael’s favourite podcasts
Cautionary tales with Tim Harford
Tim Harford, presenter of Radio 4’s brilliant number-crunching series More or Less has come up with this fascinating series in which he tries to find lessons from history. Why did inventors such as Sony and Kodak fail to capitalise on the success of their inventions? Why did John Maynard Keynes fail to predict the Wall Street Crash? The stories are told by marvellous actors such as Toby Stephens and Alan Cumming.
More or less: behind the stats
More or Less is devoted to the powerful, sometimes beautiful, and often abused but ever ubiquitous world of numbers. The programme was born of the sense that numbers were the principal language of public argument. Yet there were few places where it was thought necessary to step back and think about the way we use figures – in the way we often step back to think about language. Tim Harford is an interpreter of statistics into common sense.
Packed with new ideas, curious backstories, and sideways angles that will help you to see the world, well, a bit differently. Syed joins the dots between different strands of thinking to tell us something surprising about ourselves while also telling us a cracking story. Episodes include why you might need an alter ego to get ahead; the myth of hidden influences, explored through the 1990 trial of metal band Judas Priest; what children’s television tells us about the developing mind; lessons on teamwork from the Middle Ages.
Behavioural science made simple. The smallest changes can have the biggest impact and with Nudge, you’ll learn simple evidence-backed tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, and grow a business. Every episode is packed with practical advice from admired entrepreneurs and behavioural scientists. Nudge is fast-paced but still insightful with real-world examples that you can apply – this is not your average business podcast.
The reading list: recommended books
Using behavioural science in marketing, Nancy Harhut, Kogan Page
How to apply behavioural science principles in marketing, including marketing communications, email, direct mail and ad campaigns, social media marketing and sales funnel conversion strategies. Highly practical and accessible, it includes case studies and examples from AT&T, Apple, Spotify and The Wall Street Journal, showing how these approaches have been used in practice.
Pep Guardiola The Evolution by Marti Perandou, Arena Sport
More than the story of three seasons with one of the biggest clubs in the game. It is a portrait and analysis of a manager and the footballing philosophies that have beguiled the world. For three seasons at Bayern Munich, the author was given total access around the German super club, Bayern Munich – to its players, backroom staff, board members and, manager, Pep Guardiola. The book offers an incredible insight into all sorts of aspects of the sport, as well as behind the curtain of Guardiola’s personal and home life too.
Atomic Habits by James Clear, Random House Business
Distils the most fundamental information about habit formation, so you can accomplish more by focusing on less. An engaging, hands-on book offers the guide you need to break bad routines and make good ones. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.
The Art of Finding the Job you Love by Cara Heilmann, James Morgan Publishing
Cara connects the worlds of comedy and recruiting with a look behind the curtain to share what hiring managers are really looking for and reveals why the more successful people are, the more they wing interview prep-and how that can work against them. A down-to-earth, step-by-step guide on how to prepare for and execute on finding a purposeful job that fits who we are and what we want to contribute to the world. A short read, unconventional, refreshing and punchy, just what 10Eighty likes!
The 2 Hour Job Search by Steve Dalton, Ten Speed Press
An empowering book which focuses on the critical middle phase of the job search and helps readers bring organisations to what is all too often an ineffectual and frustrating process. Dalton’s framework cut a lot of the fat, hesitation, and excuses out of the process. He guides us to focus on the avenues that are most likely to yield results with minimum frustration. Steve Dalton is a program director and senior career consultant for the full-time MBA program at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
And, finally, if you have not already read it there is a new edition of
Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein, Penguin
Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness – Nudge is about choices – how we make them and how we can make better ones. Every day we make decisions: about the things that we buy or the meals we eat; about the investments we make or our children’s health and education; even the causes that we champion or the planet itself. What Nudge focuses on are the positive outcomes that align to our values and beliefs, named as self-reliance, life-long learning, timelessness, happiness, citizen engagement, liberty, cross-cultural empathy, promoting mastery, social inclusion, dignity, autonomy, universal access, health and wellbeing.
