Here are 100 books that Five Wishes fans have personally recommended if you like
Five Wishes.
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I’ve passionately pursued the art of screenwriting for decades now, with all the ups and downs that go with that—from the peaks of Hollywood projects winning big awards (I was a writer-producer on HBO’s Band of Brothers), to scripts nobody wanted to read and when they read them, they didn’t want to do anything with them. And everything in between. It’s been my career my entire adult life—doing it, teaching it, and helping others understand the requirements of good screenwriting.
This classic is my go-to for the challenges of living the creative life and how to push through them.
In short, punchy chapters, it identifies the main source of blocks writers and artists have and how to push through them.
I love its approach to the workmanlike attitude one needs to have to create consistently and move toward a goal, and how to be clear-eyed about the inner “resistence” we all have that seems to want to stop us.
A succinct, engaging, and practical guide forsucceeding in any creative sphere, The War ofArt is nothing less than Sun-Tzu for the soul.
What keeps so many of us from doing what we long to do?
Why is there a naysayer within? How can we avoid theroadblocks of any creative endeavor—be it starting up a dreambusiness venture, writing a novel, or painting a masterpiece?
Bestselling novelist Steven Pressfield identifies the enemy thatevery one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer thisinternal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
This book will empower you to create more happiness, abundance, and fulfillment while honoring your values for self-care, life-work balance, and living your truth.
Diana Drake Long is recognized as one of the world's master coaches, and her Dream It, Design It, Live It system gives you the keys to success…
I’m Michael Cupps, author of Time Bandit and creator of a framework that helps people take back their time through prioritization, habit building, and aligning their actions with what matters most. I’ve spent decades leading sales and operations teams in high-pressure environments, and I’ve seen how time either slips away or gets owned. I’m passionate about helping people cut through the noise, focus on what really matters, and build lives filled with purpose, not just productivity.
This book gave language to something I had long practiced intuitively: doing less, but better. McKeown’s concept of “the disciplined pursuit of less” is critical in a world where distractions are disguised as opportunities. It reminds us that focus isn’t just a tactic—it’s a strategy.
I often recommend this book to leaders and individuals who feel overwhelmed and are struggling to regain control of their time.
The life-changing international bestseller that started a global movement - now updated with the new 21-Day Essentialism Challenge and an exclusive excerpt from EFFORTLESS
Have you ever found yourself struggling with information overload?
Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilised?
Do you ever feel busy but not productive?
If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is to become an Essentialist.
In Essentialism, Greg McKeown, CEO of a Leadership and Strategy agency in Silicon Valley who has run courses at Apple, Google and Facebook, shows you how to achieve what he calls the disciplined pursuit of…
I’m Michael Cupps, author of Time Bandit and creator of a framework that helps people take back their time through prioritization, habit building, and aligning their actions with what matters most. I’ve spent decades leading sales and operations teams in high-pressure environments, and I’ve seen how time either slips away or gets owned. I’m passionate about helping people cut through the noise, focus on what really matters, and build lives filled with purpose, not just productivity.
This book drills down into the power of clarity. By continually asking, “What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”, it teaches ruthless prioritization.
I’ve found this question to be one of the most powerful tools in my daily practice—and in coaching others.
YOU WANT LESS. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what's the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller paychecks, fewer promotions-and lots of stress. AND YOU WANT MORE. You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends. NOW YOU CAN HAVE BOTH-LESS AND MORE. In The ONE Thing, you'll learn…
This book will empower you to create more happiness, abundance, and fulfillment while honoring your values for self-care, life-work balance, and living your truth.
Diana Drake Long is recognized as one of the world's master coaches, and her Dream It, Design It, Live It system gives you the keys to success…
I live and work in Santa Cruz, CA (close to Silicon Valley). I’ve been extremely fortunate to be a multi-time start-up founder, executive coach and consultant, and key contributor or operational leader at world-class brands like Apple, DreamWorks, Google, and SGI. In 2015, I had an epiphany that changed the direction of my life: that prioritization was the most important verb in business, but nobody had written a book that successfully demystified how individuals, teams, and organizations should do it. My book became a pandemic project. I sincerely hope it will help improve the world and make it a better place.
This book ought to be required reading for every high school student. I didn’t read it in high school. But I’m grateful I found and read it a short few years ago. Why? Because I’m never going to win the rat race. The harder I try, the worse off I’ll become because “the rats” keep getting bigger and faster.
While it's a truism to say that time is the most precious resource, until recently, I didn’t act that way. I know that each of us has limited time, energy, and resources. So, getting more comfortable with the fact that my life is finite is key. Becoming a productivity master is a fool's errand. And the author, Oliver Burkeman, does a stunning and entertaining job of helping you get off that treadmill to live a better, fuller, and more meaningful life.
"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." ―Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.
Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of…
I'm a Greek mom and entrepreneur at heart. Growing up, we cherished spirited conversations, ideas, and researching topics we loved. The whole goal was to really push each other to higher states of intellectual rigor that would improve the quality of life. Ideas and communication rival great food and Greek dancing fun. I share my passion for Philotimo (Greek imperative of love of honor and working for the greater good) through my books, brands, and marketing agency. I'm a fierce advocate for women and small businesses and have been featured in USA Today, Small Business Journal, Amazon Entrepreneurs, and enjoy being a weekly guest on national radio shows.
This book takes on the question that every successful woman is asked, “How do you balance it all?” Randi lives the concept that you can have it all, just not at the same time. Life is full of choices and this book breaks down a daily strategy to prioritize the most important areas of your life. She makes it so real, I could almost hear her voice, cadence, and smile. There is an honesty and vigor in the pages that really hit me hard to look in the mirror!
In this motivational handbook-both a business how-to and self-help guide-the New York Times bestselling author of Dot Complicated takes on the fallacy of the "well-balanced" life, arguing that the key to success is learning to be well-lopsided.
In an increasingly demanding world, we've been told that we can do everything-maintain friendships, devote ourselves to work, spend time with family, stay fit, and get enough sleep. We just need to learn to balance it all. Randi Zuckerberg doesn't believe in being well-balanced. We can't do it all every day,…
Do you know you will spend 80,000 hours at work in your lifetime? And yet we get so little guidance on how to make choices about the work we do. I am fascinated by the world of work and how we navigate it, and thrive in it. I’ve always wondered how people made decisions about how to live and how to approach finding the right kind of livelihood that fits their skills and interests. I’ve made it my job to design a method to help people get specific and clear and help them not only find the work that best utilises their skills and passions but also identifies the environment that works best for us.
If you are anything like me and struggle to decide on one career or one path then this is the book for you. If by working through your passions, skills, etc. you find that there isn’t just one area you want to work in but in fact, you are interested in loads of stuff, then this book will help you manage this challenge and create the life that you want not the one everyone else says you should have.
Don't know what to do with your life? Drawn to so many things that you can't choose just one? New York Times best-selling author Barbara Sher has the answer-do EVERYTHING!
"Designed to help you enjoy your many interests without feeling overwhelmed and unfocused" - Metro New York
Author of Wishcraft and I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was..., Barbara Sher has become famous for her extraordinary ability to help people define and achieve their goals. What Sher has discovered is that some individuals simply cannot, and should not, decide on a single path; they are genetically…
As a life coach and author of two dozen self-help books, I’ve spent the past twenty years helping people treat themselves better. Doing so is fundamental to personal growth and making real, purposeful change. When you fully appreciate yourself and treat yourself well, you will feel so much better! You will be in a much stronger position to overcome challenges, achieve your goals, and get more out of life.
First, I love how Martha Beck writes. She’s funny! Also wise and candid. I would happily recommend any of her books. This particular one is helpful in treating yourself better because it guides you through specific exercises to evaluate your essential self, to appreciate it, and to pursue your unique, authentic path.
New York Times bestselling author and Life Designs, Inc. creator Martha Beck shares her step-by-step program that will guide you to fulfill your own potential and create a joyful life.
In this book, you'll start by learning how to read the internal compasses already built into your brain and body--and why you may have spent your life ignoring their signals. As you become reacquainted with your own deepest desires, you'll identify and repair any unconscious beliefs or unhealed emotional wounds that may be blocking your progress.
This will change your life, but don't worry--although every life is unique, major transformations…
It has always fascinated me how one person can enter a room, and they can change its temperature, and yet others remain unnoticed. Some feel unstoppable, whilst others struggle to get out of bed. Some create such a resonant, kind, and compassionate coherence in everything they do and all those that they touch; it feels like they are surrounded by blue birds and sunshine, and yet many of their colleagues will not be remembered.To be human is complex and magical. I've spent my life learning how we can get our energy right so that every day becomes extraordinary and Technicolor, and that's why I help businesses do the same.
The only time my old agency gave everybody a book it was this one. It was incredibly popular because it was so short, punchy, and beautiful. It was the book that inspired me to write my second about how to survive and thrive in work.
Paul Arden was the creative director at Saatchi's, and he has the most wonderful gift of communicating. The book has no wasted words or square millimeters of design space. It really was created magnificently.
Yes, the content is clear and accessible, but the way it's presented is beyond sublime. The advice that I got from the book was immediately implemented, as it was practical and clear. But the way this book made me feel as I read it was like no other. Everything was possible, and this whole life is the most fantastic adventure.
Writing long books is incredibly simple; writing short ones full of…
It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be is a handbook of how to succeed in the world: a pocket bible for the talented and timid alike to help make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible.
The world's top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes, and creativity - all endeavours that can be applied to aspects of modern life.
This uplifting and humorous little book provides a unique insight into the world of advertising…
At the very beginning of my studies, I asked myself a question that still accompanies me today: “Why are some people successful and others not?” I've always been interested in people who are successful through their own efforts instead of building on the success of previous generations through their heritage. In my search for what distinguishes successful from less successful people, I began to read a variety of relevant books and attend seminars. These books and seminars dealt with the topics of success, personality development, marketing and sales, rhetoric, psychology, and management as well as self-management and personal productivity. To date, I've read several hundred books on these topics and attended a number of seminars.
Anthony Robbins is the world's most famous success coach.
With Unlimited Power, he has made Neurolinguistic Programming known outside of therapy in management.
Anyone who wants to break through beliefs that prevent success and wants to get many valuable suggestions at all levels of success, can not get past Anthony Robbins. His books have inspired and motivated me.
Anyone who really wants to be successful should read his books. In Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical & Financial Destiny! you get a very good summary of his thoughts.
The author offers advice on such matters as mastering emotions, overcoming debilitating habits such as over-eating, drinking and drug abuse, unleashing the hidden power of body and mind, improving personal and professional relationships, and taking control of personal finances.
By Ivanna Mikhailovna Rosendal and Anne Katrine Carlsson SejrAuthor
Why are we passionate about this?
We are two leaders of teams who work in the intersection between people and technology and are obsessed with the human factor in organizational transformation. We have developed the Maneuvering Monday universe to create a space where we discuss topics around leadership, organizational design, and transformation with other thought leaders and experts around the world, and love to nerd these topics to better understand different perspectives and, not least, share tactics to make work better. We spend so much time at work, so it has to be meaningful. All the books on this list have inspired us to improve as leaders, colleagues, and employees. We hope they will inspire you too!
In this book, the author shows how aligning yourself with your needs and being able to express them leads to more effective communication. This is in the context of being a woman who has a very narrow acceptable definition of wants that we are allowed to have.
For me, Ivanna, reading this book opened up my eyes to the times when I have failed at negotiating. It helped me understand how to effectively communicate the needs that I have in a negotiation.
Stop being a servant of the life you're living and become a creator of the world you want. Electrifying lessons in power, influence and persuasion to equalise women in an unequal world.
Why do so many women feel they're too much yet not enough? How can you feel 'good and mad' yet reluctant to speak up in a meeting or difficult conversation? What causes women to freeze at critical moments?
Kasia Urbaniak spent 17 years studying to become a Taoist nun. To foot the bill for her studies, she worked as a high-paid (and extremely successful) dominatrix in dungeons around…
