Here are 100 books that Your Brain at Work fans have personally recommended if you like
Your Brain at Work.
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Iāve spent a lot of my career teaching people to navigate the complex, often messy intersection of ethics, communication, and human behavior. As a behavior analyst, teacher, supervisor, and coauthor of Daily Ethics: Creating Intentional Practice for Behavior Analysts, Iāve seen firsthand how the ability to have honest, compassionate, and courageous conversations can make or break relationships, teams, and outcomes. I chose these five books because theyāve shaped how I show up in my work and lifeāand because I have seen their contents help others become more intentional, committed, and successful communicators.
I recommend this book because it taught me that every hard conversation has three layers: what happened, whatās felt, and what that means to each person.
Before reading it, I often got stuck on the āfactsā and missed the emotional undercurrent, especially for my communication partner.
Now, I approach challenging discussions with a mental checklist from Difficult Conversations that helps me listen for whatās beneath the words. It has saved me from countless misunderstandings and made me a much better listener and collaborator.
The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask"
We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to:
Ā· Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversationĀ Ā· Start a conversation without defensivenessĀ Ā· Listen for the meaning of what is not saidĀ Ā·ā¦
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesāall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueā¦
Whether writing under my pen name Kate Somerset, or showing up as Ann Louden in real life, I've always believed in the enriching value of making memorable connections. As a consultant to nonprofits, I emphasize itās not the number of donors that guarantees philanthropic support. Itās the quality of relationships with the organization. The deeper the connections, the more likely that donors will significantly invest and re-invest. As a breast cancer survivor/spokesperson, I know the importance of having a support team. And as an author and relationship coach, I emphasize establishing trust in relationships. The books on this list describe how you can be a connector, each with uniquely valuable content. I hope you find them all meaningful!
When I read this book, the lightbulb went off. I have been in so many situations where I didnāt feel heard, but I couldnāt quite put my finger on why.
Sorenson explains that truly being connected happens only when we are validated. I never realized that almost every conversation we have is a bid for validation. We are asking others not just to hear us but also to āsay something.ā
The response can either be positive or engagedāa turning towards usāOR negative or passiveāa turning away from us.Ā I couldnāt have put it into these exact words, but I now know that being understood is one of the greatest of human needs and is often unmet. The book underscores that connections happen best through validation.Ā
What if making one tweak to your day-to-day conversations could immediately improve every relationship in your life?
In this 3-hour, conversational read, youāll discover the whats, whys, and hows of one of the most valuable (yet surprisingly little-known) communication skills availableāvalidation.Ā
Whether youāre looking to improve your relationship with your spouse, navigate difficult conversations at work, or connect on a deeper level with friends and family, this book delivers simple, practical, proven techniques for improving any relationship in your life.
Mastery of this simple skill will enable you to:
Calm (and sometimes even eliminate) the concerns, fears, and uncertainties ofā¦
You know how most young kids go through a phrase where they ask āwhyā about everything, and then they ask it again, and again, and again? Well, I never really outgrew that. I studied journalism because it gave me permission to be curious about new things every day, and to ask experts āwhy.ā Marketing gave me a new way to chase my curiosity: Why are people clicking this ad, opening this email, following that social account or searching for that phrase? Iāve helped 30% of the Fortune 100 answer the questions about why their content is working, or isnāt, and my first book, The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas, was born from my introspective curiosity about how my own idea generation process worked.Ā
This book is a hefty oneāI recommend the audiobook if youāve got a bad backābut it will help you understand how your brain works in a way that almost no other book can. And the better you understand your mind, the better youāll be able to make it do what you want, and how to protect yourself from the things that might otherwise sabotage your creative thinking.
In The Organized Mind, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin offers practical solutions to the problems of information overload. ___________________________________________________
Overwhelmed by demands on your time? Caught in an unproductive spiral of emails and multitasking?
You're not alone. When we're deluged with information our creativity plummets, our decision making suffers and we grow absent-minded. Nowadays, we drown in our inboxes, forever juggle several tasks at once and try to make complex decisions ever more quickly. This is information overload.
Combining the latest neuroscience with everyday examples, Daniel Levitin explains how to take back controlā¦
Katie's Gamble is an unexpected, unique story about a young woman who's trying to support her younger siblings by keeping her family's confectionery shop open.
In order to do that, she has to take on her older brother, who's a notorious gambler in Louisiana. Additionally, she has to outsmart Rowdyā¦
I use the knowledge Iāve gained as an executive coach for 14 years and with a masterās degree in organizational communication to help organizations and individuals more effectively communicate with and engage others in the workplace and in their personal lives. I actively practice what I preach and constantly look for new information to help myself and others become better leaders, managers, and people.
This book is great for better understanding how to be fully present in a conversation, how to be authentic and say what needs to be said even when itās uncomfortable, and how to have tough conversations at work to keep great employees connected and motivated. The book is chock full of great examples of conversations and suggestions of how to say things more effectively.
The conversation is the relationship. Fierce Conversations is a way of conducting business. An attitude. A way of life. Expert Susan Scott maintains that a single conversation can change the trajectory of a career, marriage or life. Whether it's conversations with yourself, partner, colleagues, customers, family or friends, Fierce Conversations shows you how to have conversations that count. Scott reveals how to: Overcome barriers to meaningful conversations; Express who you are and what you believe; Confront tough issues with courage, confidence and sensitivity; Overcome fear to get to the heart of the problem; Inspire followers, attract believers and build visionsā¦
Iām a psychologist in Los Angeles specializing in helping people identify their blind spots and break the cycles of their past by retraining their mindset about the future. I developed a new treatment called Future Directed Therapy and Iāve been helping people build better lives for over 15 years. Iām very passionate about empowering my clients to find practical skills and tools for taking charge of their emotional health and achieving the things they want in life. I recommend these books to my clients on a regular basis and find inspiration in them for my own blog Living Forward which I write as a featured expert for Psychology Today.
Iām always saying to my clients, āEverything in life comes with a user manual these days except your brain.ā That is, until Jim Kwik wrote his book Limitless. People often feel distressed when they arenāt able to make their brain do what they want it to do, such as focusing, remembering old things, or learning new things. This book translates into a useable form, what neuroscience has shown us is how our brains work. With this book it is now possible to make your brain work for you. If you have a brain, you should not be without this book.
For the last 25 years, Jim Kwik has helped everyone from celebrities to CEOs to students improve their memory, increase their decision-making skills, learn to speed-read and unleash their superbrains.
In Limitless, readers will learn Jim's revolutionary strategies and shortcuts to break free from their perceived limitations. They'll learn how to supercharge their brains with simple, actionable tools to sharpen the mind, enhance focus and fast-track their fullest potential.
The book is organized into four sections: Mindset, Motivation, Meta-Learning and Mission. Readers will discover the myths they've been told about their IQ, abilities and skillset; understand why learning matters; learnā¦
I have been a pioneer in both the womenās and menās movement. I was elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women in NYC and was called by GQ āThe Martin Luther King of the menās movementā. I advocate for a āGender Liberation Movement, freeing both sexes from the rigid roles of the past toward more flexible roles for their futureā. I realized that boys worldwide are struggling in ways weāve barely begun to address. Iāve presented my research for The Boy Crisis worldwide, from the White House to the Norwegian Parliament, and it has inspired bipartisan fatherhood legislation in Florida.
I loved this book because it gave me a fascinating, science-backed look into how the male mind works at every stage of life. As someone who has spent years researching the challenges boys and men face, I was captivated by Brizendineās ability to translate complex neuroscience into something deeply relatable. I kept thinking, āThis explains so much!ā
What I love most about this book is how it sheds light on the biological forces that shape male behaviorāfrom boyhood to old age. It helped me better understand not just the struggles males face but also their strengths, motivations, and emotional lives. If youāve ever wondered why the males in your life think and act the way they do, this book offers eye-opening answers.
From the author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Female Brain, here is the eagerly awaited follow-up book that demystifies the puzzling male brain.
Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:
-is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced withā¦
I like trying to solve problems about the mind: Is the mind just the brain? What is consciousness, and where is it in the brain? What happens in the brain during aesthetic experience? Why are we prone to self-deception? In approaching these questions, I donāt limit myself to one discipline or set of techniques. These mental phenomena, and the problems that surround them, do not hew to our disciplinary boundaries. In spite of this, someone needs to collect, analyze, and assess information relevant to the problemsāwhich is in many different formatsāand build theories designed to make sense of it. During that time, more data will become available, so back you go.
V. S. Ramachandran is a gifted experimentalist and writer who does not hesitate to pursue deep and important questions about our minds. Rather than employing expensive imaging or large sample sizes, he is more likely to use a cardboard box, an old stereopticon, or a rubber hand in his experiments.Ā
His creativity in finding concrete ways to test seemingly vague but interesting claims about our minds has led to several breakthroughs, in our understanding of phantom limbs and our ability to treat phantom pain, and also in our study of synesthesiaācases in which people see numbers as having colors, for example.
As I can attest, he is able to transmit to his students the idea that pursuing scientific questions can be thrilling, fulfilling, and so much fun that you canāt wait to get to work in the morning.
In this landmark work, V. S. Ramachandran investigates strange, unforgettable cases-from patients who believe they are dead to sufferers of phantom limb syndrome. With a storyteller's eye for compelling case studies and a researcher's flair for new approaches to age-old questions, Ramachandran tackles the most exciting and controversial topics in brain science, including language, creativity, and consciousness.
I fell in love with technology when I wrote my first computer program at age 14 when there was no public Internet, no personal computers, no iPhone, no cloud. I have made technical contributions to every era of computing from mainframes, to PCs, Internet, Cloud, and now AI. I was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering. AI currently surpasses my wildest imagination on the art of whatās possible. I'm still passionately working in technology at Google focused on how to live healthier lives. I believe we can make AI the telescope of the future, to helping everyone live long and healthy lives.
The opening paragraph of this book is pure poetry in motion, putting me in a trance and craving to read the entire book.Ā
You wouldnāt know this is a book about neuroscience when reading the opening lines in Chapter 1. Connectome is a thought-provoking exploration of the brain's neural connections and their potential to transform our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.Ā
Given that artificial intelligence is inspired by neuroscience itās a great book to understand how the brain works.
Connectome, by Sebastian Seung is 'One of the most eagerly awaited scientific books of the year ... intellectually exhilarating, beautifully written, exquisitely precise yet still managing to be inspirational' Irish Times
What really makes us who we are? In this groundbreaking book, pioneering neuroscientist Sebastian Seung shows that our identity does not lie in our genes, but in the connections between our brain cells - our own particular wiring, or 'connectomes'.
Everything about us - emotions, thoughts, memories - is encoded in these tangled patterns of neural connections, and now Seung and a dedicated team are mapping them in orderā¦
Creativity is a practical, problem-solving, risk-taking endeavor, something we all do, whether we claim it or not. After working for many years with groups of graduate business students, artists, writers, business professionals, women in recovery, men in prison, with those just discovering their creative abilityāand with myself and my own creative journey, I realize the question isnāt āAm I creative?ā The question is āAm I using it?ā or āAm I continuing to grow?ā Nothing is more exciting than watching others as they realize just how creative they are.
While not a book explicitly about creativity, it opened my eyes to how our brains work, how we can make them work better, and what weāre just going to have to live with. For instance, āmulti-taskingā is really a mythāsome brains just switch from one task to another faster and women are better at that than men, something rooted in our evolutionary development. And our brains are hardwired for movement, particularly walking. Developmental neurobiologist Medina offers plenty of food for creative brains.
Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know--like the need for physical activity to get your brain working its best. How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is it true that men and women have different brains? In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences mightā¦
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extortsā¦
I have always been fascinated by how the human mind adapts, both individually and through history. Julian Jaynes, who taught me while pursuing my PhD in anthropology from Princeton University, provided me with a theoretical framework to explore how the personal and cultural configure each other. Jaynes inspired me to publish on psychotherapeutics, the history of Japanese psychology, linguistics, education, nationalism, the origin of religion, the Bible, ancient Egypt, popular culture, and changing definitions of self, time, and space. My interests have taken me to China and Japan, where I lived for many years. I taught at the University of Arizona and currently work as a licensed mental health counselor.Ā
Supported by a wide range of examples drawn from various disciplines, this book demonstrates how we are only conscious of a small amount of what our hidden psychological machinery manufactures nonconsciously.
This work provides a key perspective needed to appreciate Julian Jaynesās theory of consciousness and, thus his ideas on bicameral mentality.Ā
As John Casti wrote, "Finally, a book that really does explain consciousness." This groundbreaking work by Denmark's leading science writer draws on psychology, evolutionary biology, information theory, and other disciplines to argue its revolutionary point: that consciousness represents only an infinitesimal fraction of our ability to process information. Although we are unaware of it, our brains sift through and discard billions of pieces of data in order to allow us to understand the world around us. In fact, most of what we call thought is actually the unconscious discarding of information. What our consciousness rejects constitutes the most valuable partā¦
