Books like So Good They Can't Ignore You

01

Deep Work

Cal Newport · Self-help

Deep Work is Cal Newport's case that the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task is becoming both rarer and more valuable, and that people who cultivate it will thrive while everyone else stays stuck in shallow busywork.

A kindred self-help read.

02

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool · Science

Peak is Anders Ericsson's definitive account of deliberate practice — the specific type of focused, feedback-driven training that, more than any other factor, determines how expert people become in demanding fields.

Shares deliberate practice and mastery with So Good They Can't Ignore You.

03

Mastery

Robert Greene · Self-help

Mastery is Robert Greene's long account of how extraordinary human mastery develops — from childhood inclinations through apprenticeship through creative independence to the integration that characterizes true mastery.

Shares career development and mastery with So Good They Can't Ignore You.

04

Ultralearning

Scott Young · Self-help

Ultralearning is Scott Young's synthesis of principles drawn from his own extreme learning projects — completing MIT's four-year computer science curriculum in one year, learning four languages in a year, and other aggressive self-directed learning experiments — and from the academic research on skill acquisition and deliberate practice.

Shares deliberate practice and mastery with So Good They Can't Ignore You.

05

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Daniel H. Pink · Psychology

Drive is Daniel Pink's argument that the motivational model most organizations still run on — reward the behavior you want, punish the behavior you don't — is badly mismatched to the kind of work that matters most in a modern economy.

Both dig into mastery.

06

Playing Big

Tara Mohr · Self-help

Playing Big is Tara Mohr's guide to the internal barriers that prevent women — and many men — from contributing at the level they're capable of.

Both dig into career development.

07

The Art of Learning

Josh Waitzkin · Self-help

The Art of Learning is Josh Waitzkin's account of how he became a national chess champion as a child and later a world-champion martial artist, and what those two very different disciplines taught him about the structure of high performance.

Both dig into mastery.

08

The Dip

Seth Godin · Self-help

The Dip is Seth Godin's short argument that the ability to quit the right things at the right time is more strategic than persistence for its own sake.

Both dig into mastery.

09

The First 20 Hours

Josh Kaufman · Self-help

The First 20 Hours makes a sharp distinction that most books on learning quietly ignore: the difference between becoming competent at a skill and becoming world-class at one.

Both dig into deliberate practice.

10

The Little Book of Talent

Daniel Coyle · Self-help

The Little Book of Talent is Daniel Coyle's condensed follow-up to The Talent Code, distilling his observations of high-performance training environments into 52 concrete tips.

Both dig into deliberate practice.

11

The Passion Paradox

Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness · Self-help

The Passion Paradox is Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness's examination of why passion — the force that drives many people toward excellence — also burns so many of them out.

Both dig into passion.

12

The Practicing Mind

Thomas M. Sterner · Self-help

Thomas Sterner's argument starts from a simple observation: most people approach learning and improvement with an outcome-fixated mindset that makes the process feel like an obstacle to tolerate rather than the activity itself.

Both dig into mastery.