Books like When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

01

Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Gilbert · Psychology

Daniel Gilbert is a Harvard psychologist whose central finding, after decades of studying affective forecasting, is that humans are systematically wrong about what will make them happy.

A kindred psychology read.

02

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Both dig into decision-making.

03

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi · Psychology

Flow is Csikszentmihalyi's landmark study of optimal experience — those moments when people are so deeply absorbed in an activity that time warps, self-consciousness disappears, and effort feels effortless.

A kindred psychology read.

04

The Power of Full Engagement

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz · Self-help

The Power of Full Engagement starts from a simple reframe: time is fixed, but energy is not.

A kindred psychology read.

05

Do Less, Get More

Shaa Wasmund · Self-help

Do Less, Get More is Shaa Wasmund's argument that most people's productivity problem is not a shortage of effort or time but an excess of wrong activity.

Shares decision-making and productivity with When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

06

Getting Things Done

David Allen · Self-help

Getting Things Done is David Allen's argument that the main source of stress in modern knowledge work isn't the volume of tasks — it's having commitments that live only in your head.

Shares decision-making and productivity with When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

07

High Output Management

Andrew S. Grove · Business

High Output Management is Andrew Grove's manual for how managers at any level should think about their work.

Shares decision-making and productivity with When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

08

The Effective Executive

Peter F. Drucker · Business

The Effective Executive is Peter Drucker's 1967 argument that effectiveness — getting the right things done — is a discipline that can be learned, and that it is the most important capability a knowledge worker can develop.

Shares decision-making and productivity with When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

09

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

Paul Bloom · Psychology

Paul Bloom's argument is not that we should care less about others.

Both dig into decision-making.

10

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · Psychology

Brian Christian is a writer and Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, and together they argue that computer science has worked out rigorous solutions to many of the problems humans face every day — when to stop searching for a better option, how to manage your schedule, how to sort your memory — and that these solutions are both interesting and useful.

Both dig into decision-making.

11

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell · Psychology

Blink is Malcolm Gladwell's argument that fast, unconscious decisions — the ones made in the first two seconds of encountering something — are often just as reliable as slow, deliberate analysis, and sometimes more so.

Both dig into decision-making.

12

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Both dig into decision-making.