12 Time Management Books That Work Miracles With Your Productivity

TMetric offers you a great summer Reading List on time management techniques and productivity. The books listed below have one thing in common: they work.

How to Invest Your Time Like Money

by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

The Author behind this most concise and practical book 🌟: Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a writer, time coach, speaker, and the CEO of Real Life E, a time coaching company.

This 75-page book is dedicated to those who want to have 'enough time for what's important', i.e., it caters to everybody's time management needs at best. Taking the approach of treating time allocation similarly to money investments removes three barriers separating us from feeling more accomplished and more in control.

Guided by the author, readers will get help in achieving specific time management goals:

• of investment time into work with efficiency
• of reducing the impact of external circumstances on planning
• of deeper understanding of personal productivity patterns.  

Release date: 2015

Strategies and Tips for Time Management

by Jack Barret

The Author behind this amazing book 🌟: Aside from writing bestselling books, Jack Barrett is also a talented coach, consultant, speaker, and teacher.

More than often, being busy and being productive do not have relations of the equation. On the contrary, feeling under pressure all the time is a strong signal of time mismanagement.

For such cases, this is the best book as it helps:

• to keep the track of important activities
• to develop strategic thinking skills
• to aim at effectiveness instead of busyness  
• to face the time of uncertainty without fear.

Release Date:  2019

The 30-Day Productivity Plan: Break the 30 Bad Habits That Are Sabotaging Your Time Management - One Day at a Time!

by Damon Zahariades (narrated by Joe Hempel)

The Author behind this stunning book 🌟: A bestselling author and acknowledged expert in time management, Damon Zahariades has a degree in Finance and Investments. He also runs ArtOfProductivity Blog.

One of the most challenging parts in developing effective time management is a stage of habit building.

Indeed, if a habit is yet to be planted, it tends to be hard. With this book, you get:

• an actionable plan for getting rid of bad habits
• a deep look at your personal productivity
• a strategy for cultivating a healthier routine.

Release Date:  2017

The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!)

by Damon Zahariades

This is a book by the same author composed around one particular habit that turns to be destructive to time management. The seemingly innocent habit of saying yes to every request causes a lot of troubles starting from deadline failures to a fall into a procrastination loop.

This book will help you prevent these disastrous effects and:

• stop being a people pleaser
• set boundaries
• master the art of decision making  
• recognize and 'categorize' situations that require saying resolute no.

Release Date:  2017

Time Management

from Brian Tracy Success Library

The Author behind this great book 🌟: Brian Tracy is a motivational public speaker who spoke in more than 50 countries. He wrote over 80 self-development books including the famous "Eat That Frog!".

The time management journey can be exciting if you know your purpose and remember one golden rule: we always have time to do the most important thing.

The book introduces 21 proven time management techniques to set your priorities and start  to follow them instantly. Most importantly, it will help you:

• to commit to making real changes
• to develop a healthy sense of urgency
• to improve time management with visible results.

Release date: 2014

15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management

by Kevin Kruse

The Author behind this helpful book 🌟: The works of this bestselling author were featured in Forbes as well as various publications with over 100 articles on leadership, productivity and entrepreneurship.  

The full title of the book is "15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs”.  
Kevin Kruse collected an answer to the question of a secret of productivity from a distinguished audience of over 200 very successful people. Their replies fed on creating the 'System of 15 Secrets' that includes simple to follow rules:

• we focus better when we operate on smaller time units (think in terms of minutes and hours, not days and weeks)
• multitasking is a productivity killer
• working in sprints brings instant benefits of achieving results faster.

Release date: 2015

The Little Book of Productivity

by Scott Young

The Author behind this fascinating book 🌟: Scott Young's works have been featured in TEDx, The New York Times, Lifehacker, Popular Mechanics and Business Insider. He writes out of his own experience. In particular, he documented learning four languages in one(!) year and mastering the drawing of portraits in just a month.

The first chapter of this book is available for free download .

There are 99 ideas collected in 7 chapters that you will find easy to put into practice. The book will help you:

• to deal with procrastination
• to avoid burnout
• to ignite your motivation
• to build a distraction free routine.  

Release Date: 2008

We also highly recommend Ultralearning which will be of great value to students as it teaches you not to learn how little you know but rather learn new things effectively (the skill that will be a great asset always).

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

by Cal Newport

The Author behind this mandatory-to-read book 🌟: Cal Newport is a prolific writer advocating digital minimalism and a Computer Science Professor at Georgetown University.

Since we live in a world where we are always exposed to distractions, it is important to remember that we never have the time we want, we have the time we have. To make the best use of it, there isa  deep work mode.

Entering Deep Work means not only the achievement of polished time management but in a broader perspective, unlocking the creative potential. The book offers a training regime comprised of 4 rules that help to go meaningfully deep and:

• learn to focus
• let the boredom be the ignition of your curiosity
• reduce the time you spend on social media to the absolute minimum
• optimize your work not to feel bogged down by lots of small tasks.

This book is about reaching goals with certainty by following the most effective time management techniques.

Release date: 2016

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Author behind this mind-blowing book 🌟: Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology known for having introduced the concept of flow (optimal life experience).  

Behind efficient time management, there are skills of focused work, discipline, and sticking to goals.

People who know how to intentionally schedule their time with an ideal balance of intense work and recuperation, show the increased capacity to resist stress and enjoy life.  On top of it, it is associated with the sense of enjoyment so that participants can stop 'noticing' the time.

The state of this balance is called 'flow' and, in application to occupational activities, it implies uninterrupted work of maximum productivity. The book describes this phenomenon and offers suggestions of how to achieve this state.

Release date: 1990

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

by Timothy Ferriss

The Author behind this eye-opening book 🌟: Tim Ferris is a writer, an entrepreneur, and podcaster. He was listed among the Most Innovative Business People for his contribution to self-help development.

While lots of books promise a life of improved productivity (though what exactly it means is often left outside the brackets), this book includes over 50 highly practical pieces of advice that can help you achieve a life of distinction and success.  This book has been translated into more than 35 languages.

The concept of ideal time management is based on the DEAL principle:

• Definition
• Elimination
• Automation
• Liberation.

What drives big, breakthrough changes in our lives? Among other things, it is the sense of accomplishment. Understanding its meaning on a deep level will let you escape a 9 to 5 life once and for all.

Release date: 2007

80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less

by Richard Koch

The Author behind this inspiring book 🌟: Richard Koch is an entrepreneur, investor, former strategy consultant, and author of several books on business

It is tempting to define success by a simple sum of efforts. However, the reality differs from this idealistic picture. As Richard Koch says:  

In any field at all, personal or business, only 20% of efforts we exert produce 80% of the outcome. Most of what we do does not produce results.

The book, which was translated into almost 40 languages and sold 1 million copies worldwide, gives us invaluable lessons on how to be more productive  by reinventing the famous 80/20 Pareto principle.

It calls for the need to identify 20 percent of our efforts that create all 80% of positive outcomes. So, the golden rule of effective time management is based on the art of shifting focus to what matters most.

Release date: updated in 2017

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)

by Hal Elrod

The Author behind this powerful book 🌟: Hal Elrod is an American bestselling writer and top-rated motivational speaker.

The book by Hal Elrod provides readers with a plethora of advice on how to 'tame the morning'.  

While simple shifts in the daily schedule in favor of becoming a morning person won’t solve all time management issues, it still guarantees to make you more goal-oriented and organized because, in the morning, we are likely to eliminate the distractions and concentrate on a task at hand with more ease.

Claiming your morning hours seems to be an approach that is never outdated. The optimal morning routine is built around the acronym S.A.V.E.R.S standing for 'silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing'.

Release date: 2012

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Honorable Mention

Spending Time: The Most Valuable Resource

by Daniel S. Hamermesh

Release date: 2019 by Oxford University Press

To understand all the intricacies of time management, the best way to start is to get insights into how people actually use their time, and what drives their decisions once time as an asset is at stake.  

This book will be the best choice as it covers the wide areas of discussion including how time is spent in well-developed economies, how much Americans spend on paperwork, and what factors contribute to summing up the actual value of time.