If we want to become a successful management professional, passing an MBA program with excellent scores are not just enough. We will be in need of good books that can provide insights on various topics like investment, productivity, personal development, etc. Here we have listed 7 books that every MBA aspirant or student should read.
1. Think And Grow Rich
- Napoleon Hill
“Think And Grow Rich” is one of the most famous personal development books written in 1937 by Napoleon Hill. The main idea that this book portrays is that success in any endeavor can be achieved through mental visualization and imagination. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Therefore, it is your mind that determines whether you will become a success or not.
Some of the major insights from this book are,
Our thoughts are very powerful.
“Thoughts are things,” and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire…”
Thinking is more helpful to success than anything else, including money, education or knowledge. The man who thinks that he can accomplish more is already a step forward toward the finish line than the others.
Desire
How bad do you want it? It is only when we really want something, we’ll do whatever is necessary to achieve it. So if our desire is very strong, we will work hard to achieve that goal. Desire is something that links thoughts and actions together:
Thoughts → Desire → Action
Faith.
Faith means convincing yourself that your goal is achievable. One way to develop faith is through self-suggestion. If you believe in something or have a certain goal in mind, convince your mind that you will achieve that goal, and after a while, your subconscious mind will start to act on behalf of your belief system. In short, you become what you think about.
Specialized knowledge.
If you’re not specialized in anything, there is a high chance that you’re never going to be successful. This type of knowledge can be acquired very easily through various sources like online courses, journals, books, etc.
2. Lean Startup
- Eric Ries
The Lean Startup is a book written by Eric Ries based on the idea that to develop a great product, you should meet the customer needs, and create and test MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) fast to reduce waste and ensure a better market fit.
The Lean Startup is created for any startup or business that has to manage uncertainty. The major idea on which the book is written is that when you learn faster, you will succeed faster. And to learn, you will need to put your products/services in front of the customer. By reading Lean Startup your perceptions about customers will be proved wrong. This is a must book for every manager.
3. The 7 habits of highly effective people
– Stephen R. Covey
This is a self-help book written by Stephen R Covey. The author believes that the world we see around is a consolidation of the perceptions we have. So, to change a situation, we need to change our perception of how we see the world.
The 7 habits of effective people are,
- Be proactive
- Begin with the end in mind
- Put first things first
- Think win/win
- Seek first to understand then be understood
- Synergize
- Sharpen the saw
4. Rich Dad & Poor Dad
- Robert Kiyosaki
Rich Dad & Poor Dad is a book written by Robert Kiyosaki on financial management and how to make the money work for you instead of you working for the money.
Major ideas from the book are,
- Rich don’t work for money, money works for them.
- It doesn’t matter how much money you make. It is how much money you keep aside for investment.
- Rich people focus on creating assets while the poor people will focus on making liabilities.
- The most powerful asset we all have is our minds.
5. Deep Work
– Cal Newport
Deep work is a book written by Cal Newport on how to achieve success without any distractions. According to him, to complete a more meaningful work, we have to work deeply – In a state of high concentration & without any distraction. We can divide the book into 2 parts. The first part talks about the importance of working deeply and what distracts them from doing so. The second part shows us how to practice deep work in our lives and achieve success.
Who should read Deep Work?
- Anyone who wants to improve their productivity
- Anyone who wants to achieve more in less time.
- Anyone who is interested in multitasking.
4 rules of deep work are
- Work Deeply
- Embrace Boredom
- Quit Social Media
- Drain the Shallows
6. The 4-Hour Workweek
- Tim Ferriss
After education, the author – Tim Ferriss was working in sales for a tech firm. He left the job to start a business on his own. He spent 85% of his time working. He didn’t like what he was doing. The business drained his energy. Then he learned about how to apply the 80-20 principle ( Pareto principle) and started to optimize and streamline his business. He automated all the work that took much of his time. By that, he was able to make the company very profitable by spending very less time. In this book, he describes the actions he took to implement these steps. This book will help us to learn how to apply the 80-20 principle in our everyday life.
7. The power of your subconscious mind
– Joseph Murphy
This book tries to answer contrasting questions like:
- Why is someone very rich & on the other some are not?
- Why is someone really happy & some are only filled with grief and sorrows?
- Why prayers of some people are answered & some are left unattended?
This book says that our thinking defines us & attracts like-minded people towards you. You are the architect of your destiny. The subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate between good & bad thoughts, it just executes what you feed your thoughts with. Let’s say you want to become rich. Then mould your subconscious mind in the same way.
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