Productivity Archives

12 Great Books Written by People I Know and Admire

March 1, 2026March 7, 2026 Nik

In the mid-90s, the Russian artist duo Komar and Melamid conducted an interesting experiment. They hired research firms in 11 countries — including the US, Russia, France, China, Turkey, Iceland, and Kenya — to interview 1,000 people each and ask them: What do you most want in a visual work of art? Then, they painted the results. Here they are:

What was supposed to be a beautiful exploration of human diversity turned out to be, according to Komar, “a collaboration with [a] new dictator — Majority.” 30 years later, the duo’s People’s Choice series merely seems like the tip of the iceberg.

When opening his viral essay “The Age of Average” with their example, designer and strategy director Alex Murrell concludes: “The landscapes which Komar and Melamid painted have become the landscapes in which we live. […] Distinctiveness has died. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same.”

Murrell’s article about our statistical convergence mostly deals with the visual, but books do make an appearance. First, for their titles, which, among other trends, seem to love swear words these days, and second, for their lack of breadth in authors. Murrell quotes Adam Mastroianni: “In the 1950s, a little over half of the authors in the top 10 [of bestsellers] had been there before. These days, it’s closer to 75%.”

While I’m still waiting for my first top 10 bestseller, let alone repeat visits on those coveted lists, even being an aspiring self-published author has its benefits. Namely, you get to know other aspiring authors. The ones who haven’t quite made it yet but are taking their craft seriously. So, for today’s book recommendations, I have the incredible privilege of sharing titles written 100% by people I personally know and admire. Some of them, I’ve worked with. Others are old friends. But all of them are awesome writers.

ChatGPT would never suggest these books to you. You likely won’t find them on the New York Times Best Seller list or at the next airport bookstore any time soon — not that they don’t deserve it. But if you want to pick up some unique ideas from underrated people, look no further than these books.

Here are 12 great reads that’ll help you break out of the age of average.

My 10 Favorite Books of 2025

January 25, 2026January 25, 2026 Nik

Every minute spent reading is a minute of culture defended. That’s what I believe.

Therefore, I was both shocked and delighted when Goodreads told me I had managed to read 19 books in 2025. It was my first year of working a full-time job while still writing on the side, and I didn’t feel I read all that much.

Some of those books were short. Others were long. Six of them were part of a journey to read the classics that I began in 2024. The rest were a mixed bag of books written by friends, targeted research, and some bestsellers I picked up along the way.

Books are my all-time favorite gifts to both give and receive. Thoughtful book recommendations are almost as good. Maybe some of my 10 favorites from the year will make for beautiful presents for you as well. You can give them to yourself or whoever they make you think of — because the only surprise better than getting a book is getting a book on a random Tuesday when you didn’t expect anything, let alone the wisdom of a lifetime condensed into a few hundred pages.

You never know where your next great read might come from. Maybe you’ll find yours below. In no particular order, here are my 10 favorite books that I read in 2025, along with the ideas they inspired in my own writing.

How To Set Yourself Up for a Successful 2026 in 30 Minutes

December 31, 2025December 31, 2025 Nik

What does it mean to “be successful” over the course of a year?

In my early 20s, I believed success meant setting lots of New Year’s resolutions and then maintaining all of them throughout the year. But I kept failing at that. So at some point, I started thinking success might be about hitting certain milestones. “Get 10,000 email subscribers.” “Make $100,000 in revenue.” “Sell 10,000 copies of my book.” And so on. But I kept failing at those, too. Even when I reduced my goals down to just one ambitious target per year, I still kept failing.

Eventually, it dawned on me that goals might be a bad way to define success — and thus, to some extent, my happiness — altogether.

As soon as you set a goal, you’ve declared a void in your life. “Until I achieve this outcome, I won’t be happy.” It’s a choice to fight against some self-inflicted lack until it’s fixed, and once it is, you’ll quickly move the target further away. Goals are a great way to exact pressure and make yourself feel inadequate. That can work in the short term, but if it’s your only strategy in the game of life year after year, you’ll be miserable most of the time.

Once I was fed up with arbitrary numbers, I took a break from goals for a few years. But my life still needed direction. Over time, I slowly built a new process. That process involves a short annual review, a yearly theme, and a few simple experiments. It has just the right balance of ambition, contentment, and flexibility.

Thanks to this process, my big-picture happiness no longer depends on whether I hit some goalpost or win a trophy. “Did I have fun?” “Have I been learning and growing?” “Am I moving towards where I truly want to go?” These are the kinds of questions I ask myself when I look back at the end of a year. Answering them with an enthusiastic, genuine “Yes!” — that’s what having a successful year means to me.

If you’d like to measure yourself against healthier, more sustainable yardsticks too, here’s how you can do it. It only takes two tools, one commitment, and absolutely zero goals. Oh, and you can do it in the next 30 minutes. Let’s begin.

Startups for Outsiders by Amardeep Parmar (Nik’s Book Notes)

December 1, 2025December 1, 2025 Nik

Ordinary people have the most billion-dollar ideas.

Think about it: A billionaire is just a normal person who executed a plan and succeeded on an extreme scale. Don’t believe me? I’ve got proof.

As of mid-2025, only one third of the world’s 3,000 billionaires inherited their money. Meanwhile, around 70% have either founded or co-founded the business that made them wealthy.

What’s more, most billionaires build one billion-dollar business, not seven. Quiet Elon! So even if you already have all the capital in the world, scaling a global business ain’t easy. It takes more than money to make money.

Why does this little fact check matter? Because it shows the playing field is more level than we think. Innovation is not the prerogative of the rich.

My friend Amardeep Parmar understands this. “Humble startups founded by people like you have changed the world,” he begins Startups for Outsiders.

10 Lessons From 10 Years of Writing

September 28, 2024October 14, 2024 Nik

Today is the ten-year-anniversary of my first blog post. Back then, I didn’t know the first thing about headlines, title case, or narrative structure. I had no clue I was going to be a writer, let alone that I would get to do it full-time. And I definitely didn’t imagine landing here, a decade later, fully intending to write not just for another ten years but for the rest of my life.

Still, somehow, I’ve managed to publish over 2,000 pieces of writing since that first post. I rarely feel all the wiser, but I’ve undoubtedly learned a thing or two along the way. To mark the occasion, I’d like to share ten of the more palpable lessons from my journey: one particular theme that emerged during each of the years that I’ve been writing.

Here are ten lessons from ten years of wordsmithing.

Balance Is a Verb, Not a Noun

September 7, 2024September 14, 2024 Nik

“All I want is work-life balance.”

How often have you had this thought?

In theory, it makes sense: We strive to spend our lives well. That means directing the right amounts of time, effort, and attention to life’s many domains, from the necessities to taking care of ourselves to what’s most important to us.

Therefore, if we could allocate our limited resources perfectly, we’d achieve the ultimate equilibrium — and with it calm and happiness, right?

I don’t think so. In fact, I believe work-life balance doesn’t exist — and I can prove it to you with a single question:

What does perfect work-life balance look like, in detail, in your very life?

The Plus-and-Minus Theory of Living Happily

August 11, 2023August 11, 2023 Nik

On most days, I don’t shower to not feel dirty. I shower to feel clean. It may not sound like it, but there’s a difference.

Have you ever wasted away in bed for a few days until, at some point, you couldn’t stand your greasy hair anymore and lugged yourself into the shower? If so, by turning on the water, you took care of what Frederick Herzberg would have called “a hygiene factor” — pun present but not intended.

In his 1959 book The Motivation to Work, Herzberg, a clinical psychologist and professor, introduced a model of motivation called “the two-factor theory.” It stipulates that in order to feel happy in our jobs, two conditions must come together: a lack of dissatisfaction and a presence of satisfaction.

My 12 Favorite Nonfiction Books Most People Have Never Heard Of

June 30, 2023November 22, 2025 Nik

Imagine a city with one million inhabitants. It has everything you would expect from a city of that size: some skyscrapers, a decent transport system, and all the usual public and social infrastructure.

There is, however, a catch: Everyone in this city can only read the same 10 books. It’s a simple literary restriction, but what consequences might it have? If all of those books are mainly concerned with inequality and societal problems, chances are, the city’s citizens will spend most of their time bickering and fighting. But what if those books are instead filled with stories about community and kindness? Probably, people will be inclined to help one another, and everyone will get along on most days.

Regardless of their effect and how strong you believe this effect might be, however, with only 10 books, the people in that city will inevitably stop learning. Thinking, creativity, innovation — eventually, these pillars of progress will come to a screeching halt. Why? Because the pool of ideas is too limited! Try as hard as they may, the best those citizens can do is to rehash the same ideas from the same 10 books, over and over again. Sooner or later, to create more and better output, they’ll need more and better input. The same is true for you as an individual.

Haruki Murakami famously wrote that “if you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

Popular books are usually popular because they’re agreeable. They’ll get you social credit and remind you of what’s common sense, but they’ll rarely truly stretch your brain. There’s nothing wrong with reading these books, but they shouldn’t be the only ones you consume. If you and your friends all read the same few bestsellers each year, and you all agree on their premises, none of you will learn anything new! Where’s the discussion? The thinking? The sparring of ideas? If you all read different books, however, everyone has something to teach to everyone else.

Over the last ten years, I’ve read hundreds of nonfiction books. Without fail, the lesser known ones have been the most satisfying in terms of new ideas, memorable lessons, and, yes, I’ll admit it, making me look smart in front of my friends. So for more than one reason, I agree with Murakami: Don’t run the risk of becoming like the people in that city — set in your ways, a rusty thinker. Read the obscure, the questionable, the forgotten. Read what no one else is reading.

Here are 12 titles I believe will fit that mark. Even if you’re an avid nonfiction reader, I’m confident you won’t have heard of most of them. But if you give them a try, maybe they’ll enter the ranks of your all-time favorites. They sure have done so for me.

The Only Post About the Pomodoro Technique You’ll Ever Have To Read

June 26, 2023January 5, 2025 Nik

On a cloudy September afternoon in 1987, German-Italian programmer Francesco Cirillo was trying to study for his sociology exam. He couldn’t concentrate. “I made a humble bet with myself,” he says. “‘Can you stay focused for two minutes without distraction?’”

Cirillo grabbed a timer from his kitchen, wound it up, and started reading his book. It worked. Francesco’s tomato-shaped clock rang after just 120 seconds, but the moment he looked up from his book, still half-lost in its pages, the Pomodoro Technique was born.

“For the first time, I had managed to turn time into an ally,” Cirillo writes. Right when they most appeared to be his enemy, he finally started using his seconds instead of running away from them.

For the next five years, Cirillo kept refining the method. Since 1998, he’s taught it to millions of people around the globe. And his book The Pomodoro Technique is now in its third edition.

I first discovered the Pomodoro Technique around ten years ago, and I wrote about it as early as 2015. Since then, I’ve completed well over 10,000 Pomodoros to write millions of words. In the last 12 months alone, my productivity app tells me I’ve completed over 1,400 sessions averaging around 50 minutes each.

Here’s everything you need to know about this amazing tool.

Ikigai: The Wonderful Japanese Concept Everyone Misunderstands

June 18, 2023December 2, 2024 Nik

Explaining Japanese concepts to a Western audience has become a big trend in nonfiction, and ikigai is leading the charge. Naturally, in our almost-typical self-centeredness, we’ve managed to make the worst book about ikigai the most popular one and totally misunderstand the idea.

If you’ve heard of ikigai — and at this point, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t — you’ll probably loosely associate the word with “happiness” or “your life’s purpose.” That’s because our discourse about ikigai has been dominated by a single book, and while it’s a good book in and of itself, unfortunately, it completely misstates what ikigai is actually about.

I love Japan. I went to Tokyo, Kyoto, in Osaka in 2013. In 2022, I also read all major English books about ikigai — thankfully, there are only three of them. So today, I’d love to share what I’ve learned with you. Let’s understand what ikigai is actually about.