The irony of time management books, is finding time to read time management books. Or also, making sure you’re not wasting time reading the wrong books.

But, I’ve got you covered there. In this post, I’m going to introduce you to the four best books for time management that are going to blow your mind and completely change your life and your business.

I’ve been talking too, a lot about time management and work/life balance and right now, I want to introduce you to four books that have really changed my life dramatically.

These are books that I read on repeat and I highly encourage you to get your hands on them as well.

Just a little note, I am presenting these in no particular order and I’m going to talk to you a little bit about each one and who it might be best for.

So, be sure to read or watch to the very end so that you make sure that you get the right books for you.

Watch here or read below.

BOOK #1: “THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK” BY TIM FERRIS

Now, I know a lot of people probably don’t realize that this is really a book about time management. But it is.

It is a book about time management, it’s a book about time freedom, and it’s a book that really taught me how to think differently about business and get strategic.

Not just doing things that should be done, but really questioning what I’m doing and doing them in the most creative way possible. Because if you don’t know Tim Ferris, that’s what he’s about.

I first got this book shortly after the second edition was launched. I’ve had this for almost 10 years now.

And it was integral for us.

We were actually just starting to travel full-time and kind of figuring out how we were going to continue to do it. We were doing it off our savings account. This really got us thinking about our business in a whole new way and about different types of businesses that we could run and again, how to use our time in the most efficient way possible.

Ferris talks about some concepts in here that at the time, it was really the first time that I had given much thought to these things, you know?

He talks about the end of time management and not even trying to manage time. He talks about being effective versus being efficient.

He talks about Pareto’s Law, if you haven’t heard of this it’s the 80-20 Rule, right?

Where it says, “80% of the consequences flow from 20% of the causes”.

And the thing that I loved about this, was it really taught me to focus on that 20%. What was the 20% of the things I was doing that was creating 80% of the results? Letting go of the 80% of the things that were only creating 20% of the results.

Let’s be honest, in business we feel like we have to do all the things, right? But really, we don’t.

We can make the rules.

This was one of the books that helped me to fully embrace that concept, that I could let go of things that were just, okay for me.

There is so many good quotes in this book as well. Let me read a couple that I’ve had highlighted for like, 10 years.

“It’s easy to get caught in a flood of minutia. And the key to not feeling rushed, is remembering that lack of time is actually, lack of priorities.”

(As well as, lack of clarity on those priorities, let’s be real.)

“Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.”

If you have never heard what I just said, rewind that and listen to it again.

This is so crucial, this is such an amazing … Just powerful understanding once you really grasp it.

It’s this idea that if we give ourselves too much time, we fill the time we give. If we time block, like I’ve been talking about, and we give ourselves enough time but not too much, it forces us to get hyper-focused and get it done.

“The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus”.

Boom.

So here’s the thing I love about Tim Ferris, not only will he challenge your very concept of everything that is right and wrong, he will also give you specific, maybe Grade-A strategies on how to do it better.

If strategic is not his number one strength, I would be shocked.

There is obviously a lot more to this book than just time management. I highly recommend it if you’ve never read it before.

It’s so, so good. It’s really going to change the way that you think about our business and that you design your lifestyle around your business or your business around your lifestyle.

BOOK #2 “THE E MYTH REVISITED” BY MICHAEL GERBER

Now, I wasn’t expecting this to necessarily be about time management. I really didn’t know what to expect when I read this book.

What I found was that, if you are struggling in your business with doing all the things, you need this book.

What this book is really about is how to set up your business from concept all the way to million dollar company.

It teaches you to think like an actual entrepreneur instead of what he calls a “technician”.

A technician is a person who wants to do all the things.

An entrepreneur is the person who actually creates a business.

And he talks about modeling it actually, after franchises. If you can get your business so efficient that you can actually hand it to someone else and they can run it, that’s where you know that you’ve done really well.

Now, if you’re like me and you have a more of a service-based business, it can be hard to see how you can take yourself out of your business.

I still encourage you to read this book because there are a lot of ways that you could take yourself out of your business, that you can systemize and structure and create a manual for what you’re doing so that, as you’re scaling your business and you’re bringing people into it, you know exactly how to do that. They are going to know exactly how to do some of the things that you’re currently doing. And you can focus on your zone of genius, which is maybe being the face of your business or connecting with your clients or whatever it might be.

I really think this book is good for the first time entrepreneur or the fifth time entrpreneur, if you’ve never read this book or you haven’t really gotten to the point where you have grown a scalable business.

You need to read this book, you need to make sure that there are no gaps in your knowledge.

It’s just a really great foundational wisdom on how to structure and organize and plan out your business, for the long-term, which I think is really hard for a lot of us to do.

I do have to say however, it is not the most engaging book.

The whole thing is kind of written in a story-telling mode and I didn’t love that. But I did love the concepts in the book.

So, don’t read it for the amazing storytelling and the amazing writing, read it for the amazing concepts.

BOOK #3: “ESSENTIALISM” BY GREG MCKEOWN

Can I just say one of the reasons that I love this book because is that it has big gigantic letters in it, it just makes me really happy to flip to a page and that’s the only thing you have to read.

So, this whole book goes through the “essentialist versus the non-essentialist”.

And it really paints a really good picture between people who are trying to do it all, or even just do too much, and the people who are doing the right things, in the right way, at the right time.

So this one has a few strategies in it, but really I feel like this is more of a mindset book.

It’s really going to change the way you think about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how you’re doing it, if it’s the right thing to do.

It’s going to help you to narrow down on what is the right thing to do.

It’s such a powerful book that I have to read it like, once or twice a year because it’s just sort of, my little wake-up call to make sure that I’m staying aligned in my business, in my life, making sure that I am not wasting time with the busy work, right?

Let me give you a little example of his definition. This is Greg McKeown definition between non-essentialist and the essentialist. It says,

“They live a life that does not satisfy. They take on too much and their work suffers. They feel out of control. They’re unsure of whether the right things got done. They feel overwhelmed and exhausted.” The Essentialist, “Lives a life that really matters. They choose carefully in order to do great work. They feel in control. They get the right things done and they experience joy in the journey.”

If any of that resonated with you, and I’m pretty sure it did if you are here looking for books on time management, please read this book. Because really, it is not about time management.

Again, as Tim Ferris said, it’s about priorities.

And this book is going to give you the little mindset smackdown that you need to help you to stick with those priorities.

BOOK #4: “GETTING THINGS DONE” BY DAVID ALLEN

Could you get any more practical than “Getting Things Done”?

While these other books go into some strategies and they talk about a lot of mindset and perspective shifts around time management, this is literally just straight up time management.

This is like, how to actually do the things.

How to organize the things, how to structure the things.

It’s all about the things.

Now, I’ll be honest with you, this is not my favorite book. It’s very nitty gritty, a little hard to get through.

Lots and lots and lots of ideas in here though. Oh my gosh!

He talks about mastering the workflow, the five stages of project planning, setting up time, space and tools, corralling your stuff, getting your inboxes to empty.

I mean like, literally there’s so much in here that this is practically the Bible of getting things done.

So, this book is great for people who have the right mindset, they’re making sure they’re prioritizing the right things, they’re focusing on that essentialism, but they just need some really practical strategies, then this will be the book for you.

IF YOU STRUGGLE WITH TIME, DO YOU ALSO STRUGGLE WITH SELF-CARE?

Alright so, we’ve gone over the four books for time management that I love and recommend.

Can I now drop a little recommendation for something else I think you might need?

I know how hard it is to make time for self-care, which is why I created a free training called, “Self-Care in Seconds”.

It’s going to drop some really healthy mindsets on you to help you to shift from self-care being a bunch of tasks that you’re trying to put on your already stuffed To-Do list, to self-care being a way that you do things that enables you to meet your needs and always feel filled up with enough to pour out to others.

The training also includes a list of practical things you can do for self-care in as little as 30 seconds.

Because the goal here is not to spend an hour on self-care if you legitimately don’t have an hour right now.

It’s to be able to fit these things in throughout your day instead.

So if you’re struggling with time management, you are probably struggling to fit in time for self-care.

Please take the time to download this free training. It’s 100% free.

WHAT ABOUT YOU, BOSS LADY?

Have you read one of these books? What did you think about them? Or, do you have another time management book that you highly recommend to other boss ladies?

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