Which books have had the greatest impact on your career?

Reading improves your focus, memory, empathy, and communication skills. Also, it can reduce stress, improve your mental health, and help you learn new things to support your success at work and in life.

The following books have impacted my career. The connection to a book is personal, so you might experience the books differently than I did, but I hope each of them will inspire and encourage you in some way.

Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It's Different Than You Think) - From the founder of Girls Who Code, and bestselling author of Brave, Not Perfect Reshma Saujani. This book confronts the "big lie" of corporate feminism and presents a bold plan to address the burnout and inequity harming America's working women.

Career Self-Care - Like the best advice from a therapist, career counselor, and savvy best friend, this practical resource details dozens of concrete ways to improve work life in any kind of job or entrepreneurial setting. Author Minda Zetlin shows, basic self-care principles are the key, and they apply in both tranquil and turbulent times.

The Power of Moments - This book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest.

Peak Mind - Whether you’re simply browsing, talking to friends, or trying to stay focused in an important meeting, you can’t seem to manage to hang on to your attention. No matter how hard you try, you’re somewhere else. This book by researcher and professor Amish P. Jha explores attention and the consequences of missing out.

A Daily Dose of Sanity - This collection by Alan Cohen of inspiring, poignant, and humorous real-life stories, coupled with uplifting insights, will show you how to keep your head on straight and your heart open no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals - Self-care is an imperative for the ethical practice of social work and other helping professions. From A (awareness) to Z (ZZZZ--Sleep), the editors and contributors use a simple A-to-Z framework to outline strategies to help you build a self-care plan with specific goals and ways to reach them realistically.

Atomic Habits - No matter your goals, Atomic Habits by James Clear offers a proven framework for improving - every day.

Essentialism - Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.

The Power of Now - Accessing the deepest self, the true self, can be learned, author Eckhart Tolle says, by freeing ourselves from the conflicting, unreasonable demands of the mind and living present, fully, and intensely, in the Now.

The Antiracist Business Book - The Antiracist Business Book: An Equity Centered Approach to Work, Wealth, and Leadership is the business book for the modern world. Author Trudi Lebrón has spent the last decade working as a DEI and impact coach for businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs.

Additional titles on my list include:

Burning Ladders Build Bridges - by Alan Patterson

Radical Candor - by Kim Scott

Never Leave Well Enough Alone - by Raymond Loewy

The Language of Letting Go - by Melody Beattie

You're Not Listening - by Kate Murphy

The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays and Lyrics - by Carrie Newcomer

Send me an email, Tracey@professionalselfcare.com if you need additional recommendations or are looking for a resource specific to your field of practice.

If you are looking for another trusted social work book review source I encourage you to visit the The New Social Worker Magazine.