Like most years, we spent a lot of our time in 2022 reading. While not all of these books were written or released this past year, these are the ones we read that stuck out as the most impactful on our thinking– they cover a wide range of topics from work skills, our brain, community, work, life advice, racism, and more.

Take a look and hope something here will change the way you think, too!

Range
David Epstein

Our culture promotes specialization and committing to a single talent. But the most successful people and the most interesting and viable solutions come from a breadth of experience. Lots of great notes about being stuck in sunk costs vs changing paths for a better fit and how that serves people as they learn about themselves. It’s a great read if you identify as someone with multiple interests or are curious about non-linear career thinking.

The Overstory
Richard Powers

This may be the only book of fiction I’ve ever read that had such a deep impact on how I see the world, and more specifically, trees. It’s definitely the first one as a Caveday recommendation. 9 complex individuals with different relationships to trees all come together in different ways. One big takeaway was about looking at life through a tree’s timeline (much longer much slower).

How To Live
Derek Sivers

27 approaches to living your life that all intersect and overlap and conflict with each other. It makes you really reconsider that all advice is just one approach to living and there are lots of ways to live. It’s not a very long book, less than 100 pages, but a book that you can’t read more than about 10 pages without needing to put it down and really sit with what you just read.

Can’t Even
Anne Helen Petersen

If you want to understand how work became what it is, read this. Not only does Petersen go into researched history about the industrial revolution, but more impressive and detailed (and surprising, to me) was the shift that happened in the early 70s around temp workers, consultants, and what shifted office culture from human-centered to bottom-line centered.

Bittersweet
Susain Cain

I’m fascinated by emotional intelligence and learning more about our inner worlds. This book unpacks grief and sadness as integral parts of being human. Why we like sad music, why we find comfort or inspiration on a rainy day, why we connect with imperfection. Not only that, but it will help you navigate your own heavier emotions and connect with others who feel more deeply.

Free Time
Jenny Blake

A practical guide to working less. Building the systems of automation, delegation, and prioritization of less time working and ore time for yourself. Ironically, there wasn’t a whole lot of writing about the value of rest or the downside of capitalism as a system. It was just a little more surface about wanting more time for yourself and not burning out. I found it surprisingly useful and I’m still going through the tools and resources weeks later.

Almost Everything
Anne Lamott

As the title suggests, this book captures so much about life. It’s a graceful, poetic, and insightful exploration into our lives, meaning, questions, and our role in the world. It’s not intended as a book about advice or telling you what to do or even how to see the world. But it ends up making you see things in a new way. And, like a lot of Lamott’s work, it’s an invitation to overcome creative resistance and write more.

Stamped From The Beginning
Ibram X. Kendi

An eye-opening book about the history of racist ideas in the world. Going back to ancient greece and spanning the last 500 years through slavery, colonies, early America, civil war, civil rights movements, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years. So many insights and ideas about the ideas that seem so “American” are rooted in white supremacy. It was an important book in my journey in anti-racism and understanding my own privilege

Rest is Resistance
tricia Hersey

We’re big fans of Hersey’s Instagram account and brand, “The Nap Ministry.” It’s more than just getting sleep, but about the idea of rest and naps as actual resistance. She’s helping to rewrite our social scripts and is a great model for freeing ourselves from grind culture. This book is a powerful manifesto about that.

24/6
Tiffany Shlain

This is a personal story of filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s quest to give up screens one day a week for over a decade. It’s a thought-provoking and entertaining journey that will make you rethink your relationship to technology and provides a blueprint for doing it yourself.

Stolen Focus
Johan Harari

Constant switching from tabs and devices diminishes our presences and makes us, in a word, more depressed. This is a deep dive into the neuroscience and research on our attention. We think our inability to focus is a personal failure, when the reality is harsher than that– our focus has been stolen by corporations for profit.

Big Friendship
Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

These two women tell the story of their life through the lends of friendship. The define Big Friendship as a bond that transcends life phases and geography. This book explores how our friendships are formed, how they are challenged, and how they can be preserved.

We hope this list inspires you to read or listen more in the coming year and helps you find more focus, insight, and joy along the way.

Have a book that you think we’d enjoy or should read in the coming year? We’d love any new recommendations. Have a happy and healthy new year.

Caveday is on a mission to help you improve your relationship to work. We write regularly and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.