Non-fiction books that changed my life

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Some people dismiss them as self-help. But some of these books can genuinely help you improve your life.

Hand-picked and sealed. Every book here was chosen on purpose — no votes, no algorithm.

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Stacked by rubenfa · Updated 2 hours ago

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The 11 books on this stack

  • Mindset: La actitud del éxito

    Mindset

    Carol Dweck · 2017

    From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset” comes this updated edition of the million-copy bestseller—featuring transformative insights into redefining success, building lifelong resilience, and supercharging self-improvement. “Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes “It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.” After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment. In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love—to transform their lives and your own.

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    Why this book rubenfa

    When I first came across this book, I thought you had to be born good at something. But it turns out that's not true. The mindset you bring to things defines whether you can achieve them or not.

  • Céntrate (Deep Work): Edición especial

    Deep Work

    Cal Newport · 2022

    Millions of copies sold! The bestselling modern classic that sparked a worldwide conversation about the value of concentration—and the true costs of fractured attention. “I’m handing you the answer to the overwhelm you feel, and his name is Dr. Cal Newport.” —Mel Robbins, The Mel Robbins Podcast, author of New York Times bestsellingThe Let Them Theory Deep Work— the ability to focus without distraction on cognitively demanding tasks—is one of the most important abilities you can cultivate in our current moment. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce quality results in less time. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days in a frantic blur of emails, online meetings, social media, and AI slop, not realizing there’s a better way. In Deep Work, bestselling author and professor Cal Newport makes the case for reclaiming focus as a critical skill in our digital world, providing step-by step instructions for achieving this goal, including four rules for transforming your daily habits: 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work offers a vitally important message: in our age of constant distraction, focus is a superpower. With inspiring examples and clear rules, Deep Work will teach you to introduce this ability in your own life. “As a presence on the page, Newport is exceptional in the realm of self-help authors … Six ­pages in, I powered down my laptop. Twenty pages in, I left the house to buy an alarm clock so that I wouldn’t have an excuse to sleep next to my phone.”—Molly Young, The New York Times “One of the few books I would call life-changing.” —Tim Maurer, Forbes “I’ve read lots of books about productivity and lots of books about distraction. For me, Deep Work is among the best, on both counts.” —Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker “[Deep Work] has changed how I live my life. Particularly, it’s led me to stop scheduling morning meetings, and to preserve that time for more sustained, creative work.” —Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show

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    Why this book rubenfa

    In the world of social media and the internet, distractions are ever-present. We are losing our ability to focus, and in this book we learn why we should fight back.

  • Por qué dormimos: La nueva ciencia del sueño

    Why We Sleep

    Matthew Walker · 2020

    "Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.

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    Why this book rubenfa

    I'd always heard that getting 8 hours of sleep was really important. I never knew why, until I read this book. It's not about quantity, it's about quality. And in the modern world we're sleeping less and less, and worse

  • Número uno: Secretos para ser el mejor en lo que nos propongamos

    Peak

    Anders Ericsson · 2017

    Mozart wasn't born with perfect pitch. Most athletes are not born with any natural advantage. Three world-class chess players were sisters, whose success was planned by their parents before they were even born. Anders Ericsson has spent thirty years studying The Special Ones, the geniuses, sports stars and musical prodigies. And his remarkable finding, revealed in Peak, is that their special abilities are acquired through training. The innate 'gift' of talent is a myth. Exceptional individuals are born with just one unique ability, shared by us all - the ability to develop our brains and bodies through our own efforts. Anders Ericsson's research was the inspiration for the popular '10,000-hour rule' but, he tells us, this rule is only the beginning of the story. It's not just the hours that are important but how you use them. We all have the seeds of excellence within us - it's merely a question of how to make them grow. With a bit of guidance, you'll be amazed at what the average person can achieve. The astonishing stories in Peak prove that potential is what you make it.

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    Why this book rubenfa

    Have you heard of the 10,000-hour rule? Though it's partly a myth, this is the book that started it all. Anyone can become truly great at whatever they set their mind to. The secret: deliberate practice.

  • Cómo fracasar en casi todo y aun así triunfar

    How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

    Scott Adams · 2014

    Blasting clichéd career advice, the contrarian pundit and creator of Dilbert recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play the system. Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone you’ve ever met or anyone you’ve even heard of. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world’s most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years? In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares the game plan he’s followed since he was a teen: invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket. No career guide can offer advice that works for everyone. As Adams explains, your best bet is to study the ways of others who made it big and try to glean some tricks and strategies that make sense for you. Adams pulls back the covers on his own unusual life and shares how he turned one failure after another—including his corporate career, his inventions, his investments, and his two restaurants—into something good and lasting. There’s a lot to learn from his personal story, and a lot of entertainment along the way. Adams discovered some unlikely truths that helped to propel him forward. For instance: • Goals are for losers. Systems are for winners. • “Passion” is bull. What you need is personal energy. • A combination of mediocre skills can make you surprisingly valuable. • You can manage your odds in a way that makes you look lucky to others. Adams hopes you can laugh at his failures while discovering some unique and helpful ideas on your own path to personal victory. As he writes: “This is a story of one person’s unlikely success within the context of scores of embarrassing failures. Was my eventual success primarily a result of talent, luck, hard work, or an accidental just-right balance of each? All I know for sure is that I pursued a conscious strategy of managing my opportunities in a way that would make it easier for luck to find me.”

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    Why this book rubenfa

    What I take from this book is the idea of building systems. Sure, motivation is fine, but it's better to have a system in place for when it runs out — and it will.

  • Atomic Habits

    Atomic Habits

    James Clear · 2016

    People say when you want to change your life, you need to think big: swap job, move house, change partner. But they're wrong. World-renowned life coach James Clear has discovered a completely different way to revolutionise your behaviour. He knows that lasting change comes from hundreds of tiny decisions - doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call. He calls these atomic habits.

    Self help
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    Why this book rubenfa

    Habits have become a very popular topic lately. You don't need to be a habit fundamentalist, but understanding how they form — or how to break a bad one — gives you tools for everyday life.

  • COMO GANAR AMIGOS E INFLUIR SOBRE LAS PERSONAS

    COMO GANAR AMIGOS E INFLUIR SOBRE LAS PERSONAS

    Dale Carnegie · 1950

    Dale Carnegie escribió este libro con el propósito de ser un suplemento a su curso sobre oratoria y relaciones humanas y nunca se imaginó que se convertiría en un éxito de ventas y que la gente lo leería, lo criticaría y viviría según sus reglas. Carnegie entrevistó a muchas personas de renombre para tomar ejemplos de sus vidas. Entre ellas están Edison, Franklin D. Rooselvelt y James Farley. Tomado de la contracubierta del libro.

    Self help
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    Why this book rubenfa

    The title has always struck me as a bit creepy. It sounds like a guide to manipulating people into buying your product. But it's nothing of the sort. Useful advice for everyday life.

  • Rompe la barrera del no: 9 principios para negociar como si te fuera la vida en ello

    Rompe la barrera del no ES

    Chris Voss (Negotiator) · 2024

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    Why this book rubenfa

    This book sells itself: a hostage negotiator tells you the best way to negotiate. No Wall Street shark knows as much as he does. And it's not just for work. Tips you can use every day.

  • Signal and the Noise

    Signal and the Noise

    Nate Silver · 2012

    The International Bestseller by 'The Galileo of number crunchers' ( Independent ) Every time we choose a route to work, decide whether to go on a second date, or set aside money for a rainy day, we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the financial crisis to ecological disasters, we routinely fail to foresee hugely significant events, often at great cost to society. The rise of 'big data' has the potential to help us predict the future, yet much of it is misleading, useless or distracting. In The Signal and the Noise , the New York Times political forecaster Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the results of every state in the 2012 US election, reveals how we can all develop better foresight in an uncertain world. From the stock market to the poker table, from earthquakes to the economy, he takes us on an enthralling insider's tour of the high-stakes world of forecasting, showing how we can all learn to detect the true signals amid a noise of data. 'Remarkable and rewarding' Matthew D'Ancona, Sunday Telegraph 'A lucid explanation of how to think probabilistically' Guardian

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    Why this book rubenfa

    In a world where information is almost infinite, you need to separate signal from noise to improve your predictions. And this book shows you how the best forecasters do it.

  • Los desafíos de la memoria

    Moonwalking with Einstein

    Joshua Foer · 2012

    The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory “Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.” —The Boston Globe An instant bestseller that has now become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.

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    Why this book rubenfa

    I always thought you either had a good memory or you didn't. But it turns out that even memory championship winners have trained their skills. The same goes for the author of the book, who ended up becoming the US memory champion. Lots of tricks for memorizing better

  • El valor de la atención

    Stolen Focus

    Johann Hari · 2023

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening—and how to get our attention back. “The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again “Read this book to save your mind.”—Susan Cain, author of Quiet WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity. Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus—as individuals, and as a society—if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.

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    Why this book rubenfa

    This book raises more concerns than solutions. The attention deficit epidemic we are experiencing keeps growing, and as users, there is probably little we can do.