1: What is the book you’ve given most as a gift, and why?

Digging into the first question posed by Tim Ferriss in “Tribe of Mentors” (here are all of his questions), he asks:

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

This one elicited a lot of great responses from the people that supplied answers to him. Here are some of the best that I found in the book.

From actor Terry Crews:

The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel. I have read hundreds of personal development books, but this is the one that clearly showed me how to visualize, contemplate, and focus on what it was I truly wanted. It revealed to me that we only get what we desire most, and to apply myself with a laserlike focus upon a goal, task, or project. That in order to “have” you must “do,” and in order to “do” you must “be”—and this process is immediate. Although it takes time for these desires to manifest in our material world, you must see the thing you desire as completed, finished, and real, now. The better you can do this, the more you can accomplish. I have bought several copies of this book and distributed it to family and friends. I also reread it probably once a month to keep my vision clear.

From Naval Ravikant:

Everything by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. Genome, The Red Queen, The Origins of Virtue, The Rational Optimist—they’re all great.

From Dustin Moskovitz:

15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman. Though most people will typically blame other people or circumstances in their life when they are unhappy, Buddhists believe that we are the cause of our own suffering. We can’t control the fact that bad things are going to happen, but it’s how we react to them that really matters, and that we can learn to control.

Quite a few of them mentioned “Man’s Search for Meaning“, including Jimmy Fallon:

If I gave one to an adult, it would be Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I read it while spending ten days in the ICU of Bellevue hospital trying to reattach my finger from a ring avulsion accident in my kitchen. It talks about the meaning of life, and I believe you come out a better person from reading it. The lines I took from it are: “There is no exact answer to the question ‘what is the meaning of life.’ It’s like asking a chess master ‘what is the best move in the world?’ It all depends on what situation you are in.” It also reinforced the belief, that which does not kill me makes me stronger. If you read it, you’ll get more from it.

I also noticed that Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens” was in there a lot, including these notes from Ashton Kutcher:

The brainy book I seem to be sharing or talking about the most lately is Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. The more that I study people and the way systems work, the more I realize that it’s all made up. It’s easy to spout philosophies, or quote books, well-known people, or doctrines as if they are somehow of more credence than others, but the deeper you dig, the more you realize we are all just standing on piles of collective fiction. This book does a great job of illustrating that point.

My list

I thought about this question for a while, and settled on these four:

• Think Again by Adam Grant, one of my favorite books from the past few years.
• The Business of Expertise by David C. Baker, which I’ve shared on here quite a few times.
• Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller, easily the book I’ve given away the most copies of.
• Getting Things Done by David Allen. It impacted me 20 years ago, and it ultimately helped me get my life organized to the point to be able to start a business.

What book(s) would you add to this list?