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Reading is an essential part of staying sober as a designer. However, it is extremely important to read books that are outside of the design genre. We often gravitate toward our favorite magazine or fiction book to escape, but it is equally important to read about business. Hitting up the business section for books on leadership, management, and the marketing section to learn about consumer insights and selling tips can really help you manage your team, sell in the boardroom and your thought process right at your own desk.
Don’t forget to read to remember: take notes, use a highlighter, and most importantly take your time. After each chapter think about how the information in the book can help your business and how can things be tweaked for the better.
That’s what we did, and this is how it helped:
The 4 Hour Work Week - This book by @tferriss has been a bestseller for nearly two years now. Sure, it may seem like another get rich quick scheme, but it isn’t. It challenged us with new ideas around process, email, and design management, leading us to implement Highrise by @37signals. Highrise streamlined our selling process and keeps us all on the same page whether we’re in or out of the office. This new addition has saved us hours of management time which helps us be far more productive.
GroundSwell - Having been out for just over a year now, this book has become a daily reference for how we talk about social technologies and new ways to market them. Since reading this book, we have gained an understanding and subsequently landed new business in creating social communities & blogs around our clients’ products. Now we have an additional product offering and understanding that all started with simply reading one book.
As you can see, just these two books alone helped us grow our business and we are consistently looking for new titles to learn and grow more. Explore these sections of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble and give it a shot!
Other titles we suggest -
