David Allen's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2026)

1

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

Adam Grant

4.3

Give and Take highlights what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common.

For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers.

Recommended by Arianna Huffington, Dan Ariely, David Allen, and 17 others.

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

“I love this book, which shows that givers get ahead and nice guys don’t finish last. [source]

Simon Sinek

Author

Gotta say, I'm pretty flattered every time asks me if I've read @AdamMGrant book Give and Take. Good guy. Good book [source]

Susan Cain

Author

As brilliant as it is wise, this is not just a book—it’s a new and shining worldview. [source]

2

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

David Allen

4.2

Preview Summary

"The Bible of business and personal productivity" —Lifehack

"A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company

Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now sh

Recommended by David Allen, Dustin Moskovitz, Ev Williams, and 19 others.

Dustin Moskovitz

Co-founder/Facebook and Asana

Put first things first. [source]

Tony Hsieh

CEO/Zappos.com

Getting Things Done by David Allen. He recently spoke at our Zappos all-hands meeting and gave me a signed copy of his book. [source]

Eric Rose

Chairman/Columbia University Department of Surgery

When I'm flat-out stressed about the volume and complexity of my work, I open this book and find immediate ways to gain a sense of control. That's really a critical need for decision making. David made me what I am today: headstrong and proud of it. [source]

3

Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It

Dorie Clark

4.2

Standing out is no longer optional

Too many people believe that if they keep their heads down and work hard, they’ll be recognized on the merits of their work. But that’s simply not true anymore. “Safe” jobs disappear daily, and the clamor of everyday life drowns out ordinary contributions. To make
a name for yourself, to create true job security, and to make a difference in the world, you have to

Recommended by David Allen.

4

Do the Work

Steven Pressfield

4.3

“There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.” —Steven Pressfield

Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don’t know where to start?

Recommended by David Allen, David Cancel, Jeff Bullas, and 1 others.

5

The Win Without Pitching Manifesto

Blair Enns

4.7

Recommended by David Allen.

6

The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace

Ron Friedman PhD

4.4

For readers of Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, and Freakonomics, comes a captivating and surprising journey through the science of workplace excellence.

Why do successful companies reward failure?What can casinos teach us about building a happy workplace?How do you design an office that enhances both attention to detail and creativity?

In The Best Place to Work , award-winning psychologist Ron Fried

Recommended by David Allen.

7

Power Questions - Build Relationships, Win New Business and Influence Others

Andrew Sobel

4.1

An arsenal of powerful questions that will transform every conversation Skillfully redefine problems. Make an immediate connection with anyone. Rapidly determine if a client is ready to buy. Access the deepest dreams of others. Power Questions sets out a series of strategic questions that will help you win new business and dramatically deepen your professional and personal relationships. The book

Recommended by David Allen.

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8

Breaking Rank: How to lead change when yesterday's stories limit today's choices

Steven Coutinho

4.5

Recommended by David Allen.

David Allen

Author

Just finished a book I couldn't put down. Met Steven doing TedX together in Curacao. Simple, brilliant, & critically relevant now. https://t.co/PIBMj09y8j [source]

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9

The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life

Steve Zaffron, Dave Logan

4.3

A proven system for rallying all of an organizations' employees around a new vision and ideas for making the vision stick When something at work isn't going smoothly, managers struggle with what part of the problem to tackle first. Do they start with cost reduction? Or should they go for process improvements first? The authors--who have helped hundreds of companies and individuals change and impro

Recommended by David Allen.

10

Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder

Arianna Huffington

4.0

In Thrive, Arianna Huffington makes an impassioned and compelling case for the need to redefine what it means to be successful in today's world.

Arianna Huffington's personal wake-up call came in the form of a broken cheekbone and a nasty gash over her eye -- the result of a fall brought on by exhaustion and lack of sleep. As the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group -- o

Recommended by Andrew Liveris, David Allen, and Andra Zaharia.

Andrew Liveris

CEO/Dow Chemical Company

Dow Chemical Company chairman and CEO Liveris will take this time to get away from heavier reading and enjoy some of the most highly acclaimed novels of the past year. [source]

Andra Zaharia

While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read … Thrive. [source]

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11

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

Todd Henry

4.1

Most of us live with the stubborn idea that we'll always have tomorrow. But sooner or later all of our tomorrows will run out. Each day that you postpone the hard work and succumb to the clutter that chokes creativity, discipline, and innovation will result in a net deficit to the world, to your company, and to yourself. Die Empty is a tool for individuals and companies that aren't willing to put

Recommended by David Allen and Todd Henry.

Todd Henry

My book about unleashing your best work every day. [source]

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12

Seeing the Big Picture: Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company

Kevin Cope

4.1

The most successful business leaders are savvy businesspeople first and experts in their field second

An MBA in under 180 pages, Seeing the Big Picture simplifies the complexities of businesses large and small and shows you how a deep understanding of your company can help build the credibility and career you want. And it can make your work more fulfilling and purpose-driven by highlighting how yo

Recommended by David Allen.

13

Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work

Dan Roam

4.1

Ever been to so many meetings that you couldn't get your work done? Ever fallen asleep during a bulletpoint presentation? Ever watched the news and ended up knowing less? Welcome to the land of Blah Blah Blah.The Problem: We talk so much that we don't think very well. Powerful as words are, we fool ourselves when we think our words alone can detect, describe, and defuse the multifaceted problems o

Recommended by David Allen.

14

Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom

Daniel T. Willingham

4.3

Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off. Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television program, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test?

Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding o

Recommended by Bill Gates and David Allen.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012. [source]

15

Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

Caroline Myss

4.4

Building on wisdom from Hindu, Christian, and Kaballah traditions, this comprehensive guide to energy healing reveals the hidden stresses, beliefs, and attitudes that cause illness.

Anatomy of the Spirit is the boldest presentation to date of energy medicine by one of its premier practitioners, internationally acclaimed medical intuitive Caroline Myss, one of the "hottest new voices in the alternat

Recommended by David Allen and Tudor Teodorescu.

Tudor Teodorescu

I can say that my area, or my background involves a lot of practical work, traveling, learning and performing a big variety of sports, meeting new people and making contacts. But taking into account that being a young entrepreneur I wish I had known a lot of things before starting everything. Therefore, what I would suggest people to do is invest a lot in themselves professionally and personally, where I put a lot of emphasis on developing an equilibrium between mind, body and spirit. This equilibrium will help a lot in everything you do in your daily life. So these are the books I would recommend. [source]

16

Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America

James Fallows, Deborah Fallows

4.0

A vivid, surprising portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place in America, town by town and generally out of view of the national media. A realistically positive and provocative view of the country between its coasts.

For the last five years, James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, they have met hundre

Recommended by David Allen and Ali Wyne.

David Allen

Author

Fab book releasing today by friends James and Deborah Fallows - chronicle of their experiences of middle-American community success stories. Must read, if you care about how people who care can really make a difference! https://t.co/7oMJ6LnE7L [source]

Ali Wyne

There has always been this contrived boundary between domestic policy and foreign policy. They have always been intimately intertwined, but with the populist and nationalist stirrings we’re seeing, I think that looking at the relationship between the two and recognizing the artificiality of the boundary between the two of them is becoming more important. [source]

17

Don't Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training

Karen Pryor

4.4

A Better Way to Better Behavior

Karen Pryor's clear and entertaining explanation of behavioral training methods made Don't Shoot the Dog! a bestselling classic. Now this revised edition presents more of her insights into animal—and human—behavior.

A groundbreaking behavioral scientist and dynamic animal trainer, Karen Pryor is a powerful proponent of the principles and practical uses of positive rei

Recommended by David Allen and Tristan Harris.

Cover unavailable

18

Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work

Russell Bishop, David Allen

3.8

Master the Art of the Workaround to Boost Your Productivity!

"With the variety of challenges leaders face every day, Russell Bishop has hit on an amazingly simple and highly effective solution: the 'workaround.' This is a brilliant approach to facing day-to-day business challenges, and it works!"
--Marshall Goldsmith, world-renowned executive coach and author of the "New York Times" bestsellers "Mo

Recommended by David Allen.

19

The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir

Katrina Kenison

4.0

The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition-boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, an attempt to find a deeper sense of place, and a slower pace, in a small New England town. It is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with te

Recommended by David Allen.

20

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.2

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father

Recommended by David Allen.

21

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

Winifred Gallagher

3.8

Winifred Gallagher revolutionizes our understanding of attention and the creation of the interested life

In Rapt, acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it. Gallagher grapples with provocative questions—Can we train our focus? What’s different abo

Recommended by David Allen.

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22

The 8 Essential Skills for Supervisors & Managers

Paul Knudstrup

3.9

If you are a new supervisor, a recently promoted manager, a team member who is now leading the team, or a project worker who has responsibility for managing several projects with other independents, then this book is for you. That's because this book gives you the keys to success - the 8 Essential Skills for Supervisors & Managers. The job of first-line supervisor and middle-manager (the first and

Recommended by David Allen.

Cover unavailable

23

Steve Jobs I Leadership

Jay Elliot, William L. Simon, et al

4.2

Recommended by David Allen.

24

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Atul Gawande

4.3

Preview Summary

The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist

We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies‚neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer

Recommended by Bill Gates, David Allen, Jack Dorsey, and 10 others.

David Allen

Author

Atul is really talking about how absolutely powerful checklists are, and I think he makes a very creative point: that checklist are not just some static, boring thing. They actually allow you to do excellent work and free up your brain by not having to keep remembering what you need to do when. That then allows your brain to be a lot more creative about whatever it is you’re doing. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

A great read. [source]

Jack Dorsey

Co-Founder/Twitter

recommends this book because he knows that top notch execution is essential to business. [source]

25

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

Daniel J. Levitin

4.0

Preview Summary

New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details.

The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more—and faster—decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing ca

Recommended by David Allen and Satya Nadella.

David Allen

Author

Your head is not designed to remember, remind, prioritize, or manage relationships with more than four things. I’ve known this experientially for the last 35 years—that your head is for having ideas, but it’s a terrible place to hang onto them. Levitin validated that in a very rigorously researched book. [source]

26

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

Oliver Burkeman

4.3

Preview Summary

Self-help books don't seem to work. Few of the many advantages of modern life seem capable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth—even if you can get it—doesn't necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can't even agree on what "happiness" means. So are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way?

Looking both

Recommended by David Allen and 1 others.

David Allen

Author

He describes Stoicism, the philosophy of accepting current reality so that you can move past it. That is such a key, key element. It’s a real key element of getting things done, in a way, because a lot of people resist what I teach because they don’t want to look at all the commitments that they’ve made, face up to it. [source]

27

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney

4.2

One of the world's most esteemed and influential psychologists, Roy F. Baumeister, teams with New York Times science writer John Tierney to reveal the secrets of self-control and how to master it. In Willpower, the pioneering researcher Roy F. Baumeister collaborates with renowned New York Times science writer John Tierney to revolutionize our understanding of the most coveted human virtue: self-

Recommended by Dan Ariely, David Allen, Steven Pinker, and 1 others.

David Allen

Author

Who knew that a book about such a daunting topic could be as wonderfully entertaining as it is enlightening! Tierney and Baumeister have produced a highly intelligent work full of fascinating information (and great advice) about a core element of modern living. Bravo. [source]

Dan Ariely

Author

Willpower affects almost every aspect of our lives. From procrastination, to saving for retirement to exercising, Tierney and Baumeister have given us a wonderful book in which they not only share fascinating research on the subject but also provide simple tricks to help us tap into this important quality. [source]

Steven Pinker

Author

The psychologist Roy F. Baumeister has shown that the force metaphor has a kernel of neurobiological reality. In Willpower, he has teamed up with the irreverent New York Timesscience columnist John Tierney to explain this ingenious research and show how it can enhance our lives. . . . Willpower is an immensely rewarding book, filled with ingenious research, wise advice and insightful reflections on the human condition. [source]

28

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Kevin Kelly

4.2

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the twelve technological imperatives that will shape the next thirty years and transform our lives

Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, sh

Recommended by David Allen, Marc Andreessen, Chris Anderson, and 7 others.

David Allen

Author

Kevin said: We’re at a time right now, an apex in our culture, that is more significant than the Industrial Revolution, in terms of how much it’s going to change the world. I love his first chapter. He said, ‘You’re never going to get really good at anything, because everything keeps being updated. [source]

Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz

Automatic must read. [source]

Chris Anderson

This boook offers profound insight into what happens (soon!) when intelligence flows as easily into objects as electricity. [source]

Cover unavailable

29

Brainchains: Discover your brain and unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected multitasking world

Dr Theo Compernolle MD.PhD

4.0

In this book "BRAINCHAINS" you discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world
Prof Dr Theo Compernolle studied over 600 publications, surveyed 1200 professionals and wrote another easy readable and practical book.As a medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist and scholar with decades of experience in medical schools and business schools in many countries, he int

Recommended by David Allen.

David Allen

Author

Theo points out that there’s a third part of the brain, a very important thing that most people I don’t think are aware of, called the archiving brain. The archiving brain is the part of you that takes all the multitudinous inputs that we get 24/7, and starts to knit it together. It works beyond your conscious mind, and it’s absolutely necessary. [source]

Cover unavailable

30

Never Met a Man I Didn't Like

Will Rogers, Joseph H. Carter, Jim Rogers

4.2

Will Rogers "was" America. Part Cherokee Indian and former cowboy, he captivated audiences around the world with sparkling gems of wisdom cloaked in gentle and uproarious country wit and astonishing rope tricks. His colorful life recently inspired a commercially successful and critically acclaimed Broadway musical -- winner of 6 Tony Awards. His words are as entertaining, inspiring and revelant to

Recommended by David Allen.

David Allen

Author

I have a little bit of that in me. [source]

31

The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter

Patrick McKeown

4.3

Preview Summary

A simple yet revolutionary approach to improving your body’s oxygen use, increasing your health, weight loss, and sports performance—whether you’re a recovering couch potato or an Ironman triathlon champion. With a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Dr. Joseph Mercola.

Achieve more with less effort: The secret to weight loss, fitness, and wellness lies in the most basic and most overlook

Recommended by David Allen.

David Allen

Author

I had no idea how critical it is to do nasal breathing instead of mouth breathing. It is amazing stuff. [source]