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There are sure signs of summer. The weather heats up. Business slows down. And blogs and other publications offer their summer reading lists. Me too.

I'm actually going to post several lists. Each list will be short, a maximum of six books. Most of the books will be short. Each list will have a theme. As I post additional lists, I'll cross reference them. Other lists are:

Summer Re-Reading Mini-List

This is my Personal Productivity Reading Mini-List. It's a short list of excellent books that will help you think better, organize your work better, and manage your energy and concentration more effectively.

Why not start with the book subtitled: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity? Getting Things Done by David Allen has developed a cult following. You don't have to join the cult. It offers a complete system for getting and staying organized. You don't have to adopt the whole thing. If you just adopt the core, deciding on the "next action" for everything you need to do, this book will help you become dramatically more productive.

Maybe you shouldn't be managing time at all. That's the theory of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book The Power of Full Engagement. They think you should be managing energy. It makes sense and it works.

Years ago I read some of the first research on ultradian rhythms, natural biological rhythms that occur more than once a day. The best research on them has been done by Ernest Rossi and he's captured them in The 20 Minute Break. His findings match research at the National Institutes of Health and on excellent executive practices going back more than forty years.

While you're getting your work patterns in good order, you may want to improve your thinking processes as well. Just your luck, Tim Hurson's recent book, Think Better is there to help. It's the only book I know that covers all the basic thinking processes and gives you a framework, called The Productive Thinking Model, to use them well.

This has been a good year for productivity books. How the Wise Decide: The Lessons of 21 Extraordinary Leaders, by Aaron Sandoski and Bryn Zeckhauser will entertain you with stories about decision making that will also teach you something.

Boss's Bottom Line

This is a list of short, helpful books that will help you be more productive. They should help you improve every part of your life.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.