The Best Books I Read in 2020

Six books carried me through 2020: Atomic Habits, The Infinite Game, The Millionaire Mind, Hooked, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, and Go-Givers Sell More. Between habits, parenting, money, and long games, it was a year of reading about how to keep going rather than how to win outright — which, given that most of us spent the year stuck at home, feels about right.

Here’s what made the list.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Atomic Habits is James Clear’s case for tiny, repeatable improvements over big, dramatic ones. Get 1% better each day and, a year later, you’re a different person; the compounding does the work that willpower can’t.

I gave this five stars because it reframed my whole approach to change. I’d always thought about habits in terms of goals — lose the weight, write the book — but Clear’s point is that goals set a direction while systems actually get you there. Fix the system, and the outcome you wanted shows up almost as a side effect.

If you’ve set the same New Year’s resolution three years running, this is the book that explains why, and what to build instead.

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Sinek’s argument here is that business isn’t a game you can win, it’s a game you can only keep playing. Companies that treat competitors as opponents to be defeated eventually run out of road, while the ones that last are playing for the sake of staying in the game itself.

What stayed with me was the shift in what counts as success. It’s not the next quarter’s numbers, it’s whether the organization is still healthy enough to be around for the next surprise. That’s a useful lens for anything you plan to be doing for more than a year.

Read it if you’re tired of measuring your work only in short, finish-line terms.

The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley

The Millionaire Mind is Stanley’s follow-up to his research on how ordinary people actually build wealth, and the finding hasn’t changed: real millionaires are mostly frugal, unglamorous, and nothing like the lifestyle you’d picture from television.

I rated this five stars because it’s such a clean correction to the popular image of wealth. The people in Stanley’s data buy used cars, live in modest houses, and spend far less than they could — and that restraint, repeated for decades, is the actual mechanism. There’s no secret, just patience most of us don’t practice.

Read this if you associate wealth with spending, and want that association gently dismantled.

Hooked by Nir Eyal

Hooked lays out the trigger-action-reward-investment loop that keeps you opening the same apps over and over, whether you meant to or not. Eyal wrote it as a guide for product builders, but reading it as a user is its own kind of eye-opening.

It’s a useful book and a slightly unsettling one at the same time. Once you can name the loop, you start seeing it everywhere — in the apps on your phone, in your own habits, in the five extra minutes you always spend scrolling before bed. Knowing the mechanism doesn’t switch it off, but it does put a hand on the light switch.

Worth reading whether you build products or just want to understand why you can’t put your phone down.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman

I picked this one up as a parent of a young kid, and it turned out to be less a parenting manual than a book about emotion coaching — Gottman’s core idea is simple: name the feeling before you try to fix the behavior.

That one shift changed how I talk to my child. Instead of jumping straight to “stop crying” or “calm down,” I’ve learned to say “you sound really frustrated” first, and let the behavior settle on its own once the feeling’s been acknowledged. I gave it five stars because it’s advice I use nearly every week, not just theory I nodded along to once.

If you’re raising kids and want fewer power struggles, start here.

Go-Givers Sell More by Bob Burg

Burg’s premise is that the best way to sell is to stop selling and start giving value first — the selling, when it happens, is almost incidental. It’s the opposite of the hard-close sales culture most of us picture.

I gave this five stars because it’s a genuinely different way to think about influence: help first, expect nothing back, and trust that the relationship does the rest. It’s a slower approach, but it’s the one that holds up over years instead of one transaction.

Read it if “selling” feels uncomfortable to you — this book might explain why, and offer a version you can live with.

That’s my 2020 list. What was the book that got you through the year? I’d love to know.