I recently finished reading Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit, which I enjoyed tremendously. It seemed a bit wordy and redundant in some parts, but I liked the whole-person model that incorporates body, heart, mind, and spirit. Covey applies his concepts mainly to large organizations, but most of the ideas scale well to the level of personal productivity. I thought it was a nice touch that the book includes a DVD with 16 short videos, although I’d only say 3 or 4 of the videos added anything of substance.

If you enjoyed reading The 7 Habits, then I’d highly recommend The 8th Habit as well. But even if you haven’t read the first book, the 7 habits are summarized in the second quite nicely.

This isn’t the kind of book that gives you practical and immediately applicable ideas. Instead it makes you think about high-level, top-down concepts and how you might choose to follow them down to the level of action.

My next book to read will be Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan.

And after that will be Getting Things Done by Edwin Bliss (as opposed to the book of the same title by David Allen); this book was recommended by a reader in a previously posted comment — it appears to be out of print, but I found a used copy on Amazon for $3.50 (including shipping).