The Deliberate Owl

Grad students are notoriously busy. But if you work smarter, you can fit in everything you need to do with less stress and more life satisfaction. Here are five key books that will help you manage your time, do more meaningful work, and be happier, too!

1. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss (Harper Business, 2016)

This is an A+ book about negotiating. Chris Voss was the lead hostage negotiator for the FBI. Every chapter starts off with anecdotes from his time in the FBI, giving the book a high paced high stakes feel. The stories are one of the highlights, but the skills you can learn from him and his discussion of negotiation tactics could change your life. Whether you're negotiating for a higher salary in a future job, with your advisor about which hours you want to work and how many meetings you should attend, or with your landlord over rent, this book has advice you can put to use right away.

2. Deep Work: Rules for Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport (Grand Central Publishing, 2016)

The book on working well and efficiently. This one changed how I worked during graduate school. This book has the why and how of getting quality work done. Newport contrasts deep work with shallow work. Deep work includes the tasks that you need time to sit and think to do, like writing, coding, planning experiments, synthesizing information, and so on. Shallow work is the sort of stuff that should be outsourced or automated, the stuff that doesn't take you specifically to do, such as emails, chasing down references, formatting things. If you had an assistant, their job would be the shallow stuff to free you up for more deep work time. This book is Newport's guide to creating more deep work time for yourself, developing the habits to support deep work, and task scheduling using his time block planning method. He describes the problems with switching between tasks frequently, why social media in the middle of your day is eating your productivity, and so much more.

3. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (Knopf, 2016)

This is the best career and life planning book that I have read! Burnett and Evans present a design-oriented approach to creating a life that you love living, so that you live coherently with your values and goals. They explain how a design mindset can help you evaluate your path; how to use design tools such as ideation, iteration, and incremental improvement; how to find great jobs that will satisfy you (including how to hold informational interviews!), and so much more. Every chapter has practical exercises that you can try to actually design your life. Read my in depth review!

(Read: The Incremental Method to Achieving Long-Term Goals and Getting Things Done)

4. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being by Martin Seligman (Atria Books, 2011)

If you want to live a flourishing life, to be happy and fulfilled, have great relationships and meaningful work, Seligman's book will tell you how. Seligman is a leading researcher on positive psychology. This is the book where he explains what actually makes people satisfied and content with their lives, using the PERMA model: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. He includes exercises and self-reflective questions to help you evaluate your own life and help you consider what makes your life feel worthwhile.

5. Grad School Life: Surviving and Thriving Beyond Coursework and Research by Jacqueline Kory-Westlund (Columbia University Press, 2024)

This is the guidebook I wish I'd had when I started grad school. It's a pragmatic, up-to-date guide to thriving in graduate school while keeping a healthy personal life and preparing for your career—whether in academia or beyond. Unlike most other books on grad school, this one covers challenges both on and off campus. It shares candid, specific advice on personal finances, mental health, setting your own learning and career goals, maintaining friendships and relationships, and more. Plus, it's filled with concrete exercises to evaluate your situation and get started on next steps. There are detailed resource lists pointing you toward all the other books, websites, podcasts, and more you might need.

Read more about the process of creating my book here—and if you're interested, order it today!