Welcome to a special edition of Intelligent Tuesday, from the Intelligent Change team (creators of The Five Minute Journal, Productivity Planner, and My Commitment). This Intelligent Tuesday includes a Best of 2017 list of resources that has enhanced our lives. The first resource listed in each section is based on the most popular reader response, while the second resource is our personal favourite.

We want to share these with you to spread joy, productivity, and self-fulfillment as we wish you all the best for the New Year!

Articles

Article (5 Minutes) - Taking Care of Yourself Is Not Being Selfish: A 3-Hour Challenge by Brian Fishbach: With time-sucking temptations like Netflix, social media, email and TV News, it’s easy for days to slip away. Soon, you look back on your days, weeks, and months with resentment. This post by Brian Fishback provides a simple daily system to ensure you enjoy every day going forward.

Article (2 Minutes) - Make Two Lists by Seth Godin: Plagued with self-doubt? Find yourself frequently comparing yourself to others’ success? Feel like you are all alone? This simple, but profound post by Seth Godin has the antidote to our daily woes. Doing this will probably be the most important thing you do this year.

Videos

Video (5 Minutes) - Josh Kaufman | 20 Hours to Learn Anything: You may be familiar with the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. But what if you could become good at something after only 20 hours? In this quick talk, teacher Josh Kaufman shows you a roadmap of how it’s possible.

Video (13 Minutes) - Tim Ferriss: Why You Should Define Your Fears Instead of Your Goals: Often the thing holding us back from our goals is our fears - fears of focusing on one thing vs many, fear that we are not smart enough, fear of criticism from loved ones, etc.. In this excellent TED talk, Tim Ferriss shows how a fear-setting exercise may be the key to transforming your life (it’s the same exercise he did to cut his 80 hour work week business to the infamous 4 hours). Once you finish the talk, check out this Gheet a fan put together based on the talk. Act now and get it here.

Must-Read Books

Book - The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle: The Little Book of Talent is a manual for building a faster brain and a better you. The product of five years of reporting from the world’s greatest talent hotbeds and interviews with successful master coaches, it distills the daunting complexity of skill development into 52 clear, concise ideas. UJ, our co-founder, affectionately calls it The Cute Book to Help You Get Better.

Book - All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin: Warren and Charlie have made a living by simplifying the complex; and, this book is no different. You’ll learn how to avoid misery in life, fix mistakes faster, and simplify decision making. This is an excellent field guide to life that will completely rewrite your mental models.

Other Resources

Resource PDF (10 Minutes) - How to Read a Book: Mortimer J. Adler famously wrote a 400 page book called How to Read a Book. While it is a fantastic read on how to take your reading to the next level, we also recommend this handy guide put together by the University of Michigan. It’s the 80/20 for retaining and forming better mental connections for nonfiction reading (including, articles, books, studies, and more).

Article (10 minutes) - 6 Findings After Researching 1,000 Self-Help Articles Over 6 Months: Written by Intelligent Change teammate, Kevin, this article condenses learnings from the 1,000’s of happiness and productivity articles he sifts through each week while crafting this very newsletter! If you are dealing with FOMO and feel overwhelmed with the sheer amount of self-improvement information, start here.

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Thank you for reading. We are so grateful for all of your support in 2017 and look forward to even more fun, growth, and inspiration in 2018!