With 2022 coming to a close, we’re finally ready to put this rollercoaster of a year behind us. But before we do, we need to back at some of the best books we reviewed from this past year, along with a few others we’ve read and recommended for outside of the office.

And while 2022 has been a year when everything has felt like it has doubled in price, we’re going to pack at least double the information in here for you. So take that, inflation.

Top Product Books

Four Thousand Weeks

It’s no exaggeration to say that this book really changed my mindset on time. I used to be obsessed with productivity—squeezing every ounce out of every minute in the day. And then being disappointed with myself when I inevitably fell short of my impossible to-do list. But I’ve shifted my thinking. I constantly find myself repeating “it takes the time that it takes” and “I’ll get done what I get done.” I still try to be productive, but not at the expense of my sanity or the most important things in life. The shifts may be big or sometimes subtle, but for me they’ve been life-changing.

Product Thinking

Four Thousand Weeks

My wife was stressing about her long to-do list recently: clean the kitchen, pick up Christmas gifts, design some shirts, complete some orders for her store, and so on. It was an impressively long list—more than she could do in a day, or even a few day…

Read more

3 months ago · 3 likes · Kyle Evans

How Innovation Works

The book How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley was an excellent read and one of the top ones for this year. Innovation is the reason why life continues to improve so incredibly fast and why we can expect and hope that our lives will continue to improve. It may not always be linear, but doing more, creating more, and making it more valuable is key to innovation. We need to ensure that we cultivate the right environments for innovation to thrive. We can’t dictate the success of any specific innovation, but we can ensure that we create space in our work, our companies, our communities and our governments to allow innovation to create magic.

Product Thinking

How Innovation Works: Book Review

This month we are reviewing the book How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley. I’ve had this book on my shelf literally for almost 2 years now. I purchased it at the beginning of the pandemic and have been meaning to get to it for a while. And I’m glad I finally did. It has so many elements that I love—a host of stories of i…

Read more

10 months ago · Kyle Evans

Build

The book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making is the final one we’ll put on the list of product books for this year. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in building products. No matter where you are in your career, just starting out or CEO, there is something for you. And not just from someone who thinks they know. Tony has done the job, so it is a practical book about building worthwhile products.

Product Thinking

Build by Tony Fadell: Book Review

Product Thinking Book Review Tony Fadell led the incredibly successful teams that built the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat. He also led or was part of other teams that failed just as big. So his new book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making…

Read more

9 months ago · 2 comments · Kyle Evans

We reviewed many other great books this year (one each month), so go back through the archive and check out the other book reviews if you missed any.

Other Favorite Books

Of course, I don’t just read product and business books, because that sounds awful. If you’ve followed some of my previous posts in years past, you know I’m a big fan of history and science fiction. So let me give you a few more books I read this year (not necessarily written this year) that I found fascinating and exciting.