As a leader, you must never become complacent. Rather, you should always be on a journey of growth and development. 

There are five books that have helped me incredibly in doing so. I discussed them last week on Leading the Factory Forward. These books have not only increased my skill set but also taught me how to become a better learner. 

If you will take the concepts from them and put them into practice, you will begin to develop great new habits that will make you the best leader you have ever been.  

1. Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith

In the book Triggers, Goldsmith talks about several things. The first is triggers. Triggers are the things that get you started and set off habits you want to implement. Triggers and the habits they support will start you on the path towards learning new skills. 

The book also talks about structures and why we need them. As an example, the CEO of Ford Motors had a weekly business plan review. It was a highly structured meeting with his top 12 executives. Each of the executives had to present the same information in the same way. No deviations were allowed which provided consistency. People knew what was going to be expected of them at these meetings. This produced great success and forward motion in the company. 

2. Atomic Habits by James Clear

In Clear’s book, he talks about atomic habits and how they shape us. He also lays out the 4 steps to implementing habits. They all include a cue, a craving, a response, and a reward. 

The actual steps are:

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy

4. Make it satisfying

3. Deep Work by Cal Newport

Deep work is valuable and rare time you spend doing one task. 

Most of us multitask our way through life. We jump from thing to thing and are often distracted. 

Deep work, on the other hand, is a process where you choose a sole activity to focus on for between 25 minutes and 90 minutes. 

In his book, Newport gives 4 guidelines for doing deep work:

1. Work deeply

2. Embrace boredom

3. Quit social media

4. Drain the shallows

4. The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

Kaufman, the author of this book, used an amazing process to learn a wide variety of skills. Some of them include yoga, programming, playing the ukulele, and windsurfing. 

Here are the 10 steps of his process:

1. Focus your energy on one skill at a time

2. Define your target performance level

3. Deconstruct skills into subskills

4. Obtain critical tools

5. Eliminate barriers to practice

6. Make dedicated time to practice

7. Create fast feedback loops

8. Practice by the clock in short bursts

9. Emphasize quantity and speed

5. Effortless by Greg McKeown

In McKeown’s book, he talks about some ideas on how to make work effortless. He poses an important question: what if your work could actually be easy and fun? We must try to find ways to make it so.

Another concept that stood out from the book is that McKeown reminds his readers to let go of things that aren’t high priority according to the goals they've set for themselves. 

We also need to define what done looks like. What is your target level of performance? What is the goal you’re trying to reach by the end of your project? Is it 99% done or is it closer to 90% or 85%? Stop chasing perfection forever and figure out what done means for you.

Finally, McKeown says to automate things. This may also include offloading some tasks that others can do for you. 

Try out these concepts today and you’ll be set to keep growing for the rest of your life.