Three Books Every College Student Should Read

1. Designing Your Life By Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

Burnett and Evans, both former Apple execs and now current Stanford professors finally bring the book everyone needs and wants to read. Learn the design process and then apply it to find not who you want to be when you grow up, but who or what you want to grow into.

Don’t just take my or their word for it, doctoral studies on Burnett and Evan’s Stanford class have shown that these techniques allowed students to “…conceive of and pursue a career they really wanted; had fewer dysfunctional beliefs (those pesky ideas that hold you back and that just aren’t true) and an increased ability to generate new ideas for their life design (increasing their ideation capability.)”

2. The 4-Hour Work Week By Tim Ferriss

Are you worried that you’ll end up trapped in a mundane job? Or end up burnt out from an 80-hour work week? This book will reframe everything you’ve been taught about what to look for in a career. No one really wants to be a millionaire, they want to live like a millionaire. So build a career that maximizes your income-to-time ratio. This most likely won’t translate to a literal four-hour work week, but it be what allows you to pursue your dream before you’re 65.

3. The Power of Habit By Charles Duhigg

Are you a chronic procrastinator like I was? Have trouble sticking with your exercise regime? Want to change a habit, but don’t know where to start. Duhigg, a New York Times reporter uses the latest findings in social psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience to explain how habits are formed and how they can be changed. This knowledge can be useful to us college students not only to prevent writing a 15-page paper the night before its due (I got an A), but also in our future careers. Once you understand habits, they can be used not only to modify our own behavior, but also to modify group behavior. Turn your mess of an organization into a well-oiled machine.

All in all, I recommend these three of books to all ages, but they have been incredibly influential in how I have approached my time in college and will help me pursue the life after college I really want.

Written by Shelby Purl

Emory Entrepreneurship & Venture Management | Director of HackATL