Can you trust yourself to try new things without becoming overwhelmed, overburdened and overtired?

That sums up my challenges for this year. That also describes the topics of my favorite business books of 2014.

This year’s list features a mix of self-help/self-awareness, behavior design and productivity topics backed by evidence—all books that I’ve enjoyed reading and have added value to my life.

(By the way, variety, including experimentation, remains the spice of life, even though we all can benefit from strong healthy habits. The departure from the status quo applies to book lists too. For example, for the second year in a row, I’m breaking with my formula for this annual December blog post on books, even though it’s a favorite with readers.)

Here are my top five books: 

1. The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More by David DeSteno, PhD. Provocative, thought-provoking book backed by extensive research on the risks and benefits of trusting others. New research shows that trust is more situation-based than an individual personality trait. That’s why questions such as “Should I trust you?” and “Can I trust myself?” deserve the answer “It depends” rather than “yes” or “no.”
2. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal. This guide intended primarily for product designers who want to engage users for their products has valuable lessons for anyone who wants to build engagement. (It should be required reading for those responsible for engagement initiatives in organizations.) Eyal’s “Hook model” for building a viral loop of continuous engagement includes a trigger, an action, a variable reward and an investment from the user.
3. Mindfulness: 25^th Anniversary Edition by Ellen Langer. An update of the groundbreaking book about the dangers of sleep walking through life by the influential Harvard psychology professor. When you’re mindlessly following routines and other automatic behaviors, you can make errors, experience pain and find yourself on a path you didn’t mean to take. To pay more attention and be mindful, you need to stress process over outcomes and trust your intuition.
4. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel Levitin. A how-to guide that’s backed with easy-to-understand science about the value of using external systems to help you pay attention and remember to keep track of important information without undue wear, tear and stress on your brain and body. (See the blog post Outsource and organize to improve performance for more information.)
5. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. An introduction to the “systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.” The book includes some great tips on how to say “no” and be true to yourself while kind to others. (For more, see the blog post Say “no” in a yes, and VUCA world.)

The list intentionally includes just five books to avoid overwhelm.

However, I also regularly recommend these three books to anyone interested in accessible, important insights about neuroscience:

• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman. An enlightening and entertaining read about how our brains are made to connect, not just to think and feel. Yes, we are much more social than we think, which influences why and how we trust others.
• Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long by David Rock. An instructive guide on how to better manage the vast quantities of information we’re presented with as well as better cope with colleagues and family members.
• How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain by Gregory Berns. A fascinating read on several levels about the brain science of dogs, especially for those interested in the workings of the brain, dogs as human companions and dog training. (How do you get a dog to sit still for an fMRI?) Dr. Berns, a neuroeconomist who has extensively studied the reward network of the human brain, became interested in answering the question, “What is my dog thinking?” This book describes his journey.

Do you have a favorite book from 2014? And what’s on your reading list for the end of the year and into 2015? Please share!