This wasn’t my most prolific year when it came to reading. But I feel like what I lacked in volume I made up for in content. Since it was “Twenty Fixteen,” the bulk of what I read outside of my job (where I try to read as much of the content of the books I’m designing for as possible) was probably what you’d call Self Help. I prefer Life Improvement, though. It sounds slightly less corny and I feel it fit better into what my goals were for the year.

In this pile are a lot of books by people I discovered late in 2015 or very early this year through Chase Jarvis and CreativeLive. The authors are all entrepreneurs, creatives, life coaches, or, in many cases, all three. I’ve learned a great deal about focusing on things inside of me that lead to being healthier and more creative—thus affecting how I create and handle opportunities in the outside world.

To be perfectly transparent, I didn’t finish all of these books yet. Two (Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans and Jonathan Fields’s How to Live a Good Life) only came to me within the past week, and one of them is nearly 700 pages. But I have cracked them all and put in a lot of hours trying to absorb what I’ve read. Something else to consider is that there is homework with books like these. With fiction or a good memoir, you can read it and then go about your life. These books are instruction manuals in a sense, requiring a lot of practice when you’ve put them down. So while I’ve read a lot of these thoroughly, they were (and are) still with me when I’m doing other things—most other things. That time counts just as much, if not more.

I’ve written many posts this year that kind of documented what I learned from these titles as it was happening, so I’m not going to go very in-depth here. But what I will say is that a few of the real highlights that helped to change my life in 2016 were developing a morning routine and writing down ten ideas everyday. Of everything I think these two have had the most profound effect on how I approach my life on a daily basis. These, and the general idea of being brave enough to go after what you want to achieve without fear of failure, of course. But everything was incredibly helpful and I’m sure what I’ve learned through these books is going to make 2017 a really amazing year in a lot of different ways.

There’s a ton of actionable content in these books, whether you’re looking to lose weight, follow your passion, create a successful business, or just be a better person. I recommend checking out a few of them if you want to change the way you live in any or all aspects of your life. And if you’ve already read any of them, I’d love to know what you thought or what you took away from them.

Here’s the whole list:

Choose Yourself!, James Altucher

GIRLBOSS, Sophia Amoruso

Daring Greatly, Brené Brown

Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss

How to Live a Good Life, Jonathan Fields

Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert

Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday

The School of Greatness, Lewis Howes

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi

Note: I read several others in e-book form. I didn’t include those in the photo above for obvious reasons, but here they are:

Rising Strong, Brené Brown

The 4 Hour Body, Tim Ferriss

The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss

Born for This, Chris Guillebeau

Show Your Work, Austin Kleon

Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon

AskGaryVee, Gary Vaynerchuk