产品经理必读书籍——第1部分

_👋 Hey there, I’m Lenny. Each week, I write about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. For more: Lenny’s Podcast | Lennybot | How I AI | My favorite AI/PM courses, public speaking course, and interview prep copilot_

_P.S. Get a full free year of Cursor, Google AI, Lovable, Replit, Notion, Manus, Gamma, n8n, Canva, ElevenLabs, Factory, Wispr Flow, Fin, Supabase, Bolt, Linear, PostHog, Framer, Railway, Granola, Warp, Gumloop, Magic Patterns, Mobbin, Stripe Atlas, and ChatPRD, by becoming an Insider subscriber. Yes, this is for real._

I was a shy kid growing up, so I spent a lot of time reading books. I devoured sci-fi, nonfiction, and every programming book I could find. When the library didn’t have the C++ book I wanted, I taught myself to code by buying book after book from our local Borders (RIP). I was tearing through so many coding books that my dad started returning the ones I’d finished to the bookstore so we could afford to buy more.

I’ve always thought it was so cool that the smartest person in the world on a topic I care about spent years of their life distilling their best ideas into an enjoyable read, and I can get this for just $20. Amazing.

There’s endless free content flying at us now—newsletters, podcasts, tweets, oh my—but how many blog posts or tweets have had anywhere near the lasting impact on your life as a great book?

To continue my essential-reads series (don’t miss part 1 and part 2 of my favorite online essays), I’ve put together a collection of my all-time favorite books, organized by their jobs-to-be-done. When your manager tells you to work on a particular skill—or if you’re just feeling the itch for self-improvement—these are the books I recommend.

To keep this list extremely high signal-to-noise, I forced myself to pick only three books per category (so hard!), and only books I’ve completed. I included both classics and under-the-radar gems. I also agree with Marc Andreessen’s take that you should mostly read books that are over 10 years old (because those are the ones that have stood the test of time), so you’ll notice very few newer books.

There are so many great books that I didn’t include, either because I haven’t had a chance to read them or they just missed the cut. I probably forgot some important titles, too. That’s why there’ll be a part 2!

_P.S. If you feel like you have no time to read, I was in the same boat. Bryan Johnson’s suggestion to read a book for 10 minutes before bed changed my life. I started reading more books, and I got better sleep! Try it out._

I had never written anything online before starting this newsletter, so once I realized this was going to be a thing, I decided I needed to learn something about writing. Friends recommended many different books, and I read them all. But these three had the most practical, impactful, and lasting advice, which is still lodged in my head even now.

1. _Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t_ by Steven Pressfield

1. _On Writing Well_ by William Zinsser

1. _Storyworthy_ by Matthew Dicks

_Check out my conversation with Matthew Dicks._

If you love this newsletter, you crave actionable, tactical advice and frameworks that you can put into practice immediately. The first two books will give you exactly that, and the third will give you a meta-framework that’ll level up how you approach _everything_ at work.

1. _The Great CEO Within_ by Matt Mochary

1. _Scaling People_ by Claire Hughes Johnson

1. _The Goal_ by Eliyahu Goldratt

_Check out my conversations with Matt Mochary and Claire Hughes Johnson._

I remember reading these books and feeling like, okay, I finally understand what “strategy” is.

1. _Good Strategy/Bad Strategy_ by Richard Rumelt

1. _Playing to Win_ by Roger L. Martin

1. _Working Backwards_ by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr

_Check out my conversations with Richard Rumelt, Roger Martin, and Bill Carr._

This bucket of books might be my favorite of the bunch. They showed me how much a singular (relentless) mind can accomplish. Read them, and you’ll be ready to run through walls.

1. _The Making of Prince of Persia by_ Jordan Mechner

1. _Build_ by Tony Fadell

1. _Shoe Dog_ by Phil Knight

These books are among the most mentioned on my podcast. I remember reading _High Output Management_ when I was a baby manager, and it finally taught me what my job actually was. _The Making of a Manager_ is the modern version of that book. And _Radical Candor_ forever shifted how I think about hard feedback.

1. _High Output Management_ by Andy Grove

1. _The Making of a Manager_ by Julie Zhuo

1. _Radical Candor_ by Kim Scott

_Check out my conversations with Kim Scott and Julie Zhuo._

I love how the combination of these three books sums up great leadership: push people to do the best work of their lives, but be human about it, and, in the end, the score will take care of itself.

1. _Amp It Up_ by Frank Slootman

1. _The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership_ by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp

1. _The Score Takes Care of Itself_ by Bill Walsh

These classics taught me the fundamentals of product management: talking to customers, prioritizing roadmaps, and what it takes to build something valuable and impactful.

1. _The Mom Test_ by Rob Fitzpatrick

1. _Escaping the Build Trap_ by Melissa Perri

1. _Continuous Discovery Habits_ by Teresa Torres

_Check out my conversations with Melissa Perri and Teresa Torres._

These books are also some of the most mentioned on my podcast, because they’ll shift how you think about the role of product within your organization, and how to make decisions in uncertain environments.

1. _Empowered_ by Marty Cagan

1. _Inspired_ by Marty Cagan

1. _Thinking in Bets_ by Annie Duke

_Check out my conversations with Marty Cagan (and, again, Marty Cagan) and Annie Duke._

With AI making it easier to build, distribution is becoming the bigger bottleneck. This is not a natural strength for most builders, which is why you need to develop your marketing and sales muscle. I learned more about marketing and sales from these three books than from anywhere else.

1. _Purple Cow_ by Seth Godin

1. _Obviously Awesome_ by April Dunford

1. _Founding Sales_ by Peter Kazanjy

_Check out my conversations with Seth Godin, April Dunford, and Peter Kazanjy._