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Maybe it’s me, but one of the things that holds me back from purchasing a new book is often its price. Some books cost an arm and a leg, and there is nothing worse than the feeling of buyer’s remorse when reading a book that does not meet your expectations.

But I guarantee that this won’t be the case with the following three books.

The two great things about these books is that they are packed full of useful information such as productivity and conflict resolution strategies, AND their price is ridiculously low. The Kindle versions of these books come to less than $7. With so much value, even Ebenezer Scrooge will feel like paying more.

So here are ‘3 Personal Development Books that Represent Incredible Value’.

10 STEPS TO EARNING AWESOME GRADES

If there ever was a book that I wish I had read earlier in my life, especially when I was studying at university, then 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades by Thomas Frank would be it. If I was the parent of a child who is currently in year 11 or 12, then I would immediately buy them this book.

For those of you who don’t know, Thomas Frank is a world famous productivity expert, YouTuber and founder of CollegeInfoGeek.com. 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades is packed full of productivity tips and strategies that you can implement straight away. From the moment you open his book, it becomes apparent that Thomas REALLY knows his stuff. In 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades, Thomas talks about:

How to plan like a general and stay organised
How to study effectively and the optimal conditions for studying
How to write better and how to get through the dreaded group project

The best tip that Thomas writes about would have to be the project management app called Trello. Trello uses the Kanban system of cards and categories which was developed by Toyota to help oversee their manufacturing process of automobile parts. It runs very similar to a to-do-list but it’s far more visual, and, at a moments notice, you can instantly see where you are in your workflow process. Currently I have made Kanban boards in Trello for the following workflow processes:

Keeping track of the numeracy committee than I run at my school
Creating YouTube videos and everything that goes along with this process
Monitoring all my writing tasks like scripts, book reviews and blogs
Tracking my ideas and where I am at with creating TPT products

I have embedded a video about Trello down below for those of you who are interested in learning more.

Thomas has deliberately kept the price of 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades incredibly low, so it’s ridiculously affordable for university/college students, but having read this book, there is nothing stopping a high school student from picking it up and getting something from it as well.

You can purchase the Kindle version of 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades for $1.36 at Amazon.

Click here to view 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades

HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE

If there ever was a book that provides a master class in diplomacy, then How to Win Friends and Influence People would be it. Written by public speaking coach Dale Carnegie back in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People details an incredible range of strategies for resolving conflict, and how you can look at life’s many problems with a different point of view.

Being a teacher myself, a lot of the strategies that he talks about are directly applicable to the sources of conflict that teachers will encounter. I know because I have used them myself, I’ll detail more about these strategies in a future book review for How to Win Friends and Influence People. But first, let me share with you my favourite quote from How to Win Friends and Influence People

The moment I read this quote, I realised that I could have shown more warmth towards my children with respect to how I speak to them when they make mistakes. As parents, we want the best for our children; however, this desire can sometimes lead us to over-criticising them. I previously had a tendency to criticise my eldest daughter for all of the things that she wasn’t doing at home.

Why hasn’t she cleaned her room, why hasn’t she put away the dishes and why hasn’t she put her bag back in the bag rack. The harsh wind of criticism coming from me could be quite strong sometimes and in these moments my daughter’s eyes would glaze over.

How dare a child behave like a child! 🤷‍♂️

About six months ago I made the switch to a warmer approach, such as praising her more often for the progress that she has been making with keeping her room tidy and when she completed her flute practice without prompting. If she made something 1% better, than I praised her for it. Having made this change to how I parent, I’ve noticed a positive change within my daughter. Her overall levels of happiness have been higher, she’s getting more enjoyment from school and she’s been managing her chores better than before. Mind you she still forgets the odd chore, but the change within her has been noticeable.

Some people are willing to pay thousands of dollars to have better relationships with their family members, and I’ve managed to achieve this by simply reading a book.

Perhaps this is something that you could do as well? 🤔💭

You can purchase How to Win Friends and Influence People on Amazon for $0.79!

Click here to view How to Win Friends and Influence People

THE MOTIVATION HACKER

The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter, which is part self development book and part auto-biography, details Nick’s 3 month journey towards achieving 18 Goals of his in record breaking time. Some of his ridiculously ambitious goals include:

Running a half marathon
Creating a language/studying app call Skritter (it’s perfect for learning Japanese & Chinese)
Writing an incredible best man’s speech
Learning how to lucid dream
Developing a better relationship with his girl friend.

Nick resorted to some pretty extreme tactics to achieve his goals, tactics such as pledging $7,290 to a charity in the event that he didn’t fulfil his goal of writing this book! I admire Nick for the lengths that he took to achieve his goals and I also appreciated how openly he talked about his socially awkward former self.

The best strategy I learnt from The Motivation Hacker was the concept of input based goals. Instead of focusing on output, like creating a YouTube video once a week, I have been focusing on something that I know that I have full control over, which is the amount of time (my input) I spend creating YouTube videos. By changing my mindset in this area, my motivation to create YouTube videos has been stronger and I haven’t beaten myself up when I missed a deadline. I am still a beginner after all. I know that I showed up and learnt new skills, so to me, that’s what counts the most. The output will eventually come as I gain more experience, but for now I need to be patient.

A question to ask yourself would be this, in which areas of your life could you be more input focused instead of output focused? 🤔💭

Nick also talks about other motivation enhancing strategies, such as the concepts of success spirals and time coins; however, I wouldn’t want to spoil the book for you other than saying these strategies are useful to know and that they have influenced my thinking.

You can purchase the Kindle version of The Motivation Hacker for $3.99 on Amazon.

Click here to view The Motivation Hacker

So there we have it, that was 3 Personal Development books that represent incredible value.

FYI, you don’t need to own a Kindle e-reader to download these books, you could purchase them from your phone or tablet on Amazon.com.au and then download them to your Kindle app. So there is no reason why they shouldn’t reside within your book collection.