New Book Releases | February 3
From how to flourish and live a meaningful life to the importance of agility and a rethink of how we collaborate in the modern workplace, the four books we're recommending this week are chock-full of actionable insights.
Because our awards and industry appreciation event always takes place at the end of January, we often joke around the office that the new year at Porchlight really starts at the beginning of February. So, you'll find that the books we are focusing on this first week of February are perfect for helping us with our New Year's resolutions. We hope they align with yours, as well.
All four of the following books are available online and on bookshop shelves today.
AQ: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That's Always Changing by Liz Tran, published by Crown Currency
You’ve heard of IQ and EQ. But in today's world, they’re no longer enough. We need the Agility Quotient (AQ).
In a time defined by nonstop disruptions, when jobs vanish overnight, industries evolve in months, and yesterday’s rules no longer apply, AQ—the Agility Quotient—is the intelligence you need to handle change, uncertainty, and the unknown. The good news is that, with the right toolkit, you can grow your agility and learn to navigate a world of increasing instability.
Drawing on leadership coach and former venture capitalist Liz Tran’s work with over 200 successful founders, executives, and dozens of companies and organizations, AQ reveals a model for how high-performing teams and managers adapt to uncertainty. Tran will show you how to cultivate “durable skills,” essential human abilities that remain valuable no matter what the future holds. With the book’s Agility Archetype assessment, the book personalizes the AQ journey to every kind of individual. No matter their experience level or ambitions.
Written with conversational flair and practical advice, AQ offers readers a wealth of resources, including:
- Tools to rebuild confidence for when you’re bombarded by life's curveballs or feeling burned out.
- Actionable steps for making a big shift, even when you feel stuck.
- Advice on finding clarity in moments of professional turbulence.
AQ also takes readers behind the scenes at companies, from NVIDIA and Microsoft to rising startups like Lex, to see AQ in action. You’ll also meet trailblazers like Maggie Lena Walker, the first female bank president in American history, and Emile-Maurice Hermès, who transformed Hermès into a global luxury powerhouse.
As the adage goes, “the only certain thing is change.” AQ is the critical intelligence for our unpredictable future.
Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment by Daniel Coyle, published by Bantam
A science-based, practical blueprint for cultivating a life—at work and at home—full of belonging, joy, and vitality, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code.
What is a meaningful life, and how do we make one? How do certain communities foster closeness, fulfillment, happiness, and energy?
In Flourish, bestselling author and leading culture expert Daniel Coyle trains his eye on the groups and people who demonstrate exceptional connectivity, presence, and dynamism. He draws on research and original reporting—taking us inside an unlikely brotherhood of thirty-three men who were trapped in a Chilean mine, a tiny Michigan deli that blossomed into a $90 million ecosystem of businesses, an inventive Dutch soccer team that revolutionized the sport as we know it, and a disconnected Paris district that remade itself into a tight-knit neighborhood—to reveal the principles and practices that ignite and sustain thriving. He finds that flourishing groups do two things: They make meaning (creating deep connections) and build community (forging a common good).
Through captivating real-world stories, rigorous scientific studies, and firsthand accounts, Coyle reveals what sets some groups apart—and offers you the tools and insights to flourish in your own life.
How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, published by Simon Element
The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Designing Your Life return with a groundbreaking guide to transforming your daily routine into one brimming with joy, purpose, and meaning.
In a world grappling with major societal shifts and increasing isolation, it’s easy to feel like nothing you do matters. Even when we’re at the top of our game in our careers and have reached the personal milestones we’ve always dreamed about, so many of us still feel like something is missing, disconnected, and stuck. There must be more to life than simply surviving each day—but how do we uncover it?
Bestselling authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the “empowering” (Publishers Weekly) visionaries behind Stanford’s renowned Life Design Lab, have already inspired millions of readers to use design thinking principles to craft lives and careers they love. Now, in How to Live a Meaningful Life, they take on the most profound design problem of all: how to make a life rich with meaning and purpose. Evolving their revolutionary framework, Burnett and Evans present the latest research on what makes life worth living, showing us how to bring wonder, coherence, flow, and community into our everyday experiences. Instead of cramming more into an already packed life, they give us the steps we need to extract more out of it, moment by moment.
Through actionable insights and with Burnett and Evans’s signature compassion and warmth, How to Live a Meaningful Life equips you with the tools to turn your ordinary days into an extraordinary life today.
Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done by Rebecca Hinds, published by Simon Acumen
From Rebecca Hinds, PhD—organizational expert who has helped Fortune 500 companies fix their fractured collaboration—comes a bold, battle-tested blueprint for tackling the workplace’s biggest time-wasters: meetings.
Meetings are broken. They are relics from a bygone era of top-down hierarchies and factory-like procedures—designed to issue orders, flaunt power, and keep the hierarchy intact. In today’s digital, collaborate-or-bust era, this model isn’t just inefficient, it actively harms employees and organizations.
Drawing on decades of research and stories from leading companies like Google, Salesforce, Pixar, YouTube, and Dropbox, Your Best Meeting Ever provides a blueprint to transform your meetings from monotonous, soul-crushing time sinks into powerful tools for collaboration. The secret? Treat them like products. Using seven product design principles, you’ll turn your meetings into well-designed products that actually drive work forward and serve your most important users—the people in your organization. You’ll learn:
- Why every organization needs a “Meeting Doomsday” to reset collaboration, and how to strategically orchestrate one at your company.
- How to fix your communication system so meetings are a last resort, not a knee-jerk default.
- Which meeting metrics matter—and which do more harm than good.
- How to inject moments of delight into your meetings so people genuinely want to show up.
- When to integrate technology into your meetings so you enhance collaboration, rather than detract from it.
More than just a practical guide, Your Best Meeting Ever is a rallying call to rethink how we collaborate in the modern workplace. Whether you’re a leader or an individual contributor, this powerful book will nudge you to be audacious—to challenge the existing norms and embrace new paradigms—so you’ll never dread another meeting again.
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The Porchlight staff members choosing new books each week are Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Gabriella Cisneros and Dylan Schleicher.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are from the publisher.
