The 14 Books That Changed My Life

On October 12th, 2026, I started a fourteen-part series on my Instagram (@masha.qed) where I explain concepts I implemented throughout my life after reading fourteen self-help books. This page will be updated as the videos come out, so be sure to follow me on insta to catch the latest one. 1. Atomic Habits by James Clear This was the first book of the self-help genre that I read: once as an audiobook and once with the physical book. I stumbled across it in my family's shared Audible library and decided to give it a listen, because the thought of being able to change my bad habits and instill new ones was honestly pretty appealing. Why wouldn't it be? Here are the following concepts have stayed with me after three years since I've listened, and the third one I still use every day to organize my tasks. Concept #1: Already imagine yourself as that person. When making a decision, think about what an X person would do; a healthy person, a consistent person, a studious person: the person who you want to be. Imagine that you’re already your ideal self and keep making decisions that support your identity. Concept #2: Prime your environment This one is talked about a lot, but I truly think this is one of the most important things you can do to set yourself up for success. Your brain associates certain environments with the activities you do in them, for example, if you always sleep in your bed, your brain will be unconsciously cued to start getting sleepy when you lie down there. You can easily mess up these associations by meshing one activity in one spot with a bunch of other activities, like eating, studying, or watching TV in your bed as well as sleeping. The same goes for studying at your desk: if you want to be able to focus when you sit down to do work, then make that space for work only and nothing else. For habits, you want the environment to already tell you what you need to do. Another thing that helps with this is to create a "ritual" before you perform a habit or task. For example, I make tea and organize my desk every morning before doing a stretch of studying. This primes my brain to start getting ready to focus. Building up associations like these will make completing habits and tasks so much easier. Concept #3: "I will do [thing] at [time] in [location]" Every evening I'll write down what I want my day to look like tomorrow. The things I want to get done always get written down in this format. For example: "I will study probability at 8:00 AM in the library," or, for a habit, "I will go for a walk at 6:30 PM after dinner in the park." Writing your day like this instead of a to-do list will get your brain thinking about the actual execution of the task and will get you closer to actually doing it instead of never even putting yourself in a position to start. When you do this in a journal, holding yourself accountable for the habits you missed becomes much clearer, and I've found that I'm more likely to actually do the habit when I put in more time to think about how I'll do it the next day. The full list: 1. Atomic Habits 2. ??? 3. ??? 4. ??? 5. ??? 6. ??? 7. ??? 8. ??? 9. ??? 10. ??? 11. ??? 12. ??? 13. ??? 14. ???