OFD Library & Recommendations

Books recommended and/or offered by the OFD

To check-out any of our books, email Megan Shaffer

Family and personal focused

  • Master the Media by Julie Smith
  • Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D.

Career focused

  • Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins
  • Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
  • Change The Way You See Yourself Through Asset-Based Thinking, by Kathryn Cramer, PhD and Hank Wasiak
  • Career Advice for Life Scientists, Volume I & II, The American Society for Cell Biology
  • AAMC Faculty Salary Report, FY 2024
  • What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear, by Danielle Ofri, MD

Productivity recommendations from Susan Johnson, MD

  • Getting Things Done: The art of stress free productivity, 2nd edition
    David Allen (2015)
    A popular, effective, comprehensive workflow and planning system. If you aren’t sure about buying the book, view a brief overview of this system.
  • Free to Focus
    Michael Hyatt (2019)
    This book covers goal setting, planning, and executing to reach those goals and other relevant topics.
    NOTE: The combo of Free to Focus and Getting Things Done provides a complete productivity system.
  • The One Minute To-do List
    Michael Linenberger
    You can request a free download of this book. The method is an effective way to create and manage your to-do (task) list, and can be used either as a stand alone, or as a complement to the GTD next action list method
  • I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time
    Laura Vanderkam (2015)
    Vanderkam is a journalist and author who became interested in how people spend their time, and now writes books about successful strategies. This book focuses on the actual experiences of a group of 100 women who have busy professional careers and children at home, and who kept time diaries for a week. Vanderkam analyzed the diaries and identified strategies these women use to be successful in both spheres. Not just for women!

Productivity for writing

  • Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world, Cal Newport
  • Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day. Joan Bolker, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1998
  • The Now Habit, Neil Fiore
    Practical approaches to procrastination
  • Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. Second Edition 2nd Edition,1999 Mimi Zeiger

Work-life focused

  • Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter
  • How Full is Your Bucket: Positive Strategies for Work and Life, Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, PhD

Web-based books/articles/resources