In this informal vlog, Matt Ragland begins with a brief personal anecdote about a recent dental appointment and gives a quick tour of his Nashville office, highlighting his workspace setup and colleagues’ offices. He then shifts focus to the central theme of the video: the books he most frequently gives as gifts. Ragland explains that he selects books for people at life transition points—graduations, new jobs, marriages, or other major changes—and outlines the core ideas and personal relevance of each recommendation. The primary titles he discusses are: (1) Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art (and a brief mention of The Art of Work), emphasizing overcoming mental resistance to creative or personal goals; (2) C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, which he values both as a Christian work and as a study of human psychology and temptation; (3) Seth Godin’s Tribes and Linchpin, which he recommends for understanding community building and professional indispensability; and (4) Dan Pink’s Whole New Mind (with a nod to To Sell Is Human), highlighting a shift toward right‑brain, creative thinking in modern work. He concludes by recapping the list and inviting viewers to share the books they most often give away. The video blends casual office ambience with thoughtful book recommendations tied to personal development and career growth.
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Just got done at the dentist and this is my current smile capability. There's nothing, nothing over here at all. That's how it felt. I had the, the whatever, the numbing went all the way up to my eyelid. So right here, I've not touched it, so Hi, I'm in our Nashville office. You want to take a look with me? Anything to take the focus off of the dying right side of my face. Here we are, a nice big open space. Nice couch. Sometimes there's a television here. Kitchen where no one eats. Company values. Excellent coffee. Lovely view of the Sitco and apartments. This is Darryl's office. Hope you don't mind, buddy, but I actually work some in Darryl's office whenever he's not here because the lighting is just so, so lovely and wonderful. This is the office where I normally work. So need to tidy it up a bit like any space that I inhabit. I've got a good standing desk right here, Varidesk. It's, uh, it's okay. I have some— I'll talk about that in a different video. I got a nice monitor here, a ViewSonic 27-inch. Very comfortable chairs. And here's our dark conference room that does not have a table. There we go. How great is this? Before we jump in, before I jump into the sardines, and you'll be glad that you're not here with me, another question that I've been rolling around in my head, and I encourage you to think about as well, is what books have you given away? Maybe you're not a book giver. What is maybe a gift or recommendation that you've regularly sent to people. I am a book reader and a book giver. So here are the ones that I— the 4/5 books that I give away the most to people. And it could be that they are graduating college, they're going into their first job, they're getting married, they're transitioning jobs, they're There's a lot of work, just graduating high school is one. Just different ways to think about life and work and family. So here are the 4. The one that I've given away the most, probably the top 2, but it's debatable for me, but one is The Art of Work by Steven Pressfield. Highly recommend The Art of Work because it does It does talk about, in terms of a bigger picture, the creative process, but there's a way of thinking about how you're going to overcome a lot of the mental hurdles that come with doing anything different, doing anything like out of the ordinary, or just getting over our own crap to do something new, whether that is write something or lose weight or start working out or eating new food or, you know, having difficult conversations, just getting over that mental hurdle, War of Art, it's, it's not a big book. It might be over here. Let's go see real quick. I know we've got a Steven Pressfield book, but it is not that one. We have Do the Work, which is also, also good. I don't recommend that one as much because Art of Work or The War of Art is— Art of Work is a Jeff Goin's book. The War of Art is excellent. Number 2, the second book that I've given away the most is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It's my favorite C.S. Lewis book. That, Great Divorce, also excellent. What I love about Screwtape Letters You might know that I'm a Christian, and so the Christian aspect of it is very interesting and compelling to me. But the reason that I give it away to lots of people, regardless of whether or not they identify as Christians, is because to me it's also a study in human psychology. So however you want to think about, you know, angels and demons and temptation, any of that, just in kind of a similar way a work of art, there are ways that we process things and interesting, you know, kind of just behavior patterns that we fall into. And Screwtape Letters has a very interesting take on that because it's written from the perspective of like a minor league, an apprentice tempter. That's Screwtape. And then he's always meeting with his mentor Wormwood, or the other way around. Wormwood and Screwtape are talking about how to best get this person into hell. And you think, "Oh, well, we just have to get him to do all these terrible things and he'll go to hell." And it's nowhere close to that. It's like this steady, gentle decline. They're like, "We can take our time." In fact, like, doing awful things may not be that useful because then it shows them how awful it is and they could have like a moment where, you know, just even a moment where they're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm really terrible." So it's a fascinating book. It's one that I give away a lot. The other 1/2, so this is like 3, you know, 3A and B, 2 books by Seth Godin. You can read either one. If you want a shorter book, then Tribes is fantastic. I've given away Tribes a bunch. Tribes was given to me by my dad and it's been a really important book, one that we talk about a lot. It comes up a lot. So Tribes is great. Another one by Seth is Linchpin, and also very, very important book for me when I was kind of thinking about what I wanted work to look like and my role in a company, in a team, and even with like job security and how you think about, you know, what a career is going to look like professionally. The last one, I haven't given this one away as much, but for a while I— it still makes the list because I think it's important. I would love to see him do a follow-up to it, but Whole New Mind by Dan Pink. And probably my favorite Dan Pink book. To Sell Is Human is fantastic as well. You could read either one of those. He's a great storyteller/researcher. I think that's a very unique combination. Seth is more of a storyteller but just such a brilliant one. Malcolm Gladwell, I think, is a fantastic researcher/storyteller. But Whole New Mind by Dan Pink, again, that's a book that for me really kicked off thinking of like, oh, like there's, there's a new way to work. There's a new way to do things. And hey, Stephanie. And Whole New Mind is what kind of kicked off that thought process for me. It's one that I recommend a lot to people, to kids, young adults in high school and college, as they're especially as they're thinking about majors and what they want their maybe initial profession or career to be. So to recap: War of Art by Steven Pressfield, Whole New Mind by Dan Pink— again, I would love to see Dan Pink do like a 10-year follow-up to Whole New Mind— Linchpin and/or Tribes by Seth Godin, and then Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Those are the books that I've given away the most, and I would love to see in the comments what books you've given away the most. There are a couple more that just missed the cut, but yeah, these, these are them.
