Tuminha's Library 2026: 20 Books That Changed How I Think (None About Teeth)
Table of Contents
Here's a confession: the books that made me a better periodontist have nothing to do with periodontology.
After completing my MBA and spending decades placing implants, I've realized something crucial - the best ideas for your practice often come from completely unrelated fields. A concept from Silicon Valley might revolutionize your patient workflow. A Japanese philosophy might transform how you handle difficult cases. An AI researcher might change how you see the future of dentistry.
This is my curated library for 2026 - 20 books I've actually read, highlighted, and found myself recommending to colleagues over coffee (or sometimes wine). No textbooks. No clinical manuals. Just books that made me think differently.
Fair warning: If you click through and buy any of these, I may earn a small commission as an Amazon affiliate. But I'd recommend these books even if I didn't - in fact, I've been doing exactly that for years.
🎯 Productivity & Focus
These four books fundamentally changed how I manage my time between clinic, teaching, and building Periospot. If you feel like you're always busy but never accomplishing what matters - start here.
Deep Work
This book hit me like a diagnosis I'd been avoiding. I used to pride myself on being "always available" - answering messages between patients, checking email during lunch. Newport showed me that fragmented attention was killing my best work. Now I have sacred blocks for surgery, writing, and strategic thinking. My implant success rate stayed the same, but my stress dropped by half.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Slow Productivity
Newport's 2024 follow-up is even more relevant for us in clinical practice. The dental industry pushes "more patients, faster turnover, hustle harder." This book argues the opposite: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, obsess over quality. Sound familiar? It's exactly what we preach about treatment planning - now applied to your entire career.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Four Thousand Weeks
The title is your lifespan in weeks. Let that sink in. Burkeman doesn't give you productivity hacks - he asks why you're trying to "optimize" your finite existence. After reading this, I stopped trying to fit more into my schedule and started asking which things deserved to be there at all. Profoundly liberating for any clinician drowning in obligations.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Essentialism
"If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will." I think about this line every time I'm asked to join another committee or take on another project. McKeown's framework for ruthless prioritization helped me say no to good opportunities so I could say yes to great ones. Essential reading - pun absolutely intended.
📚 Buy on Amazon🧠 Mindset & Psychology
The mind is our most important instrument in the operatory. These books upgraded my mental operating system.
Tiny Experiments
Anne-Laure is a neuroscientist who writes about "mindful productivity" - and this book is her masterpiece. The core idea? Stop planning your entire life and start running small experiments instead. Want to teach more? Don't commit to a full course - try one lecture. Thinking about a new procedure? Do one case, evaluate, iterate. This experimental mindset has transformed how I approach everything from new techniques to content creation.
📚 Buy on Amazon
The Courage to Be Disliked
This Japanese bestseller presents Adlerian psychology through Socratic dialogue - and it will challenge everything you believe about happiness. The central premise: we create our own suffering through the need for approval. For dentists who agonize over patient reviews and peer judgment, this is medicine for the soul.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Think Again
Grant's thesis: intelligence isn't about thinking - it's about rethinking. In our field, we often cling to techniques we learned decades ago because "that's how I was trained." This book gave me permission to question everything, including my own expertise. The best clinicians I know are constantly updating their mental models. This book shows you how.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Thinking, Fast and Slow
The late Nobel laureate's magnum opus on how we think. System 1 (fast, intuitive) vs System 2 (slow, deliberate). Once you understand this framework, you'll see cognitive biases everywhere - in your treatment planning, in patient decisions, in your own blind spots. Dense but transformative.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Atomic Habits
Yes, everyone's read it. Yes, it deserves the hype. Clear's framework for building good habits and breaking bad ones is so practical that I've implemented it in my morning routine, my surgical prep, and even my flossing consistency (a periodontist who doesn't floss is like a cardiologist who smokes). The compound effect of tiny improvements is real.
📚 Buy on Amazon🚀 Business & Entrepreneurship
Running a practice is running a business. These books taught me things dental school never did.
Zero to One
Thiel's contrarian question: "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" This book reframes business as creating something genuinely new, not copying what works. It made me rethink Periospot's entire positioning. Instead of being "another dental education site," I asked: what can we offer that no one else can?
📚 Buy on Amazon
The Lean Startup
Build, measure, learn, repeat. Ries's methodology for rapid iteration applies beautifully to practice development. Want to add a new service? Don't build out the full program - create a minimum viable version, test with patients, gather feedback, improve. I've used this approach for everything from patient education materials to course development.
📚 Buy on Amazon
Built to Sell
Even if you never want to sell your practice, this book will change how you run it. The core insight: a business dependent on you isn't valuable. Can your practice run without you? Do you have systems that anyone can follow? Reading this made me document every protocol and build a team that doesn't need me for daily operations.
📚 Buy on AmazonThe Diary of a CEO
Bartlett built a social media empire, lost it, built another, and distilled the lessons into 33 laws for business and life. Raw, honest, and surprisingly applicable to healthcare. His chapters on team building and handling failure resonated deeply - we don't talk enough about failure in medicine.
📚 Buy on Amazon💰 Wealth & Life Philosophy
Money is a tool, not a goal. These books helped me develop a healthier relationship with it.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Naval is a philosopher disguised as an investor. This compilation of his wisdom on wealth and happiness is profound and endlessly quotable. "Seek wealth, not money or status." "Play long-term games with long-term people." "The most important skill is knowing what to learn." I return to this book monthly.
📚 Buy on Amazon
The Psychology of Money
Housel's revelation: financial success isn't about intelligence - it's about behavior. As dentists, we earn well but often manage money poorly because no one taught us the psychology behind our decisions. This book explains why your colleague with half your income might retire with twice your savings. Eye-opening.
📚 Buy on Amazon🤖 AI & Future Thinking
AI is transforming every industry. Understanding it isn't optional anymore.
Life 3.0
Tegmark, an MIT physicist, explores what happens when AI surpasses human intelligence. This isn't science fiction - it's serious analysis of scenarios we might face in our lifetimes. For any clinician wondering how AI will reshape healthcare, this provides the big-picture context. Both thrilling and sobering.
📚 Buy on Amazon
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book
You don't need to code to understand how AI works - but you should understand the basics. Burkov achieves the impossible: explaining machine learning in 100 dense but accessible pages. After reading this, you'll actually understand what ChatGPT is doing and why AI diagnostics work the way they do.
📚 Buy on Amazon
The Beginning of Infinity
This is the most intellectually ambitious book on my list. Deutsch, a physicist, argues that all problems are solvable given the right knowledge. His chapters on the nature of explanation and scientific progress rewired how I think about evidence-based dentistry. Warning: will make you feel simultaneously tiny and infinitely capable.
📚 Buy on Amazon🎓 Skills & Learning
The meta-skill is learning itself. These books teach you how.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
Hamming was a legendary scientist at Bell Labs. This book, based on his famous course, asks: "Why do some scientists do great work while others are forgotten?" His answer involves vision, courage, and working on the right problems. Directly applicable to anyone wanting to make a lasting contribution to their field.
📚 Buy on Amazon
How to Tell a Story
Whether you're presenting at a conference, explaining a treatment plan, or writing for your blog - storytelling is the universal skill. The Moth (famous for their live storytelling events) shares their framework for crafting compelling narratives. Since reading this, my lectures have transformed from information dumps to experiences people remember.
📚 Buy on AmazonFinal Thoughts
Twenty books. Zero about teeth. Yet each one has made me better at what I do in the operatory.
The best dentists I know are voracious learners who refuse to stay in their lane. They read about psychology to understand patients. They study business to build sustainable practices. They explore AI to prepare for the future. They dive into philosophy to find meaning in their work.
What's on your reading list? Drop me a message - I'm always looking for the next book that will challenge my thinking.
And if you grab any of these through the links above, thank you for supporting Periospot. Every commission goes directly back into creating free educational content for our community.
Happy reading! 📚
- Tuminha
P.S. - This is just Volume 1. I have 50+ more books from my 2023-2025 reading that didn't make this cut. If you want me to publish Volume 2 covering AI & Machine Learning, Web3, or Programming - let me know in the comments.
FAQ
Q: Why no dental books?
A: This list is specifically about learning from outside our field. I have plenty of recommendations for clinical texts - that's a different article!
Q: Are these affiliate links?
A: Yes, transparently. If you purchase through these links, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It helps support Periospot's free educational content.
Q: What's your reading routine?
A: 30 minutes before bed, physical book (not Kindle - the blue light ruins my sleep). I aim for 2 books per month.
Q: Do you actually read all these?
A: Every single one. I don't recommend books I haven't finished and found valuable. Life's too short for mediocre reads.
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