I've mentioned in the past that I'm a big fan of Audible, and I have been sprinkling audio books in with my 'normal' reading fare. As part of my 2-book-per-month credit as an Audible Premium Listener, I recently downloaded an audio book called "The 21 Most Powerful Minutes In A Leader's Day" by John Maxwell. It's available in audio via Audible, or in print form or on cassette from Powell's.

When I initially downloaded it, I thought it was going to be another take on the "start your day by planning what you want to do or you'll end up doing a bunch of random stuff." Boy, was I surprised, and pleasantly so.

If you have something against the Bible, this one may not be for you. Otherwise, read on.

This book is a series of short chapters that take stories from the Bible and relate them to leadership lessons that are very thought provoking, and quite poignant. The "21 Minutes..." in the title refers to the suggestion that you listen to one chapter a day and reflect on it. That process should take about 21 minutes a day.

For the last week or so, I've been listening to one of these chapters each day during my morning commute (on my lovely iPod Shuffle, of course, which is connected to my car stereo). I really look forward to the chapter each morning now, and the thinking about the concepts have already helped me out at work. The first chapter, for example, is about courage and breaking through your current limitations as a leader, and uses the contrast between the leadership styles of David and Saul to illustrate its points.

If you don't mind getting a bit of business teaching from stories written thousands of years ago, I recommend this one. Even if the Bible isn't your thing, why not give it a try? After all, I'm not Hindu, but I have learned a lot from Ghandi.

One other thing I realized after the fact: this book is published by Michael Hyatt's company - if you haven't checked out his "Working Smart" blog, please do. He has some great productivity tips over there.