This month’s featured read is all about habit-building for meaningful change:

• Good Habits, Bad Habits – In this course, you'll uncover scientist Wendy Wood's knowledge about the complex processes behind habits and dive into the three bases for habit formation: context, repetition, and reward. You'll gain a toolkit for how to break unwanted habits and create new, desired ones. And you'll learn how to form and stick with habits that work with you, not against you.

As always, you can use our self-paced Workday Learning course and discussion templates to start your own book club, as well as borrow the book from the LDE Lending Library.

This January, try out some courses that focus on clarity, focus, and practical strategies for growth:

• Setting a Vision: How to Gain Clarity on Your Goals – In this course, personal growth coach Mechelle McDonald shares strategic, analytical steps to help you identify your top personal goals and dissect the truth behind the fears preventing you from achieving them.
• Focus on What Matters and Minimize Distraction – Learn how to set an intention for what you want to accomplish, avoid task switching, and prevent yourself from procrastinating on the task at hand. This course also shares techniques for strategically using breaks to your advantage and leveraging apps to block digital distractions.
• Cultivating a Growth Mindset – In this course, Dr. Gemma Leigh Roberts guides you through practical tools to recognize your mindsets—and how those mindsets alter your response to challenges.

To access more LinkedIn Learning courses, go to Workday Learning, select Search for Available Learning, and filter by LinkedIn Learning under Content Type.

January’s book picks are centered around clarity, motivation, and forward movement:

• "Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms" by Shellye Archambeau – Through the busts and booms of Silicon Valley in the early 2000s, this bold and inspiring book details the risks the author took and the strategies she engaged to steer her family, her career, and her career toward success.
• "Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries" by Safi Bahcall – Loonshots reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.
• “Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life” by Jim Murphy – This step-by-step training manual from one of the world's top mental skills coaches will teach you how to train your mind like the very best.
• “Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation” by Ayelet Fishbach – With fascinating research from the field of motivation science and compelling stories of people who learned to motivate themselves, Get It Done illuminates invaluable strategies for pulling yourself in whatever direction you want to go—so you can achieve your goals while staying healthy, clearheaded, and happy.

Visit our virtual LDE Lending Library to explore and check out these titles or others.

This month, we’re highlighting “LDE Essentials: Enhancing Emotional Intelligence”, an LDE-curated collection of resources focused on developing key facets of emotional intelligence. Start the new year by building your emotional intelligence—the cornerstone of effective leadership, communication, and collaboration. Whether you’re leading a team or contributing across departments, emotional intelligence helps you respond (rather than react), build stronger relationships, and work with greater clarity and purpose.

Get grounded with these self-paced courses designed to support your growth and intentionality:

• LDE Next Level: Developing a Growth Mindset – In this course, you’ll first learn about the differences between a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. You’ll then explore how a growth mindset can benefit you and your team. Finally, uncover specific strategies to develop a growth mindset—and expand your possibilities.
• LDE Next Level: Take Control of Your Future - Career Development – In this course, you’ll learn how to map your career development plan, track progress with your manager, and add value to your role.

Set a “theme word” for 2026. Instead of resolutions, choose a single word to anchor your mindset and decisions this year. Examples: “Steady,” “Connect,” “Grow,” “Simplify.”

Write your word down, put it somewhere visible, and revisit it weekly. Ask yourself:

• How does this word show up in my choices this week?
• What small step can I take that aligns with this theme?