This book had a lot of good points around self improvement being the driving factor of life. It also made the point that money should not be an end goal. Money is purely a means to other items. That mantra is in line with one of my personal mantras; it is the use and experience of something that gives it value, ownership or control are simply easy ways to get use. I’m already doing most of what the book recommends, but I should be networking a good deal more. I certainly have enough friends in interesting groups and companies that could introduce me to more interesting people. I have been ok at keeping in touch with my friends and acquaintances, but haven’t used them for introductions as much as I could.
This book had a lot of good tips to keep yourself free of distraction. I was very surprised at how much they pulled on the Buddhist teachings about mindfulness. The entire book is rife with the Buddhist teachings and the practices that are taught in this book are just modernized versions of them. The goal of Buddhism isn’t really brought up, but the practice of mindfulness is key to the core fo the book. The book bases it’s teaching on a story of two people, a husband and a wife. They play out the scenarios in bad ways and then in good ways. The good ways have pretty much everything go right, and many times in serendipitous ways, which bothered me a bit. I think they should have done only outcomes that were resultant of being mindful, and using the techniques, instead of having everything go right even if it was mostly unrelated to the core tenants of the book.
This book had a lot of good points on how to foster leadership, hard work, and efficiency. They talk about how the company makes it every persons job to be in charge of their station, and then makes it important for them to know all the things about the line. It stresses that building leadership and efficient, happy work are an ongoing process. Having the ongoing process where everyone has the authority point out better ways of doing things can make the company great.
Most of the books I’ve been reading recently on being great involve inspiring others. That is the core focus of this book, and describes well how to go about starting to inspire. The key that this book puts forth is give people a large goal of “Why.” When people have the “Why” then they can work towards the goals of the group without having to constantly ask the group if things are ok or not.
This book had a lot of great advice about how to inspire the people you work with and get them to realize their potential. I noticed how the leaders around me were like the leaders they mentioned in the book and how some of them were not like the leaders mentioned. I would like to think that I could use the methods applied in the book, but I tend to Blake getting my hands dirty. I’ll try as much as I can to inspire the people around me.
I like the way they broke down the automatic responses from the thought out responses. This ties in really well with The Power of Habit and the concept of Mindfulness in Buddhism. The habit is the automatic response while mindfulness is full consciousness. They go into a lot of detail and focus really on the same concepts as Decision Analysis. I really enjoyed the book, and might go back for a second listen. I wasn’t particularly surprised by anything in it since I’d read similar books and take the classes on Decision Analysis.
This book was very good. The arguments were laid out clearly and logically, with anecdotal supporting evidence. The concepts covered were very good, about getting other people to work for you the best that they can. The methods to doing this are creating the right atmosphere, asking good questions, not being the decision maker, and giving individuals more power and responsibility than they would normally get. Where I work has policies that are meant to support this kind of environment, and they work to a certain degree. I’d say this is my number two favorite book so far.
This was not that great of a listen. The author spent most of the time in somewhat related anecdotal stories, as well as only giving moderately useful guidance on what to do to better yourself. The last book I read “The Power of Habit” was much better, even though it only talks about willpower in one chapter of the book. This book also mirrored much of the Buddhist teachings of mindfulness that I’ve been listening to. It has been a really interesting how I’m hearing those Buddhist overtones in parts of many of the books I’m listening to now. I think it has to do with the ideas being very tested and refined. Western teachings on self-improvement are just catching up to the idea of being mindful. That said, I still don’t agree with some of the other Buddhist teachings.
This book shows some great ways to be less mindful and still good. The power of habit is all about how people get into habits, how they take over, and how they are structured. The habit is composed of 3 parts, the trigger, the action, and the reward. Knowing about how these 3 are a part of your habit will help in changing the habit. Triggers are something you try to recognize, not change. This is the same with the reward, just recognize the reward. In the middle of the habit change the action, so that the trigger can tell you when to do it and so that it produces the expected reward. This is a somewhat paradoxical way of mindfully being unmindful. As much as I don’t really buy into the whole end state of the Buddhist teaching, the practice of mindfulness has been nagging at me more and more. The power of habit makes unmindfulness mindful, and is something that can be leveraged when our willpower is low.
It's an Exciting World 