I’ve been struggling with inspiration on article topics so I thought this would be a good time to recommend some books.  I’ve read a number of really good books lately and here are my favorites.

Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for Fear and Profit -  As I said in my Amazon review I’m certainly not a fan of Big Pharma or the medical establishment.  They both have a lot of problems, but I am a fan of science and progress.  This is an extremely well argued book and whatever your perspective you should take Golberg’s arguments seriously.

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase to Catch Lincoln’s Killer -  This was a superb and compelling read about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth.  If you are at all interested in history and biography, this is a really good read.

We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess -  A wide-ranging look at the topic of self-control in the modern world of excess.  This book is a very enjoyable read and is densely packed with information and analysis.  I really liked it.

Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals -  I read a lot of books like this and Heidi Halvorson has produced a truly superior product with this book. Every chapter is clearly composed, filled with stories and examples, describes the research behind the conclusions, and ends with a bulleted summary of the key concepts. 

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves -  A very persuasively argued book on why we should be optimistic about the future.  A counter to the overwhelmingly negative doomsday predictions that are so popular right now.

Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life -  Michael Neill’s self-improvement books are really outstanding and this one is my favorite.  I can highly recommend this book without reservation.

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (Borzoi Books) – If you want a clearly written explanation of why we get fat (it’s not calories) and what is wrong with our modern agricultural diet, look no further.  For a fantastic and really enjoyable book that is more broadly focused try The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet.

The Immortality Edge: Realize the Secrets of Your Telomeres for a Longer, Healthier Life -  If you are interested in healthy aging I highly recommend this book.  It was one of the best I’ve read on the topic.

Don’t Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now -  This is an incredibly inspiring book about engaging and participating in life.  A lot of practical tips.

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Switch

Chip and Dan Heath of Made to Stick fame are out with a new book that looks to be a huge winner: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  Check out 90+% five star reviews on Amazon.  It is currently a best seller on Amazon and the New York Times lists.

Switch is an excellent book with very practical advice that is made as easy to follow as you can imagine for such a broad and complex topic.  I really loved this book.  I bought the book at a Barnes and Noble.  When I was checking out, the sales clerk said “The whole world needs to read this book”.

I’m going to write a series summarizing the ideas and suggestions in the book and this first article in the series will be an overview.

Overview

The book covers individual, organizations, and societal change and does so in a reasonably concise way.  The book is organized around a metaphor of an elephant, the rider on the elephant, and the path the rider and the elephant take.  The elephant represents the emotional self, the rider represents the rational self, and the path represents the environment in which change occurs.  This metaphor works very well.  When the rider and the elephant do not agree, which is often, you have a problem.

The authors describe interesting research on human behavior that is relevant to their topic.  They also use a lot of real-world examples and stories to make it engaging and believable, really believable.  It is really well done.

The book and the process for making changes have three main parts described below.  The authors admit that they leave out a lot of “great thinking” on change in order to create a framework that is practical.  Maybe that’s what separates this book from many others.  Instead of droning on and on about theory, they try to create something that someone can actually put into practice.

You don’t have to finish the whole book to make use of it.  After reading the Find the Bright Spots chapter near the beginning of the book, I was already thinking of ways I could put the advice to use.

The process and the organization of the book into main parts and chapters is described below.

Direct the Rider

– What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity.  So provide crystal-clear direction.

1. Find the Bright Spots
2. Script the Critical Moves
3. Point to the Destination

Motivate the elephant

– What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.  The Rider can’t get his way by force for very long.  So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side – get their Elephants on the path and cooperative.

1. Find the Feeling
2. Shrink the Change
3. Grow Your People

Shape the Path

– What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.  We call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the “Path”.  When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.

1. Tweak the Environment
2. Build Habits
3. Rally the Herd

What’s Next?

Coming next is a summary of the ideas in Change Made Simple – Direct the Rider

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? is a really, really good book.  It’s hard for me to imagine anyone not getting something of value from its pages, unless you are retired and spend all your time relaxing and having fun.  If you have a job and/or are trying to create, this book is for you.

The book is a passionate plea and argument to individuals to become indispensable linchpins in whatever it is they do.  Unlike some of Seth’s other writing, Linchpin is not a book about marketing, but a true self-improvement book and applicable to people in all organizations and typical jobs as well as artists and entrepreneurs.

“This is a personal manifesto, a plea from me to you.  Right now, I’m not focused on the external, on the tactics organizations use to make great products or spread important ideas.  This book is different.  It’s about choice and it’s about your life.  This choice doesn’t require you to quit your job, though it challenges you to rethink how you do your job.

The system we grew up with is a mess.  It’s falling apart at the seams and a lot of people I care about are in pain because the things we thought would work don’t.  Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back.  They have become victims, pawns in a senseless system that uses them up and undervalues them.

It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map.

My goal is to persuade you that there is an opportunity available to you, a chance to significantly change your life for the better.  Not by doing something that is easy or that you’ve been trained to do, but by understanding how the rules of our world have fundamentally changed and by taking advantage of this moment to become something the world believes is indispensable.”

–Seth Godin, from the Introduction

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, is full of insights that I think are very valuable.  This is a well written and thoughtful book that deserves wide readership.  Judging by it’s sales on Amazon, that is not going to be a problem.  It’s an engaging book written in a style that is not typical of his other books.

Godin does not provide you with a script to follow, although you do get a lot of suggestions.  It’s the very nature of what he is arguing that makes it impossible to provide a script:

“Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it.  If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.  Don’t you hate that?  I love that there is no map.”

I suggest you read the Amazon reviews (about 90% of the reviewers are rating it 5 stars).  Here are the chapters that make up the book and a brief summary of their content.  After I completed the summaries below, I almost took them out.  They seem so inadequate at indicating the insights contained within the text.  For most of those you’ll have to read the book, but I’ll share some of them with you in future articles.

• The New World of Work – Outsourcing and automation make most information workers replaceable cogs in a vast machine, just like factory workers in the industrial age.  The white collar job is a myth, it’s just factory work of a different sort.  Godin introduces the idea that this new world now includes a third team in addition to management and labor; the linchpins.
• Thinking About Your Choice – You can choose to buy into the fear of the corporate system or you can choose to map out your own course, regardless of what your boss thinks.  The boss really wants someone who is an artist and who changes everything, regardless of what he says.  You can choose to be remarkable, be generous, create art, make judgment calls, and connect people and ideas.  You can choose to become a linchpin.
• Indoctrination: How We Got Here – Our schools and our cultures are not teaching us the right skills.  “We’ve bought into a model that taught us to embrace the system, to spend for pleasure, and to separate ourselves from our work.”  Godin provides a list of things we are teaching our kids and then asks “Which of these attributes are the keys to being indispensible?” and “Are we building the sort of people our society needs?”.
• Becoming the Linchpin – Being good isn’t good enough anymore.  Meeting specs, following a manual, or doing something that can be measured can usually be outsourced or automated less expensively.  This is the same argument made by others such as Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.  “The linchpin is someone who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, and make things happen.”
• Is It Possible to Do Hard Work in a Cubicle? – Smiling, connecting with humans, taking initiative, being creative, being surprising, and changing people we interact with for the better is what Godin calls “emotional labor”.  He says we do it for free all our lives and then when we show up for work we expect to be told what to do and get paid for it.  Bring your gift of being human to work.
• The Resistance – This chapter, the longest in the book, begins with a drawing of three overlapping circles.  They are labeled “Could have”, “Should have”, and “Would have”.  Where they all three overlap in the center is “Didn’t”.   I love that drawing.   Godin talks about your reptilian brain and your amygdala and how your resistance to being indispensable is biological.  Until you recognize your resistance and deal with it you will be frustrated by it.  Your resistance works hard to make sure you won’t do anything remarkable or become indispensable.
• The Powerful Culture of Gifts – “The culture of gifts has a long history on this planet, and understanding how it brings people together is a critical step in becoming indispensable.”  There is a lot in this chapter about truly giving your gifts without the expectation or even possibility of reciprocity.  It is excellent work.  Godin gave his gift well.
• There Is No Map – This is why there are so few linchpins and why they are so valuable.  If it was easy it wouldn’t be valuable.  Waiting for instructions is easy.  Figuring out for yourself what to do next is hard and it is what allows you to create indispensable value.  Godin even goes Zen and talks about letting go of attachments to outcomes.
• Making the Choice – You either fit in or you stand out.  You either defend the status quo or you challenge it.  You either make a difference or you disappear into the sea of cogs.  The essence of being a linchpin is a choice you make.  Most people will not make the hard choice to overcome the anxiety associated with being an indispensable leader and connector.  What about you?
• The Culture of Connection – “Your personality and attitude are more important than the actual work product you create, because indispensable work is work that is connected to others.”  This is a very short chapter about the power of social intelligence.
• The Seven Abilities of the Linchpin – This almost sounds like a summary chapter of the book, but it is not.  It is a tiny chapter describing seven characteristics of a Linchpin.  I found it a rather odd chapter.
• When It Doesn’t Work – Your ideas don’t always work.  Godin makes some suggestions including the possibility that you simply won’t get paid for them.  But at least in a connected (Internet) world it is easy to share your ideas and art with the public.  He ends this chapter with two more sets of circles.  “Dignity”, “Generosity”, and “Humanity” yielding  “Indispensable”.  “Conformity”, “Obedience”, and “Compliance” yielding “Surrender”.
• Summary – The last section of this last chapter is called “The Last Word”.  There is a lot of wisdom in this little section.  “We can’t profitably get more average.  We can’t get more homogenized, more obedient, or cheaper.  We can’t get faster either.  It is our desire to be treated like individuals that will end this cycle.  Our passion for contribution and possibility, the passion we’ve drowned out in school and the corporate world – that’s the only way out.”  If you can overcome your resistance and take your humanity to your work, you can become a linchpin.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future offers an interesting, and I think valid, perspective on what it is going to take to succeed or to continue to succeed in the world in which we currently find ourselves.

The thesis of the book is basically the following:

• Due to abundance, reasonably priced reasonable quality goods and services are available to most people in the Western world.
• What differentiates these products and services now are more aesthetic qualities such as design, beauty, and emotion.
• What brought us the abundance was predominately left-brained thought which is sequential, logical, textual, and detailed.
• What produces the qualities that are becoming premium in our choices about how to spend our money is predominately right-brained thinking which is simultaneous, contextual, metaphorical, emotional, synthetic, and big picture.
• Left-brained thinking is much more easily outsourced to Asia and much more easily automated by computers.
• Therefore those with right-brain thinking styles will be the ones who are going to be most in demand in the future and for whose services a premium price will be paid.

There is nothing mind-blowing about all this, but it is something I had not been really thinking about.  I just really enjoyed the book’s style and content and found the author’s arguments reasonably persuasive.  This book encouraged me to think a little differently and I have taken some actions as a result.  For me personally, that’s a good indication that is was a valuable investment of my time.

One thing I really like about the book in addition to the attraction of it’s central theme is something Pink calls “Portfolios”.  At the end of chapter dealing with one of the six right-brain abilities Pink lists as essential to success in the new world, he places what he calls a portfolio.  These portfolios are filled with tools, exercises, and further reading that you can make use of in sharpening the particular ability you have just read about.  Those  portfolios were of real practical value.

Six Right-Brain Aptitudes for the New Conceptual Age

The following are the six aptitudes Pink thinks are essential for mastering the new “Conceptual Age”.  He devotes one chapter to each followed by a portfolio of ways to work on enhancing each of them.  I found most of these chapters quite interesting, especially the earlier ones.

Design

People are no longer satisfied with products or services that are merely functional.  They want products and services that are beautiful, meaningful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.

“Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.” — Poala Antonelli

Story

With information overload and limited time, just creating left-brain logical arguments is not enough.  The ability to fashion a compelling narrative is critical to persuasion and communication in the new age.

“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” — Roger C. Schank

Symphony

Specialization and focus are being outsourced and automated by computers.  What is needed now is the ability to see the big picture and to combine disparate parts into new and exciting wholes.  Synthesis and not just analysis.

“Seeing the big picture is fast becoming a killer app in business.” — Daniel H. Pink

Empathy

One thing that will distinguish those who thrive will be the ability to understand their fellow human beings, to create relationships, and to care for others.

“Leadership is about empathy.  It is about having the ability to relate and to connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” — Oprah Winfrey

Play

In addition to seriousness, our well-being even in a professional setting, requires laughter, lightheartedness, games, and humor.

“There is no question that a playfully light attitude is characteristic of creative individuals.” — Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

Meaning

The world of abundance has freed much of the Western world from day-to-day struggles and allowed them to pursue more significant lives of purpose and spiritual fulfillment.

“At the very least, we ought to take spirituality seriously because of its demonstrated ability to improve our lives – something that might be even more valuable when so many of us have satisfied (and oversatisfied) our material needs.” – Daniel H. Pink

Obviously his book devotes many pages to each of these aptitudes and if you want the full benefit of Pink’s insights you’ll have to read the book.  A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future is fairly easy to read and can be had from Amazon for $10.  It was easily worth it to me.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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I thought I would list some of the books I’ve read recently and found interesting or enjoyable recently.  I won’t write a lot about them because they are Amazon links that you can follow and get a lot more information than I can provide here.

Heart Warming

I love animals and this book just made me feel good.  A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion.

Happiness and Well-Being

Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life – I highly recommend this book.  It doesn’t seem to be too well known but 64% of Amazon reviewers gave it 5 stars.  I agree.  The author Dr. Todd Kashdan claims the missing ingredient in much of the popularization of positive psychology is curiosity.  Very well written.

Two books by Tal Ben-Shahar The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life and Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment.  The author has a very personable writing style and these books are full of insights that I found valuable.  They are both fairly short (200 pages) and easy to read.  I found the one on perfection to be slightly preferable because it covers less well-travelled ground.

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want is outstanding.

I wrote a whole article called Positivity Leads to a Flourishing Life on this book so I won’t say anymore here other than I recommend it: Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive.

Productivity

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less is a unique and fascinating book by Sam Carpenter. It gets an 90% 5 star rating on Amazon.

I absolutely loved Can I Have Your Attention?: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Concentration.  This book is obviously not widely read and my review on Amazon is the only one out there.  I gave it 5 stars when I was only 1/2 way through the book.  So maybe I’m crazy and maybe I liked it because it was so unique.  I really don’t know, but it is an inexpensive and short 200 page paperback so how can you lose?

I devoured The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World and now I’m trying to figure out how to use it.  It is a quick and interesting read.

OK, I read this one a long time ago but it is an idea that most people just don’t seem to apply: The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less.

Good to Great

The book gets a 94% 5 star rating on Amazon: The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great. I truly enjoyed this book and it has a fairly unique thesis.  Rick Smith the author writes about how to make “the leap” without leaping and taking a lot of risk.  It’s 200 pages long and is an easy read.

Health

I bought this book the day it came out.  I noticed it has since received a 100% 5 star rating on Amazon.  It is a fascinating and unique book and I strongly recommend it.  Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality

Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever – This is a very interesting and highly valuable book in my opinion.  The nine steps are a mnemonic for the word “transcend”: Talk with your doctor; Relaxation; Assessment; Nutrition; Supplements; Calorie reduction; Exercise; New technologies; Detoxification.  The authors have an extremely optimistic view of the future in health that may not come to pass, but this is an excellent resource.

Odd

I thoroughly enjoyed The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, but it is rather controversial and gets mixed reviews.  To a curious person like myself it was a very interesting read.

Biography

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a long (721 pages) biography about the father of the atomic bomb.  I found it engrossing.

True Story

Trail Of Feathers: Searching for Philip True is about a reporter who was murdered in Mexico and the subsequent search for justice.

Life in General

I thought this book was excellent but be forewarned: it is a rejoinder to the very popular The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  Thus, it is not for everyone.  Robert M. Price writes from a humanist perspective:  The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For?

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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