Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Five Minute Book
Saturday Jun 28, 2008
This is the book that’s changing the way people view productivity. It has been a big hit, making the New York Times’ best seller list and launching its author, Tim Ferriss, into the media spotlight. The Four Hour Work Week’s (T4HWW) success is attributable to two main things: 1) It offers a refreshingly new approach to productivity, and explores some key new developments that can help a person spend less time at work, and 2) Tim Ferriss’ tireless (shameless?) self publicity that has gotten him on the front pages of many newspapers, magazines and on the couches of many chat shows. What follows is a brief surgical strike summary of the book so you can get a feel of what it’s all about and make your decision about purchasing it (or not!). If you do want to buy the book, there is a link to it on my recommended reading section in the sidebar to the right of this post.
The book is split into (appropriately enough) four main chapters, Definition, Elimination, Automation and Liberation, giving the nice acronym DEAL. I’ll go through each of the sections in turn.Read the rest of this entry »
Despite coming at happiness from many angles, one thing all these new books agree on is the difficulty in defining precisely what happiness is. One thing seems clear, they don’t mean pleasure. Pleasure seems too fleeting and too much linked to sensation and the physical body. Happiness on the other hand, while refusing to fit within a neat and concise definition, seems more related to a feeling of peace of mind and general wellbeing. More a kind of background emotion that can persist even in the face of physical discomfort or psychological or emotional strain. After all, people can report happiness in the most extreme places or situations, such as concentraton camps, or during severe illness.
The Gratitude Key
One thing appears to be key in being able to develop happiness as a steady and reliable feature of your life and not something that’s contingent on events: gratitude. But what do we have to be grateful for? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, Work, travel
Sunday Jun 15, 2008
Commuting to work; most of us have done it or know people that do. Traveling mid to long distances to work either each day to a work location or staying over for the week and traveling back home again for the weekend. This has become so prevalent that it’s given rise to a new phenomena - the relationship commute, or the telepartner. This is where you spend the majority of your time at your work location and commute back to your partner at specific times - e.g. the weekend. In the US, apparently more the 3.5 million couples live like this, double the figure taken in 1990.
You would think this would be a tough challenge for most relationships, and yet the figures given by the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships (and who knew that existed!) show that such couples are no more likely to break up than couples who spend the majority of their time living together. Indeed, such couples are likely to be no less satisfied in their relationships or more likely to cheat.
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, Work, thought
Friday Jun 13, 2008
You hear a lot these days about work/life balance. About how it’s becoming more important for people to integrate their lives better with their work. It’s a big buzzword in corporate life, and many large companies stress their commitment to helping their employees pursue it.
Jazz Up Your Life
If you’ve been thinking about work/life balance lately, forget it! It’s wrong headed thinking. The balance analogy implies a win/lose relationship between the two - a pair of scales where as one goes up the other goes down. I prefer the approach of Dr. Stewart Friedman presented at T4HWW. He argues that a much better analogy is to think of our lives like a jazz band, where the aim is to be a tight, integrated musical masterclass - think Miles Davis and John Coltrane:
I don’t know about you, but somehow I’m not sure I’d be laughing quite so much as the people in this clip. Sure, it’s a smart and innovative use of mobile phones, but jeez! Ordering pizza on my cell will never be quite the same ever again…
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, thought
Tuesday Jun 10, 2008
Forget the four-hour-work-week, the power of positive thinking, lifehacks and winning the lottery, there’s only one sure fire way to turn yourself from a sad, underpaid, unfulfilled depressed loser into one of life’s, serene, impossibly positive and happy-to-be-alive winners. It’s something available to all of us and guaranteed to happen to you on a not infrequent basis. Each of the people below discovered its life altering powers, and here are just some of their testimonies to its awesome, life affirming badasserdry (taken from Daniel Gilbert’s book “Stumbling On Happiness”).
- “I am so much better off physically, financially, mentally and in almost every other way.” - JW from Texas
- “It was a glorious experience” - MB from Louisiana
- “I didn’t appreciate others nearly as much as I do now” - CR from California
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, dreams
Thursday Jun 5, 2008
While its great and all to read stuff about re-designing your life, taking mini-retirements, automating your income and sailing around the world with your kids in tow. A lot of us feel a million miles away from ever being able to effect such drastic lifehacks in our own lives. The good news is that to begin changing things doesn’t have to be so dramatic. There’s a ton of small, mini-lifehacks each of us can do that will start to mix things up for us right now!
By examining the small things we could change we learn a few things. We learn that we can change and that we are not destined to keep living out the same kind of days we have always done, we also learn what making a conscious change feels like (even if only on the small scale); what it feels like to do something different on purpose, rather than doing something because its a habit and we’ve always done it. The risk is of course, you might learn to like how that feels, and who knows where that might end up…
This is the book that’s changing the way people view productivity. It has been a big hit, making the New York Times’ best seller list and launching its author, Tim Ferriss, into the media spotlight. The Four Hour Work Week’s (T4HWW) success is attributable to two main things: 1) It offers a refreshingly new approach to productivity, and explores some key new developments that can help a person spend less time at work, and 2) Tim Ferriss’ tireless (shameless?) self publicity that has gotten him on the front pages of many newspapers, magazines and on the couches of many chat shows. What follows is a brief surgical strike summary of the book so you can get a feel of what it’s all about and make your decision about purchasing it (or not!). If you do want to buy the book, there is a link to it on my recommended reading section in the sidebar to the right of this post.
