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 »
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, thought
Wednesday Jun 25, 2008
If you go to your bookshop these days you are likely to see several new books that all focus on happiness - what it is, how to get it, how we misunderstand it, the history of it and the latest research about it to name just a few of the themes.
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, 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
Can you guess what it is? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, happiness, money
Thursday May 8, 2008
What was the goal of the Apollo Moon Program? To put a man on the moon and bring him safely back, right? Wrong! Remember this was during the cold war and what the Americans really wanted to demonstrate was that they were superior to those pesky Commies. United States thinktanks examined several options and worked out that the US could probably (with a lot of effort) get a man to the moon and back within a decade, but crucially, they believed the Soviets couldn’t. President Kennedy then announced it to the world, and the rest is History. So putting a man on the moon wasn’t the goal; the goal was to be able to shout out to the world, “Hey, look how much better than the Reds we are!”, and putting a man on the moon was the means by which the Americans achieved it.
What has this got to do with being rich? Well, most of us would admit to having the goal of being wealthy, or at least being wealthier. But, like going to the moon, this is not our real goal but rather a way of achieving something else, which I would guess is to be happy, or obtain some peace of mind. Going to the moon or becoming rich are technically only the means or objectives - particular ways to satisfy goals. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
