Thoughts on reading "The Magic of Thinking Big"

Recently, I stumbled on a classic book, called “The Magic of Thinking Big”. It was a book written by David Schwartz, an American motivational writer and coach.

When I started reading this book, I did not know that it was written in 1959. Imagine! 1959! I wasn’t even born at that time. That was a completely different era. It was a world without computers, social media and smartphones.

I started guessing that this was a very old book when the author used certain terms in his book that clearly showed he was from a different era. For example, he mentioned the occupation “stenographer” in one of his chapters. This was someone whose occupation is to transcribe spoken words into written form. It was more common in the past when people do not usually have personal computers, and had secretaries to transcribe what they said into documents.

For a book that was more than half a century old (older even than I am!), I marvel at how many of the things the author said was still so relevant even in today’s times. I guess human nature has not changed that much over the years.

I also marvel at how his words still had the power to motivate, to make one feel better and more confident. That was why I love motivational books so much. They make one feel good just reading the books, and make one feel like striving to achieve and do one’s best.

I really love this inspirational book. It provides so many useful tips for you to get the most out of your job and your life.

PS. I took a quick look at the comments on Goodreads, and many readers gave it a 5-star!

Book Review: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

I love Dilbert the comics. In a short sequence of drawings, Dilbert manages to make us laugh and still bring out the ironies of working life.

When I came across this book by Scott Adams, I was instantly intrigued. According to its back cover, the book was a cross between a story of his life, and some life advice that he is giving out. I also assumed that since he is so famous as a cartoonist, there should be a good dash of humour in the book, which should make the book an entertaining read.

I was not disappointed.

The book was definitely not the same as other “self-help” books that I have read before. Scott Adams has a very unique way of looking at life.

Some of them are not new to us. For example, he is an ardent believer in embracing failures. As he himself says: “… over the years, I have cultivated a unique relationship with failure. I invite it. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it.”

However, he also has a whole new way of looking at achieving what you want. To him, goals are for losers. You need to have a “system” instead.

I really love the part about systems and goals that I will summarize it for you here. 

Basically, he says that goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. And a system is something that you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run.

For example, embracing challenges is a “system”. Because each time you embrace a challenge and fail, you are a step closer to achieving success. You are not failing, because you are just applying your “system”.

What he is proposing here is to focus very much on the actions that you take on a regular basis to achieve what you want, rather than what you want. He assumes that human beings are generally the same, and want the same thing from life, i.e. health, happiness, wealth, etc. So you do not really need to focus so much on where you want to go, but just on how to get there.

Err…. It kinda makes sense, right? Yet it completely overturns what popular literature say about achieving stuff in life.

However, I would caution that we take what he says with a pinch of salt. He contradicts himself all over the book by describing some of the goals that he chased after all his life. This includes his dream of becoming a cartoonist (which clearly is a goal), and his entrepreneurial dream of creating something of value and reproducing it in unlimited quantities. Nevertheless, I loved the way that he thinks of it this way, as it provokes us to think in another way.

So what exactly is his “system” for achieving happiness and success?

It is surprisingly simple. Maximize your energy metric.

Maximizing his personal energy means eating right, exercising, and having something in his life that makes him excited to wake up.

He also teaches us one important life hack. He said that if you are stuck in a corporate life that you dislike, have side projects that energizes you. He pursued half a dozen side projects while doing corporate jobs. One of them, as we know, got him to where he was. But he also made it clear that you need to put in efforts in those side projects as well. For him, he woke up at 4:30 am every morning to draw.

This book is a really a gem. Sometimes, Scott Adams says things that others have said a thousand times before, yet make them sound different. Sometimes, he says quite a lot of downright confounding things. As he himself warned at the start of the book, don’t take what a cartoonist say in its entirety. Filter it through your “crap-buster”. Still, it has quite a lot of good stuff to provoke you to think about life in a different way.

Let a Little Adventure into Your Life

I’m half way through reading the book “The Happiness of Pursuit” by Chris Guillebeau.

I really love the title of the book. Instead of the more common phrase “the pursuit of happiness”, which by the way is a phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence*, the title of the book turns it on its head and put it as “the happiness of pursuit”.

Just by reading the title of the book, something “clicked” in my head.

Suddenly, I understood why I still keep to the tradition of setting New Year resolutions, and why, from time to time, I keep setting impossible goals for myself. There was something about chasing after a specific goal that was very invigorating and exciting. Just dreaming about a big, hairy, audacious goal is thrilling by itself. When you see yourself making progress, that’s when things become doubly exciting.

Of course the author, Chris Guillebeau, does not call the dreams “goals”. Instead, he called the “thing” that you are chasing after a quest. His book had one and only one simple message: “Go on a quest. It makes your life more interesting and adventurous.”

Adventure comes in many forms. You can go visit every single country in the world, which is what the author did, or just decide to knit or crochet 10,000 handmade hats. You can circumnavigate the world’s ocean on a 38-foot sailboat, or you can cook a meal from every country for your family. The idea is to just think of a crazy idea, and go do it!

Reading the book makes me feel very much like going on a quest myself. It is the kind of book that is very, very dangerous. It incites you to dream.

Alas, from someone who has repeatedly made audacious goals for myself, and not achieving them at the end of the day, I have a different take about goal setting. I think that setting the goal is the easy part, putting in the effort to do it is a different thing entirely. Take running a marathon, for example. You have to train for the marathon first, and that involves running three times a week for 10 km, 20 km and longer and longer distances progressively. If you speak to the runners, while many talk about the thrill of completing the race, not many talk about the monotony that comes with the task.

Don’t take me wrong. I think it is good to dream, even better to dream BIG. As the book shows, so many people have dreamt and achieved their crazy ideas. However, if you do embark on a dream, be prepared that achieving it will be very boring, very tiresome, and you will want to stop. As Colin Powel puts it, a dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.




And with that scary advice, I will still say: This is a godamn good book! Read it, be inspired, and just go and embark on your dream. Better still, don’t read it, and still go and achieve your dream.

* The sentence from the United States Declaration of Independence states that: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Credit: Determination image rom alainanelson.blogspot.com

Who is Richard Branson? Thoughts on reading "The Virgin Way"

Who is Richard Branson?

I mean, who is he really like, as a person, and as a leader?

This was the answer that I hoped to find when I parted ways with a tidy sum of S$30 for the book, "The Virgin Way".

Unfortunately, after reading the book, I was disappointed to realise that I have found little of the answer. It is hard to distinguish the “PR” part of this book, where he is forever advertising the Virgin brand, and the real story about the person.

Perhaps I am not giving the guy his full credits. Maybe he is really so in love with his own company and brand. However, it feels like I am having too much of the “good stuff”, when every page is full of tiresome praise about “the Virgin Way”.

Still, when reading this book, I am left wondering, how in the world did this guy do it? I mean, he dabbled in everything from a student magazine, to an airline company, to now a space tourism venture, and did a hugely successful job of it. And on top of it, he still found time to write seven books? And here I am, struggling to even find the time to blog.

Well, from what I found from reading this book, his tips on leadership seem extraordinarily ordinary. At the end of the 373 page book, he gave a very helpful summary list. To save you time, I will reproduce it here:

1. Follow your dreams and Just Do It
2. Make a Positive Difference and Do Some Good
3. Believe In Your Ideas and Be The Best
4. Have Fun and Look After Your Team
5. Don’t Give Up
6. Listen, Take Lots of Notes, and Keep Setting New Challenges
7. Delegate and spend more time with your family
8. Turn off that laptop and iphone and get your derriere out there
9. Communicate, Collaborate and Communicate Some More
10. Do what you love and make a couch in the kitchen

Doesn’t the list above sound like any other list that you read from some random leadership books or website?

Reading this book makes me feel like I tried so hard to find the secret ingredient to a super tasty dish, only to find out there really is no secret. The only way to cook that magical dish, is to put in lots of passion and effort.

Although the book disappointed me, Richard Branson the guy will forever be a legend to look up to in terms of his style and daring.

 He will be one of the persons in my “heroes file”, and when I need to make hard decisions, I will pull him out from this file and think: “What would Richard Branson do or say if he is in this situation?”

I can picture myself “channeling” the Branson in me to say: “Screw it, let’s do it!” to the challenges that I will face!

Image Credit: http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/10-inspirational-richard-branson-quotes