Book review: Better and Faster by Jeremy Gutsche

This compelling book by Jeremy Gutsche begins by outlining the three common neurological traps that not only may block any successful person but may also render the person to soon become irrelevant. Visit the accompanying website.

Using the analogy of the farmer and the hunter, these three traps are:

1. Complacency - an inward focus that kills curiosity and innovation. As elucidated by the author, all too often we shape our careers around superficial, short term goals only to find ourselves stupefied by the rewards and rigid structures. Success breeds a form of complacency by sticking with the status quo. Antidote: Insatiability. As the author puts it: in a fiercely competitive world, the dictum is: "eat or be eaten".
2. Repetition - taking the cues from a farmer, the author describes the annual routine that the farmer has to go through - seeding, tending, harvesting, seeding, tending, harvesting, seeding, tending, harvesting, etc. This rigid repetition dampens the capacity for creativity and adaptation. To quote the author: "As individuals, we, too, can easily blunder into the trap of repetition. Once you find an industry that pays you well, you'll tend to stick with it." Antidote: Curiosity.
3. Protectiveness. As the author puts it so well: "Every strong culture contains seed of its own destruction. A culture is a defined set of behaviors that develop over time.  But when  new opportunities arise, the culture holds you back." Bill Gates, in his book, The Road Ahead, says: "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." This trap causes people to hang onto past success, cling to one career too long and resist trying new technologies and different ways of getting work done." Antidote: Willingness to destroy. To avoid falling into the trap of protectiveness, we need to be willing to destroy - destroy the old mold, to abandon the relative safety of normalcy. Be willing to scrap away past and current successes and try something bolder. A bold refusal to rest our laurels. As Eric Ripert, the famous French chef, one of the youngest chefs to have received four stars from the NYT, said that signature dish is an accomplishment, a past accomplishment. It means that our success is in the past. If customers walk to his restaurant and ask for a specific entree that they heard was his specialty, he would tell them that it is already out of stock and removed from menu before it ends up becoming a "signature" dish. He said: "All that care you've put into the old dish dies because nobody cares anymore.

Having highlighted these three traps, the author then describe six patterns of opportunity with each of these in a single chapter, namely

1. Convergence
2. Divergence
3. Cyclicality
4. Redirection
5. Reduction 
6. Acceleration.

Watch a keynote talk by the author here:

Convergence:
This is the process of creating a product by combining multiple products by mixing, product integration, social integration, bringing people together, adding value through layering, drama, multi-function and co-branding.

Adversity (whether due to an illness, economic pressures, lost jobs, etc) when looked from the positive angle, can present with tremendous opportunity. This is because when our security is threatened, complacency is not a realistic strategy. As the author describes it, on the surface, a positive confident attitude may seems most beneficial. However, this sense of confidence may suppress the feeling of urgency, inhibiting adaptation. It results in a celebration of past successes and focuses on optimizing tried-and-true strategies. In contrast, desperate people or companies know that status quo would not save them. Slipping sales or fast-declining market share can spark a fervor that boosts innovation. To fight success-bred complacency, one needs to be insatiably curious, open to intentional destruction and just be a little bit paranoid.

Divergence:
This refers to the process whereby products are designed to oppose or break free from the mainstream. This opportunity pattern extends beyond rebellion to include personalization, customization, status and luxury.

Know the difference between "popular" and "cool". Too often, people mistakenly pursue that which is already popular. Popular is mainstream. Popular is hot. And if it is hot, it means that somebody has already done it. It is crowded with competitors. Cool is not hot. Competitive advantage comes from searching for something cool. In order to pursue that which is cool and potentially radical, the first step is not to fear the outcome. And that is the leap of faith with divergence.  And sometimes, as the author says, your greatest weakness can be your greatest strength.

Cyclicality:
This refers to the predictably recurring opportunities and it include searching for the retro, nostalgia, economic cycles, seasonality, generational patterns and repetitive cycles. As the author puts it, everything old is new again. As the author explains it, expect repetition. Many people fail to adapt to cyclical patterns, but if you expect repetition, you can open your mind to the clues that will lead to opportunity. But in order to do so, one needs to act fast because cyclical opportunities are fleeting.

Redirection:
Redirection is the process of re-channeling or skillfully re-framing a product to your advantage, instead of fighting it. And the way to do this includes rationalizing, refocusing, re-prioritizing and reversing.

Reduction:
This is a process of simplifying a concept or product or focusing it more on a specific idea. This also includes removing the layers and steps from a product. In fact, as the author describes it, niche ideas today have a far greater reach because the internet helps you find similarly minded people. Launching a niche community can be done in the half hour it takes to start a Facebook fan page. The author also advises the readers to find little ideas. We do not need to find a big idea. We can find a little idea that can be made big.

Acceleration:
This is a process of identifying a critical feature of a product and dramatically enhancing that element. This includes perfecting it, aspirational positioning and doing exaggerated features highlighting. To do so, we need to first pinpoint exactly why and where something is great and then to create something remarkable out of it.

I personally find this book to be informative, full of anecdotes and highly motivational with a lot of creative ideas that one can work on, regardless of the fields of work one is involved in.

This is the one book everyone should read and not just those involve in businesses and advertising.

I received this e-book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Book review: Speak, Lord

 
To begin with, I am now not a big fan of devotional books, especially those that have a mixture of anecdotal accounts with theological accounts. But the strength of this book by Vic Black is that there are a lot of interactive features that invite the readers to experience the Psalms themselves. It is a 'to-do' book vs a 'to-read' book. As the author says:

"I would encourage you to live in one psalm for a period of time. The objective is not speed. I would not encourage you to try to do one psalm a day. Take a slower approach and stay in a psalm for a week or two...."

Each chapter of this book is divided into a few sections:
1) The psalm itself and a commentary by the author
2) The re-writing of the psalm based on the author's personal experience
3) A reflection section by the author
4) The Practice section broken into Writing Prompts and Devotional Thoughts for you to consider. This is the part where the readers are given various hints, tips and prompts to interact with the psalms.

(Disclosure of Material Connection: I was given access for a limited time to this e-book free from Tyndale House Publishers  as part of their book review program called Tyndale Blog Network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”)

Book review: The Ancient Path: Old Lessons from the Church Fathers for a New Life Today

This book is a semi-autobiography of John Michael Talbot relating his spiritual experiences how the early church fathers deeply influenced his spiritual, professional and personal life.

Talbot was born into a Methodist family with a musical background and at age 15 he dropped out of school and was performing as a guitarist for Mason Proffit, a country folk-rock band formed with his older brother Terry. Talbot embarked on a spiritual journey that led him through Native American religion and Buddhism to Christianity. At this point he and his brother, Terry, joined the Jesus Movement. Reading the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, he was inspired to begin studying at a Franciscan center in Indianapolis. He became a Roman Catholic and joined the Secular Franciscan Order in 1978. He started a house of prayer, The Little Portion. This book basically describes some of his experiences.

However, I find this book to be quite difficult to read. Talbot started by emphasizing that the early church preferred nothing  - not even life itself - to Christ. If Christians were willing to die as martyrs, it was because they wished to imitate Christ and reach Christ.

Ignatius of Antioch in AD 107 for example said: "I am the wheat of God. Let me be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ." Or as St. Cyprian said: "Prefer nothing to Christ because he preferred nothing to us, and on our account preferred hard things to ease, poverty to riches, servitude to rule, death to immortality."

Theologically too as an evangelical Christian, I find certain segments of the book hard to accept. For example, in chapter 3, Talbot said that the Eastern Fathers spoke of the graced exchange in Greek terms that are startling to Western ears. They called it theopoiesis - literally "god-making". They called it theosis - which can be translated, roughly, as godding. In saving us, God has "godded" us by making us partakers of his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

......St. Athanasius of Alexandria, in the fourth century, said it most concisely: "He was made man that we might be made God." This does not mean we're given permission to walk around acting like we're God Almighty. No, it is a divine gift that makes us even more perfectly human." 

Although the qualifier is made, I still find this process of deification,  quite difficult for me to accept.

But the subsequent segment on prayers is great. As Talbot said:

The goal was to make Jesus the single focal point of life, and to make our prayer to him as constant as breath. Breathe in: Lord. Breathe out: Jesus.... It's not mechanical. It's not magical. It's love. 

The Eastern Fathers tell us to invoke the name and person of Jesus with every breath we take. Think about it: breathing is the only analogue we have as we become as we begin to consider the scriptural command. It is the one thing we do without ceasing. If we're living, we're breathing. When we stop breathing, we're dead.

In short, it might be a nice work, but still certain theological issues I find them hard to accept.


(Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this e-book free from Blogger for books as part of their book review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”)

Book review: Praying Upside Down

In this book Praying Upside Down, Kelly O'Dell Stanley uses imagery, simple techniques, and artwork to help the readers to creatively connect with God like never before and to move their prayer life away from the preconceived and expected to a new level of intimacy.  God, as the author calls it, "...is the Master of Creativity, the original Artist, and He rarely responds in the ways we expect"

Kelly is a graphic designer and writer - which explains the contents of this book: the product out of the junction of all of her passions - faith, art and writing. 

Praying Upside Down basically offers a fresh chance to learn something new, hear an answer we may not anticipate, and experience God in a more real, tangible way.

As she explained in the introduction section of this book, praying upside means to allow God to let us see - truly see Him at work, see Him in action, letting go of our own expectations. To pray upside down means to allow Him to throw our world out of orbit, turn our thoughts topsy-turvy and changing us from the inside out. Praying upside down will definitely mean that our perspective will never be the same again. Similarly, in chapter 3, the author defines praying upside down in this way:

Praying upside down is a way to move your prayers away from the expected so that you can learn something new, hear an answer you didn't anticipate, or see God in a unique way.

And again, in chapter 4, the author says that

Praying upside down is any way that God shakes you out of your comfort zone. It's a new perspective, an altitude of exploration, the wonder and marvel of sacred revelation.

As she says, before we can pray upside down, we have to learn to see upside down - or sideways, backwards, from other angles and vantage points. This disciplines trains our minds to examine things from a new perspective, much like an artist does. Preconceived ideas are discarded allowing our brains to see the actual shapes that we might have missed when the image was right side up. To pray upside down means we must be prepared to embrace  - and expect, the unexpected.

As she said:

Whatever we are viewing, once it's inverted, we become more aware of its nuances - the shapes of the dark shadows, the space between the edge of the object and the side of the page. We see it for what it is. The goal of reproducing the image hasn't changed, but the end result of the upside-down drawing is more accurate.

To introduce the core content of the book, she first picked up the brush and sketched out the background in the form of her own testimony when she and her husband were contemplating of buying a house. They were praying for someone to buy over her old house, when God prompted her to pray for the woman who was her potential buyer instead of about her own house.

As she wrote in the next chapter:

To make art, we have to be able to enter a complicated dance between knowing and not knowing, between what's clear and what's chaotic

To me, that can be scary especially if you are someone who is a control-freak or constantly worry or been disappointed before. As the author says in chapter 3,

God's answers to our prayers may seem upside down. He may ask you to forgive, even if you are the one who is wronged. He may ask you to become the wife your husband needs, rather than turning your husband into the man you always dreamed of. He may not save your job, but He might give you the time you've always needed to learn more about Him., or free your schedule to finish he renovations on your kitchen. He might not deliver you from poverty but instead teach you how to budget, balance, and take care of what He's provided. Or He may show you that even if you have very little, when you can find ways to give what you do have, you will feel wealthy.

For these groups of people, the author has this to encourage:
Maybe you are feeling stuck. Worried that God doesn't hear you. Convinced that you don't deserve to have your prayers answered. Wondering how, when, or even if God will answer you. Your need may be huge....You might have been hurt by "religion" or had someone twist the words of the Bible against you. You may have seen the way God answered one of your prayers and didn't like it, so you're afraid to try praying again.

We are face hurdles. Our issues, personalities, and abilities color our faith and guide our behavior. Whether you want to overcome issues from the past or you're taking your first tentative steps of faith - wherever you fall on the continuum of human experience - this is your chance to give prayer another chance, or to deepen your existing practice of prayer. To ask and to watch for answers. To try to see God in a new way.

Jesus Himself turned the world upside down because the world by itself is already upside-downed. To quote Billy Sunday:

• The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down in order to be right side up.

Other notable quotes by Kelly O'Dell Stanley in this book:

• God wasn't late. He was right on time. He saw the big picture, knew what was at stake, and steadily put things in motion. 
• Praise your child only for what he has actually done. Don't exaggerate. When you set unrealistic goals for your children, you're setting them up for feelings of failure and inadequacy.
• Even in the lowest times, God's still there showing me truths, He never condemns, He doesn't want my disappointment in myself to keep me away.
• In matters of spiritual growth, as in art, one of the best ways to learn is by observing someone who has been doing it for a while. It's one thing to bow your head, maybe even raise your hands in the middle of a church service during the swelling chorus of your favorite song, alongside a hundred of other people. But it's another to do it when you're on your own, alone in a quiet room.

In generally, I love this book. This book is not just for read, but for action. It's an invitation. It's an encouragement for us to chew of the goodness of God, to savor the aroma of His love.

(Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this e-book free from Tyndale House Publishers  as part of their book review program called Tyndale Blog Network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”)

Book Review: Trying Not To Try by Edward Slingerland

This book attempts to blend the Chinese philosophy of wu-wei with some recent researches from cognitive sciences. Wu-wei or “non-action” implies that our action is done without our doing. We are the object through which the natural forces work.

As much as the author tries to explain how wu-wei can be achieved in our daily lives, he alludes to the elusiveness of this task or as he quoted from Shunryu Suzuki in chapter 8: “You cannot try, but you also cannot not try; trying is wrong, but not trying is also wrong.”

I do quite like some of the things he said, many of which I find to be very meaningful and consistent with my own Christian beliefs. For example in Chapter 4, he wrote: “Knowing the contentment of contentment” requires resisting the siren call of consumer culture and instead holding fast to primitive and simple pleasures.” The Bible too has much to say about contentment: “Now godliness with contentment is great gain.  (1Ti 6:6 NKJV)” and  “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content (Php 4:11 NKJV)”.

Slingerland further wrote: “The desires of the eye form, of course, the entire basis of modern advertising industry, which has turned the continuous ramping up of our desire for “goods hard to come by” into a refined science. The minute the latest iPhone is released, our current iPhone suddenly seems less attractive. And as author puts it “Our belly may be perfectly comfortable in our current car, but our eye can see the nicer, newer car in the driveway next door (or in the magazine ad or billboard), and this perception immediately decreases our satisfaction with what we’re currently driving. The car itself has not changed the slightest bit, but our benchmarking mind has demoted it anyway.”

The Bible says: “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. (1Jn 2:16 NKJV)”

This is called the hedonic treadmill, where positive or negative events result in only temporary increases in happiness or unhappiness (http://tinyurl.com/o8zd3n3). Or to state it in another way, human beings have the tendency to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. This term was first coined by two psychologists, Brickman and Campbell, in 1971.

One of classic experiment on the concept of hedonic treadmill is a study by Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman in 1987 titled “Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?” (Download full text in pdf: http://tinyurl.com/kr5rupg) In that study, the authors found that, although there were strong initial emotional reactions of happiness and sadness respectively, but in the long term, neither group appeared to be happier than the other. 

The basic mechanism for hedonic treadmill is adaptation. It is a phenomenon where after perceiving something for a certain period of time, your sensory system “adapts” to it, causing it to recede into the background. Adaptation can be good as it helps to cope with our tragedies. But adaptation can also be bad when we begin to covet what others have that we do not. And this never-ending cycle of initial euphoria, adaptation and covetousness results in a rat race.

As Slingerland says, again in chapter 4: “Another source of dissatisfaction is our incessant need to measure our achievements against those of our peers…once a certain minimum threshold of material well-being is reached, our objective level of wealth seems to be much less important than our relative wealth – that is how we stack up against our neighbors or colleagues. Once you have enough money to buy the basics and indulge in some pleasures, like eating out or buying new clothes, ranked status comes to matter much mire than wealth per se.  Status, in turn, is inherently unstable because it is by its very nature relative – the benchmark is always moving as others around us rise or fall. Moreover, we seem designed to focus more on what we don't have than what we do; we are much more irked about those two people ahead of us than pleased about twenty behind.”

The Bible has much to say about the deceitfulness of our heart that can never be truly satisfied with the material things. "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? (Jer 17:9 NKJV)”

The Bible also has much to say about covetousness: “Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Col 3:5 NKJV)”

There are also a number of Christian paradoxes that have similarities with the wu-wei concept. For it is in surrendering our lives that we can find true meaning of life (Matt 10:39).  For it is humbling ourselves that we find ourselves exalted (Matt 23:12).  For it is in giving that we receive (Luke 6:38). For it is in our weaknesses that we become strong (2 Cor  12:9,10). 

Note:
I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.