Book Review 3: 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman

I am not a book expert nor even a consistent book reader, but I intend to start reading more books from now on. I would like to start giving my two-cents on the books I have read to share my views and opinion on them with others just like me, the infrequent reader, to overview the perspective I gained after reading a book. I am hoping to receive critical feedbacks on the points I may have been missing out or even wronged about. Recommendations on books that you all think might be helpful and useful to me would be certainly appreciated.

I tend to get very committed to whatever I am involved in. During my studies and now at work, I always force myself to keep my concentration and focus. However I always feel I don’t utilise my efforts and time on the right things and properly. But the problem is not just there. It is also before I start on my projects or whatever it is I needed to do. I tend to delay, procrastinate and didn’t seem to have the urgency to get started. I also tend to get distracted by others and even by the situation I created myself and prolongs my work to the extent, I feel like I want to give up on it.

I have to admit, I don’t really have the correct system, well, even a system on how to manage my focus, time management and even work plan. I needed to learn how to properly balance out what are the most important things that I need to work from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed. I wanted to be able to say “I had a productive day today and I got everything I had planned for today, settled!” And I wanted to be able to say that every day. Sounds ambitious? But I need to give it a try.

So I got this book – 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman. I really appreciate the author’s approach of proving the effectiveness of his suggestions and advices to lead a more organised and successful life by sharing his own experience in the corporate world – plus a few from his peers as well. The content was also filled with research statistics and facts that helped to convince how the approaches are in fact, logical and agreed from the academic world. These approaches are simple and do not require a lot of our time to invest in but requires consistency in managing our working life.

However, as much as I enjoyed reading this book and it did lifted me with hopes that these tips could easily boost my confidence and make me more organised, while I was finishing of the last quarter of the book, I realised that not all of us – including myself, would have the privilege to follow these tips. These recommendations, in my opinion, are actually limited to those upper management level employees that have the rule to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to certain requests and any other decision making processes. For lower level employees and especially fresh employees that follow orders from their bosses, they certainly do not have the choice to do all of the recommendations.

 All in all, I did learn a lot of things from this book. Though I found quite a chunk of the book are recommendations that I might find unsuited for a junior management employee like myself, I do believe that managing our daily work with a clear, goal-oriented and organised way will help to increase our productivity and efficiency. The book helped me to learn the importance of focus on one thing. Just one thing at a time. Know what you want to achieve, set a realistic goal, PLAN how to get where you want and work for it.

Maybe one day, with hard work and discipline, I can get to be in a higher management level, that I can utilise everything that is pointed out by the author. But for now, I just need to FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME.

Book pages: 251

Price: RM 12
Store the book was bought: The Mines - during the Big Bad Wolf Sale

Book Review 2: Make You Happy by Jessamy Hibberd & Jo Usmar

I am not a book expert nor even a consistent book reader, but I intend to start reading more books from now on. I would like to start giving my two-cents on the books I have read to share my views and opinion on them with others just like me, the infrequent reader, to overview the perspective I gained after reading a book. I am hoping to receive critical feedbacks on the points I may have been missing out or even wronged about. Recommendations on books that you all think might be helpful and useful to me would be certainly appreciated.

Personally, the year 2016 was all mixed up with ups and downs. Initially, I began 2016 with such a promising start and I was grateful and in another word, HAPPY. However, as weeks passed by, a lot of things started to change. I slipped at a couple of areas, nothing major at first, but I began to dwell on my mistakes, torturing myself convincing they were huge, and it surely affected my mood and confidence. This unhealthy behaviour, in the end, had a major impact on my judgements and overall behaviour, that eventually leaded me to create some major setbacks in my life and obviously, I was pretty frustrated and beat. Pessimist? – The answer is “YES”. I had constantly been asking myself, “How could have I made something big out of nothing, in the first place?” and “Why do I have to always think negatively?” Knowing this could only lead me to no good, I decided to change this (still am) and wanted to manage how I deal with certain bad news or issues, differently and more positive.

This book was surely a light read and I find it very straightforward. Even though most of the things highlighted in the book was in fact no rocket science, but they are something that a pessimist like me always tend to ignore, worse; constantly deny. The author generally emphasises, in handling unpleasant situations, we should never assume things such as assuming what others think or what he or she will react or do in a particular circumstances. I instantly remembered what a friend once told me (please pardon my language) - “Assumption is the mother of all f*ck ups, so don’t assume things!”

Yet again I would like to state here - we know this. But I kept on repeating making assumptions and caused me to think badly of a situation. The flow is fairly routine; I faced with an issue, I deeply think the worst of the outcome, avoid interactions and keep the issues all to myself unresolved, feel terrible and frustrated with myself and finally will end me making other bad decisions and not believing myself.

The author stressed that, this feeling is not unique. A lot are going through the same thing and I am not alone. The solution to this, made by the author was fairly simple and to be frank, had made me feel a little bit sceptical about it. Throughout the book, the author recommended to truly analyse each unpleasant situation through some logical steps or guide by listing down these points;

     1. What happened?

- Without exaggerating, note done what honestly happened.

     2. The NATs

- What thoughts went through your mind about yourself and your future? What are you thinking about others? What type of NATs is this?

    3. Feelings

- What are your main feelings and emotions?

    4. Evidence against NAT

-    What is the evidence against this thought? What alternatives might there be? What is the evidence against this view? How would you see this if you were not feeling low? What would you say to a friend?

    5. How I feel now?

-  Write down any degree or change in the feelings you now feel. This of course requires a lot of practice and positive attitude. I’ve lightly initiated this process and to be honest, it does help a little. I am able to be more calm and patient in assessing the situation, think of all possible views rather than jumping to negative conclusions.

Apart from that, the book encouraged us to focus and really think of what are the things that make us happy and repeat that things that we do that make us feel happy. Rather than constantly obsess about the terrible things and mistake that happen, we need to reward ourselves by remembering the things and reasons that make us smile and become cheerful. Doing this will distract our minds from negative thoughts that may cause us to make bad judgements and decisions.

To be fair to the author, there are other points made in this book, but I picked the ones I mentioned as they were the ones that I find most helpful (to me).

Even though the points highlighted in this book are simple, straightforward and nothing innovative I know with discipline and consistency in applying the recommendations made, it will eventually turn them into something natural and a good habit that I hope will stick with me forever, I sincerely believe that.

Finally, to keep me positive and take charge on my attitude, I will always keep hold to two of the sentences extracted from this book;

    1. Behaving badly or in ways that are out of character will only maintain the problem or make it worse.

     2. Thoughts are not facts.

Book pages: 154

Price: RM 12

Store the book was bought: The Mines - during the Big Bad Wolf Sale