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Thread: Life Is Good

  1. I've been upping my reading game lately. Two books I've read lately are bugging me, and two were great.

    I finally got around to finishing 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson. The first half of the book was a chore to get through so I stopped reading it regularly. I found the themes unengaging and the constant references to God and Being and Him in uppercase distracting. I must not be the target audience, because I know several guys who swore this increased their self worth and I felt nothing for anything he stated in the first half. The latter rules (after 8?) started to become more nuanced and interesting, behaviourally-focused and measured. His takes on social progress are far more liberal than the "alt-right" sabre rattlers on the left would like to admit (he believes inequality is a very real and dangerous social issue, for example). The book's writing style remains poor, choppy and meandered throughout. Wouldn't recommend it (his youtube lectures on personality are great though—he's a voluble speaker and I think that's the medium he's best enjoyed in).

    To offset Peterson I also read Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power by Noam Chomsky. An interesting take that didn't clarify fundamental issues I normally find confusing about socialism-centric ideas. In fact, Chomsky fails or refuses to outright set the parameters of his socialism in such a way that coming to any conclusions at all is very fuzzy. Money = greed = bad is largely the takeaway. He never explores the positives indicators of capitalism: income and money generation seems to be one of the quickest ways societies improve their citizens quality of life (in different flavours, US-style rich-tides-will-raise-us-all to more distribution-based Scandinavian models). His most interesting and useful ideas are about Media Control and propaganda. He has an entire book on that I'll read next, I think. His writing style is also very... meandering. These thinker-types always brag about over editing their shit. Maybe that's to blame?

    To offset the negativity of these books I managed to read two books that were immensely enjoyable:

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which was a joy to read and an interesting and engaging book from beginning to end. Time and pages breezed on by while I read this. I highly recommend this book, especially if you're going on a flight or something like that where you need to speed up time. Its narrative about maintaining life, understanding, the pursuit of quiality are much better and more relevant than either of the two books above by the actual professional sociologists. I think it's because he simply explores the underlying metaphysics of Western culture honestly without caring much about where people end up or what they think. There's no real agenda. He has another book I intend to read about the development of values and morals.

    The last book is Death by Meeting. It's short and about how to run effective meetings. If you hate meetings this is a good book to read. I've slowly been practicing the tactics presented in this book over the last 5 weeks at work and they are legitimately useful. It comes from the perspective that meetings should be valuable.
    Quote Originally Posted by rezo
    Once, a gang of fat girls threatened to beat me up for not cottoning to their advances. As they explained it to me: "guys can usually beat up girls, but we are all fat, and there are a lot of us."

  2. #22682
    I find it hard to take self help books and by extension Business self help books too serious. The very first one, Think and Grow rich was a con. https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-...-he-1789385645

    I've had a couple forced upon me by work and most of them are mental candy. They tell the reader things they want to hear or reaffirm things they already know about success, without helping in the heavy lifting of actually producing a successful business or life.


    With the meeting thing, for me, it is either an abuse of authority, ego or aging boomers.

    Some basics are

    1. Respect people's time. Your meeting isn't the only thing they have to do today.
    2. Can you use something other than a meeting for the same goal? Would a call, text or email work?
    3. Don't use meetings to force people to complete work in that meeting.
    4. Don't use meetings to gather information you could complete on your own, or ask for through email.
    5. All meetings should meet a need of the people at the meeting. If its just for the boss, don't have it.
    6. Meetings should be as short as possible.
    7. Leave your office and talk to people. Don't use meetings as your primary form of face to face communication.
    8. Don't use meetings to cover your ass. Some people have meetings just to tell their boss they had one when things go to shit. Find some other way to cover your ass, like actual work.
    9. Consider combining and changing the times of meetings. It might be better to have 1 final meeting at the end of the day, instead of a morning meeting or mid day meeting. You usually get better information from your direct reports when you do this if you give them more time to prepare.
    10. Don't play the blame game in meetings. Assign problems to scenarios and causes, not people. Lastly, assign responsibility to teams to fix those problems. But ultimately, success is everyone's job. This attitude can make meetings more productive and avoid dread.

    Most of this usually falls on closed ears. People don't like to be told how and when to extend their authority. Even if getting everyone together for an hour to do the boss's work is a waste of work time and money.
    Last edited by Fe 26; 16 Apr 2018 at 02:05 AM.

  3. #22683
    Oh and 11. learn to use the technology purchased for you by your company. Don't hold meetings because you're an old fuck that doesn't like email or texts.

  4. #22684
    Also, 12. Don't use meetings to force other people to complete work. I've seen managers assign completed project work by a meeting time. This is ruling by shame. The person will stay long hours just to avoid looking stupid in front of their coworkers.

    Just set a deadline. Don't rule by shame.

  5. #22685
    I prefer to rule by fear.

  6. Fe you should read the book. It's cheap and quick. It addresses (almost) all of your points. Especially the "Find some other way to cover your ass, like actual work." line of thinking. I read quite a bit of business books related to software development (The Goal, Lean UX, etc.) and there's a lot of trash out there. This one is pretty pragmatic and uses a story to tell its lessons.

    The one caveat is I'm not sure how well this knowledge translates to a workplace dynamic like you have. It doesn't have any wisdom or pragmatic insight or dealing with using a meeting to publicize or shame reports, for instance. My teams usually hold huddle-style meetings at the end of a sprint of work or during checkpoints and they seem to like it. They also know they won't be shamed if they experienced problems over the course of the week and couldn't resolve them in time.
    Quote Originally Posted by rezo
    Once, a gang of fat girls threatened to beat me up for not cottoning to their advances. As they explained it to me: "guys can usually beat up girls, but we are all fat, and there are a lot of us."

  7. #22687
    I hate self help / self help business books that use stories.

  8. #22688
    The blame game and shaming is old pretech industry shit. It goes back to deviding a large organization up into areas with leaders before we had technology to communicate better. Areas would become little kingdoms.

    It would be pathetic and stupid for anyone in tech to allow that into their group. It's so easy to prevent with modern technology allowed coaching.

  9. #22689
    Thoigh, admittedly I've seen tech managers implement misguided technocrat shit like getting employees to compete with each other, even going as far as encouraging spite and anger.

    You can guess how well that goes over.

  10. That's what my partner used to do with his three stores, pit them against each other.
    Dumbest move ever. Why would you direct a customer to another store if you'll get shit on for that store having a better sales day? Why tell the customer the truth when they have you call another store to check inventory for the same reason? Some assholes would go so far as to shit on the other store's employees to discourage people from going to them.
    Just one of the things he did that has me scratching my head all these years later as to how he managed to find so much financial success.

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