A comprehensive, contemporary, and highly useful survival guide for the distracted.
A definitive guide to defeating the distractions of modern life.
Educational psychologist and life coach Markel (Defeating the 8 Demons of Distraction, 2008, etc.) identifies eight specific “demons of distraction” (including “Technology Demon,” “Stress Demon,” and “Fatigue Demon”) and delves deeply into their causes and effects. Devoting a chapter to each, she establishes a five-step “Plan of Attack” that she applies throughout the book, giving it a consistent, parallel structure; the plan includes assessment, analysis, goal-setting, taking action, and monitoring one’s progress. In Markel’s discussion of the “Technology Demon,” for example, she writes that it “can be today’s greatest enemy of top performance and high productivity.” She then leads readers through a “Self-Check” exercise, uses a specific example to highlight the demon’s consequences, offers an assessment tool (a “Technology Journal”), and demonstrates how to set realistic goals. She goes on to talk about specific “issues and strategies” regarding technology’s negative effects, such as “The Evil Empire of E-mail” and “Gaming Addictions.” Markel closes with a summary section, “Moving from Intention to Action,” that reinforces the chapter’s content, along with a brief story about a real-life person who used a “preemptive strike” to prevent the Technology Demon from taking hold. The other chapters effectively address each of the other demons in similar fashion. The final chapter, “Maintenance, Meltdowns and Peacefulness,” targets more general improvements in productivity and lifestyle. In addition to being well-organized, the book is clearly written, carefully researched, highly pertinent to readers’ lives, and thorough in its presentation. Markel includes a wealth of charts, checklists, and questionnaires throughout, as well as an extensive list of resources at the book’s conclusion. The descriptions and examples of each of the different demons make for captivating reading by themselves, but Markel’s ability to pinpoint ways to overcome them raises this book up as an invaluable resource for anyone plagued by distractions.
A comprehensive, contemporary, and highly useful survival guide for the distracted.Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615586397
Page Count: 215
Publisher: Managing Your Mind, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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