A practical and compassionate approach to common productivity challenges faced by college students.
Rettig’s self-help book for undergraduates seeking to improve productivity.
In this guide, undergraduates are given strategies to increase “joyful productivity” and reduce challenges like procrastination, perfectionism, ineffectiveness, rejection, and time mismanagement. The author, a time management and productivity expert and teacher, centers her advice around five tenets: effectiveness, compassion, joyful work, resilience, and abundance. One of the major roadblocks to success is procrastination, which Rettig believes results from disempowerment: familial, societal, and transitional. The compassion section digs deeper into procrastination and its traits—negativity, grandiosity, and rigidity—and how to tap into one’s inner compassionate adult. Joyful work, she says, involves fostering creativity, embracing nonlinearity, and experimenting with new ways of doing things in general. Rettig also advises seeking healthy coping mechanisms, fostering empathy, and avoiding social media. Finally, the “abundance” section instructs readers on time management techniques; the author recommends investing two-thirds of one’s time into one’s mission and the remainder into “self-care and replenishing recreation.” Maintaining good boundaries, according to Rettig, can help students more effectively manage their busy schedules. The author combines her extensive knowledge with undergraduate-themed anecdotes to provide a balanced approach to collegiate challenges. Her casual tone (e.g., a chapter titled, “When Professors Screw Up”) and empathetic attitude will endear her to college students, and the chapters are short and easily digestible. Her expertise with this younger demographic is obvious. For example, she includes a helpful table that outlines the common productivity obstacles that students face, from freshman year to graduation. Rettig’s concepts are unique and often entertaining, like when she describes a project’s stages that include the “Honeymoon” (the overly optimistic beginning), the “Anti-Honeymoon” (the peak of disillusionment), the “Vast Middle” (trial and error), the “Home Stretch,” the momentary “Finale,” and “Sharing” (or handing it in). However, some of Retting’s tips may be unrealistic for young adults and digital natives, such as the suggestion to use two computers—one with WiFi disabled—during study time and “save minor online tasks—like looking up a date or writing a quick email—for your next online session.”
A practical and compassionate approach to common productivity challenges faced by college students.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798989638710
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Infinite Art
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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