A mostly inspirational kick-in-the-pants for people who want to make the most of their time.
Sterling (There Are 72 Hours in a Day, 2017, etc.) offers a practical, motivational manual for increasing one’s productivity.
Through daily lessons, this book aims to help readers increase their efficiency and organization, so that they can free up time for more meaningful pursuits. “Be productive in all your activities,” the author advises. “Be assertive regarding your aspirations. Don’t wander through life like a directionless butterfly, wasting time and effort.” The first task, he says, is tackling mental barriers. Sterling encourages inquisitive self-examination, instructing readers on how to recognize and eliminate time-wasting tasks and how to compose personal mission statements. He then urges readers to notice what habits work well, so that they may establish routines, develop and implement plans, and delegate tasks for maximum efficiency. The book recommends using organizational tools, including to-do lists, voice recordings, and Post-it notes. Being prolific is another one of the goals of the program, which “involves the ability to complete multiple tasks simultaneously or in rapid succession without compromising quality,” the author explains; this requires stamina, which, in turn, requires mental and physical conditioning. For the former, Sterling advocates making productivity a game by incentivizing one’s efforts; for the latter, he recommends a healthy diet and exercise. Improving one’s environment is also essential, he says, and he shows how one may do so by avoiding toxic situations, people, or surroundings. Overall, the tools contained in this book are all achievable, and the author’s many aphorisms, such as “Every option is not an opportunity,” are certainly catchy. A few tips may strike readers as odd, though, such as recommendations to learn CPR, wear seat belts, and install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Others seem unnecessarily complicated, such as the “Implementation Matrix”—an extensive, color-coded document that lists every single step in a plan. Also, some sections, such as those regarding organizational roles, will apply only to those in supervisory positions or those who work in group settings.
A mostly inspirational kick-in-the-pants for people who want to make the most of their time.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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