Becoming a writer…

Becoming a writer is not a “career decision” like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days. Unless you turn out to be a favorite of the gods (and woe to the man who banks on that), your work will never bring in enough to support you, and if you mean to have a roof over your ead and not starve to Death, you must resign yourself to doing other work to pay the bills.

(Paul Auster, Hand to mouth)

The 4-hour Workweek – Timothy Ferriss

No matter if you are an employer or an employee: you probably think that you have to work harder and harder, the more the better, for a life, and then, at the end, when you will be 60, 65 or 70, you will enjoy the rent.
This is not what Ferris wanted. He experienced this way of life but decided that it was not for him.

He now works 4 hours each week and earns around 40.000 $ each month (at the beginning of his career he earned 40.000 $ each year, by working 80 hours a week). Well, it is not 100% clear to me wich job he does now, I only understand that he can work through a computer everywhere he is.

His suggestions are valid both for the ones who do not want to quit their current job and for the ones who cannot stand for it anymore. My opinion is that this model is not applicable to Italian working system, it requires too much flexibility from the company owners: if you show that you can do the job in half the time, the owner won’t give you the other hours from free, but he will double your work;-)

Anyway I believe that every want-to-be leader should read this book, at least to learn the meeting rules that will avoid you to lose time!! Please do, time wasting is not only money wasting… at least for the parts where he underlines the need to fix the duration and to inform the colleagues about the topics.

Another suggestion that is often difficult to let the sales leaders understand, is that you have not to accept each customer all around the world. Please remember the Pareto rule: the 20% of the clients made the 80% of the turnover! Why are you wasting time and peaceful minds to follow up clients who do little and make you angry at the end of the day??

Well, Tim Ferriss also suggests to lower at the lowest level the… customer care. This can be partially done through the Pareto Rule but then…. well, Tim, customer care is my job. After having cut all time spending activities, how can I spare more time to focus on the 20% customers?
Answer: I cannot. I am just an employee.

And last but not least: Ferris you are Young and have no experience in children at all. Believe me, with children is not that simple.

The 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires – Brian Tracy

 

In this book I found some things that I liked and some other ones that I did not like at all.

I liked that many suggestions do not refer to money alone.

Tracy tells you to find a job that you love, so that you do not need to work (actually, this was a Confucio’s suggestion), to write down your goals, to make big dreams that nobody is more intelligent than you, that it is not necessary to be rich to be happy, to read a lot, to stay with positive people, to avoid plaintive friends, to take care of own health…

On the other hand, when he explains what to do to become richer, I am in dismay.
What? Shall I save 10% of my wage each month? Why does he need to tell you this? Does it mean that in the USA it is normal to live without saving anything, through debits and credit card and overdrawn accounts?
Frugality is the keyword for Tracy. Spare and invest, spare and invest.
OK, but why should I live sparing and investing? The goal is to become rich in the mature years, it seems. To enjoy the life when you are old and retired.

Above all I did not like the chapter about the maximum commitment. I mean: I commit to my job, I like to go home after having done what I had to, but Tracy is going much further. He tells you to work harder and harder, much more than the 40 hours each week: self-made millionaires work around 59 hours each week, you should do the same!!!

And then: do not waste time. Do not chat with your colleagues and tell them that you cannot talk, if they try to involve you in some kind of time wasting. Work all the time, do not lift your head, stay on the paper and you will drawn attention on you… go to work one hour earlier, work during the break, stay on the workplace one hour later…

what??

Yes, says Tracy, this is how you can build your best reputation on work.
Well, best reputation with the boss, maybe, but what about relationship with colleagues? This guy is worse than me.

I still have the bad sensation that, when he says that you must take care of other people, he always says this because you myst then get something back.

Leader of yourself – Roberto Re

This would be a great inspiring book. It reminds us that we can take decisions about our lives, and that if we don’t, we take in any case some kind of decision. It teaches how to become counscious about our fears and beliefs, values and goals: no miracles in this book, nothing supernatural, just some little truths that we usually forget.

So, why have I written that this book would be that great? Simply because I have read Tony Robbins one week ago.

Roberto Re openly admits at the beginning that he is often defined as the Italian Robbins and that he is proud of this. Robbins is his idol. Re has attended all his meetings and read all his books and got all his videotapes.

Actually, the general scheme of this book matches Awaken The Gian Within: difference between dreams and goals, decisions, actions, when a goal can be called so, top ten list of goals, and so on. If contens are ok, as they are, I have nothing against repetition. But Roberto Re says that he has kept an European/Italian point of view in writing his book.

Now I ask myself: where??

A lot of examples are the same one of Robbin’s book (es. the story of Elvys Presley or Sylvester Stallone) with very few exeptions of italian guys. I believe that he should have taken many more examples of successfull people from our country, like the one of Nerio Alessandri, the founder of Technogym, for instance. We do not miss such people, In Italy and in Europe.

A lot of quotes are the same ones of Robbin’s (Mark Twains, Mother Terese, Herny Ford, Robbins himself…).

Re even puts some opinions of famous Readers of his book at the very first pages: a typical USA literary habit.

Well, shall I then discourage you from reading this book? Not at all! Repetition is the key word, although I am a little dismaied by the Robbin’s method copying. We Always need to repeat inside ourselves that we can get something more, just if… just if… just if…

Last comment: we live in a crisis period, don’t we? Well, long life to people like Robbins, Re, Livio Sgarbi, favaretto, who created a new job: the coaching.

Are you workless? Then create your own job. And, please, do not try to produce something new. The world has plenty of objects that must then be thrown away, with all ecological consequences.

The work of the future must turn around people, not objects. The work of the future is not linked to production, but to service.