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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
It was an engaging book and very helpful, but it got very repetitive. Towards the end it felt like I was reading the same examples with different names attached and the lessons were nearly identical.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
i read this book as an anthropologist. I was curious to see what the fuss was about and I found a copy of it in my home this morning. I went into it knowing that it was sort of a finance bro meme but thought heck I always am looking for more friends and more influence! so why not!
1. this book is insane (and not in a good way.) I think the key audience is for someone that has never met another person before? like all the advice is undeniably true. like yes people will like you more if you smile, and people do not like to be criticized. but the author takes one story from his life and uses it to produce a general, sweeping statements about every situation that has the effect of making it not true anymore. i don't know, maybe its true if you are trying to maximize how many friends you have and do not value a single other thing? but most of his tips seem are given under the assumed context of the workplace and like... if someone messes up at work you should not always just let it slide so that they will like you. I feel stupid writing this because its so obvious. but then again, everything in this book is so obvious.
2. the chapter about smiling was the most crazy. there's a testimony from a prior student about the impact smiling has had on his life. and he's like "15 years of marriage and I never smiled at my wife once nor spoke more than 1 sentence to her per day. the first day I tried smiling, she was overflowing with joy!" so like... what??
it was written in like the 30s which I did not know and i think explains a little bit the disconnect between the book and reality. honestly the one most helpful advice is to shut the fuck up and people will like you more, which is something I am always working on. but again its like, I am not going to shut up at the sacrifice of my own happiness.
with a core theme of the book being getting people to like you, you would think the author would have done a better job at getting me to like him. but no, at the beginning he had a section about how to get the most out of the book. which included an annotation guide suggesting you underline certain sentences and star others, and that you need to reread every couple of months to really understand the information and keep it front of mind. but none of it was hard to understand!!!
anyway, maybe I am just wasting my breath critiquing an obviously stupid book that I should not have read in the first place.
1. this book is insane (and not in a good way.) I think the key audience is for someone that has never met another person before? like all the advice is undeniably true. like yes people will like you more if you smile, and people do not like to be criticized. but the author takes one story from his life and uses it to produce a general, sweeping statements about every situation that has the effect of making it not true anymore. i don't know, maybe its true if you are trying to maximize how many friends you have and do not value a single other thing? but most of his tips seem are given under the assumed context of the workplace and like... if someone messes up at work you should not always just let it slide so that they will like you. I feel stupid writing this because its so obvious. but then again, everything in this book is so obvious.
2. the chapter about smiling was the most crazy. there's a testimony from a prior student about the impact smiling has had on his life. and he's like "15 years of marriage and I never smiled at my wife once nor spoke more than 1 sentence to her per day. the first day I tried smiling, she was overflowing with joy!" so like... what??
it was written in like the 30s which I did not know and i think explains a little bit the disconnect between the book and reality. honestly the one most helpful advice is to shut the fuck up and people will like you more, which is something I am always working on. but again its like, I am not going to shut up at the sacrifice of my own happiness.
with a core theme of the book being getting people to like you, you would think the author would have done a better job at getting me to like him. but no, at the beginning he had a section about how to get the most out of the book. which included an annotation guide suggesting you underline certain sentences and star others, and that you need to reread every couple of months to really understand the information and keep it front of mind. but none of it was hard to understand!!!
anyway, maybe I am just wasting my breath critiquing an obviously stupid book that I should not have read in the first place.
informative
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Much of this book is common sense or has already made its way from this book into common knowledge, but it's still worth reading for the reminders and examples of successful usages.