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A review by ameya88
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman
4.0
There are some powerful ideas here about how to approach life - how being 'positive' is not necessarily always beneficial, how to (not!) try to control your thoughts, how to approach goals and failures, the outlook towards death, disassociating from 'moodiness'. All backed up by examples and conversations, written a pretty irreverent manner.
Of course, there are a number of places where you would have further questions (and to be fair to Burkeman he does pre-empt some of these), but that's the limitation of any book. And a lot of the chapters could have been summed up in a few pages (Memento Mori for eg.), but then again - most non-fiction works could be HBR articles and serve their purpose just as fine. Only the authors wouldn't be as richer and hence we plough through....
I've always been a pessimist since my school days and as I grew up - I realised that unlike what most people told me ("Don't be so negative!" is a common lament), it could actually be a strength. Even remember winging one of those pre-MBA questions on the basis of this. So the very premise of this book did appeal to me.
What I think Burkeman does very well is to put some intuitive thoughts into a structured framework - which makes it easier to rationalise with yourself why you do what you do, as well as explain it to other people if the situation so demands. For eg, I've always been big on Prepare for the Worst without knowing the Stoic philosophical moorings behind it. So Antidote is also a good primer on philosophy 101 in some ways. I came away with lots of names and concepts I wanted to Google further.
Of course, there are a number of places where you would have further questions (and to be fair to Burkeman he does pre-empt some of these), but that's the limitation of any book. And a lot of the chapters could have been summed up in a few pages (Memento Mori for eg.), but then again - most non-fiction works could be HBR articles and serve their purpose just as fine. Only the authors wouldn't be as richer and hence we plough through....
I've always been a pessimist since my school days and as I grew up - I realised that unlike what most people told me ("Don't be so negative!" is a common lament), it could actually be a strength. Even remember winging one of those pre-MBA questions on the basis of this. So the very premise of this book did appeal to me.
What I think Burkeman does very well is to put some intuitive thoughts into a structured framework - which makes it easier to rationalise with yourself why you do what you do, as well as explain it to other people if the situation so demands. For eg, I've always been big on Prepare for the Worst without knowing the Stoic philosophical moorings behind it. So Antidote is also a good primer on philosophy 101 in some ways. I came away with lots of names and concepts I wanted to Google further.