The latest business book I finished is Find Your Why by Simon Sinek with David Mead & Peter Docker. This book was not really content that should have been a book, though. I feel like I wasted a lot of time because of that.
There were a few tidbits of information in the book but overall I wouldn’t recommend reading it at all. In fact, if you want to go through the activities of it (which is mostly all it is) then I advise you to just buy it to go through the activities rather than try to read it through as a book.
The book may have been better suited for either a course or just some worksheets on the website. But then they couldn’t have sold it for money or reached as big of an audience, right? It may be that you have to first read the book Start With Why and then only go through this book if you want to do the activities.
The entire book is mostly activities and provides very little in the way of actionable reading. They are actionable activities, sure, but nobody reads a book to do activities but rather they take a course or download activity sheets to do activities.
So, it was entirely in the wrong format and was extremely disappointing to me who was thinking I was going to read a good business book.
As far as the good about the book, I would say that it makes you think about what a why even is for your business. In fact, it helps you look at things the right way, so you can find the right goal of your business or marketing campaigns. What am I talking about? This: the why or goal of any business isn’t just to earn money.
Money is a result, not a why or a goal.
Money is just what you get out of it and if that’s the only goal of your marketing campaigns or your entire business then you will fail. That is always what people tell me about website design and their goal for it. That’s not a good goal, and it will downright lead to failure if that’s your only goal in your business.
You will fail every time.
So, that was the only thing that rang true and helpful in the book. Other than that it was just a bunch of activities that there was absolutely now way I was going to go through while trying to read a book.
If 25% or more of your book is activities then it shouldn’t be a book.
Oh, and who the heck loves any words so much they’d get them tattooed on their body? Ya, that was mentioned in the book.
“We sometimes play a little game with people and ask them if they like the words in their Why Statement enough to have them tattooed on their body. If the answer is no, then you haven’t found the words you “love” and relate to yet.”
Excerpt From: Simon Sinek, David Mead & Peter Docker. “Find Your Why.”
There are absolutely no words in the world or anything I love enough to want to tattoo them on my body. I’m not sure where that leaves me.
Regardless, I’m not sure if it matters because the book just wasn’t worth the time to read. I ended up skipping through large portions of it, and it was already short to begin with. Even though I skipped a lot, it was still a waste of time.
Next Book
My saving grace for wasting the last book I read was that I’m now reading an excellent book, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. It’s entertaining, somewhat secretive, and Reese Witherspoon is going to (or already has) made a movie about it!
I think this book would definitely lend itself well to a movie because the main character, Eleanor, is so very interesting. She doesn’t live an exceptionally exciting life but her observations about the world is so amusing.
I look forward to writing more about this book and also finding out what happens.