Become intelligent and successful in 30 days (or years) — I thought one item was missing, so I left a Comment.
Rejection Therapy: A Hundred Days of ‘No’ — and this is linked to the above although it’s not mentioned. And see his website: Hope From Nope, which contained this gem:
When asking someone to do something, there is a big difference between a favor and a challenge.
A favor requires the requested to invest time and effort on behalf of someone else. When it comes from a stranger, its success tabs into the altruistic side of the request recipient.
He might not know it (yet?), but he just explained to everyone why business-speak is drowning in the word “challenge.” It’s disguised and manipulative begging that absolves the “challenger” from being accountable for a failed goal.
This is the trend of abundance (and the real financial crisis), and it’s making it a lot harder every year to stand out. It’s no longer just a question of having an interesting product for people to buy. You have to outcompete all the other things people buy as well.
What would you rather have?
• One full-year subscription to the New York Times = $455
• Or… an XBOX ($99), a Netflix subscription ($99), and a Nexus 4 phone ($299) = $497This is the real challenge the younger generation is faced with today. And since random general purpose news is freely available somewhere else, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to guess which choice they make.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
I have that book he cites, Gödel, Escher, Bach. I’ve had it for years and on my TBR list longer than that. I guess I better get reading.
That was a hot book … back in the 1980s!
I’m a bit behind on my reading…
At least you’re not going all the way to the frikkin 1800s to read… what a backlog I have!
Wait, what? *I* am reading shit written in the early 18th Century.
I am researching consumerism in this decade and the last link you provided has been helpful.