Customer Reviews

How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work

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How to Be Useful more or less fell off the shelf into my hand at a local bookstore the other day. The title's catchy, the cover is distinctive, and the subtitle - 'A beginners guide to not hating work' very much struck my fancy.

The premise of the book is simple - Megan Hustad has read a ludicrous number of self-help business books and has put together a book of the high points of a number of the unlikely ones, with each chapter focusing on a certain kind of idea and a book or author who is iconic to it. A few of these are familiar but dated, such as Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' or Covey's 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' but most of them are either much more obscure or far more unlikely to be useful. 'Sex and the Single Girl'. 'Dress For Success'. The etiquette writings of Emily Post. Even Donald Trump gets a nod.

The book walks a marvelous line between enthusiasm and criticism. Some chapters, especially dedicated to older or more obscure sources, seem to focus on uncovering lost jewels. Other chapters, usually dealing with more modern books, are all about cutting away the bulk of it for the one or two choice morsels inside. The author has no love of Stephen Covey, for example, and restricts her analysis so a single habit, but drills down into it very seriously.

I was particularly amused by one non-chapter, which can really boil down to "There are no good examples from the 70s. They're all really terrible." She takes a little time to talk about the books and ideas of the period, so the dismissal is not entirely arbitrary, and in the end I supported the decision. One word: est.

All in all it was a fast, enjoyable read. For a reader with little or no familiarity with the material under her belt, this hits a good range of notes. For the more experienced reader, there are still treasures to be found, especially in the earlier chapters about authors whose names have been mostly forgotten. At the very least it may suggest other books worth looking up.

So all in all, I enjoyed it very much, and as a practical measure of success, I'll probably be getting a copy of this for my younger brother.

One last note - the bibliography has extensive commentary, and is well worth a read.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to make a Downtown Women's Club event at Barnes & Noble to hear Megan Hustad speak on her new book, How To Be Useful. Hustad is a soft-spoken veteran of the book publishing world, and extremely nimble with her words. Despite the interference of the cafe machinery, Hustad read a few excerpts and explained the process of writing a retrospective of 100 years of Success Literature.

Now that I've finished this book (and already re-read a few sections), I place this at the very top of my list of recommended Success books. I have a certain amount of envy that Hustad thought of the project first, but really she does a fantastic job in surveying a long list of advice books and distilling the essence of each down to its most useful principles. Through interviews with contemporary colleagues and research on her fellow Success authors, she deftly equips the reader with a range of situations for practical application of the proffered career advancement methods.

Hustad's writing is at once intelligent, and easily digested. She adds a certain amount of fine dry wit to her work, as well as an icing of footnotes to flush out certain points. Any book she has gone over is helpfully included in the bibliography, for further reading, although this might be extraneous.

My personal favorite chapters are "2 - Dodging the Great Failure Army" and "8 - Self-Deprecation." In Chapter 2, we are introduced to Orison Swett Marden's ideas on being relentlessly cheerful and kind to everyone, from the CEO to the concierge. The idea is not new (Marden wrote in the early part of the 20th century), but the various applications of how to apply this optimism to career development is wonderfully explained. Marden's idea of the "Law of Attraction," the idea that people are drawn to the positive, is similar to the heart of "The Secret," but must less mystical. By applying pleasantries to our office mates, carefully and not gratuitously, one cultivates an air of camaraderie, and leaves the door open for others to follow suit. Chapter 2 is full of examples of how to deploy this cheerful method, as well as misguided attempts to avoid.

Chapter 8 covers the art of self-deprecation, which I think should be mandatory reading for new people in the office, particularly those guilty of over-sharing. Hustad here examines the rags-to-riches story, and how overcoming obstacles endears oneself to those around one, but conversely, stories about common problems can pile up and backfire on the teller. It's one thing to talk about overcoming a poor financial situation by winning a full scholarship to college, but another thing entirely to tell about one's embarrassing behavior while drunk last night on the way home from happy hour. As I was reading this chapter, I could feel myself cringe as I remembered telling self-deprecating stories that probably did more to decrease public opinion of myself rather that create a sense of "we've all been there" endearment.

I would highly recommend this book to career services offices, high school guidance offices, and any other place that prepares new graduates for the workforce. I'd add that this would make an excellent read for anyone who struggles with social interactions or anxieties, because of its easy to follow pedagogy on interpersonal communications. Even though it is written with career success in mind, the advice is extraordinarily useful in many situations from networking events to parties.

A student walks into my office complaining that the grade she received on her group project is not at all reflective of her efforts. "I pulled an all-nighter to finish it -- she says, -- all while my teammates were enjoying the MBA beer night." You've ever done that? Have you ever taken desperate measures to get noticed, to get rescued from the "talent pool?" Did it work? Minds of varying greatness have been giving advice on how to do this right for a century now. You should go read it all, but, if you don't have two years or so to spare, you can find what really can help you in "How to Be Useful." You might, for instance, learn how to join the right group (or job), or how to leave the wrong one. You might also get a laugh or two along the way.

Then, save the Epilogue for a quiet evening at home, with a favorite CD on loop, and a glass of red not far from reach. The last few pages might just touch you, they might just dust off some of that cynicism you've accumulated over the years. They did it for me.

Well, join the club. But Megan Hustad shows that there are ways of making it not suck, besides precious Dilbert-style resignation or ruthless backstabbing. "How to Be Useful" takes what's good from self-improvement books you wouldn't be caught dead with (Carnegie, Covey, Trump) and shows that--who knew?--they actually contain some sound advice for the shrewd, secretly ambitious entry-level worker.

"How to Be Useful" is a history of career-advice literature and a guide to getting what you want out of work--something that, like it or not, consumes most of your daylight hours. And it doesn't come across as an upper-management handout, either. (One tip buried in Chapter Seven: "freeload.")

Favorite lessons included how to play off a sub-Ivy League education in a snooty crowd; how to defuse an enraged higher-up; how to resist the delicious temptation of workplace snark; and how to slowly, purposefully fire yourself when you know you're done with a job.

This book is chock full of hilarious office bloopers, so it took me a little while to stop cackling from schadenfreude and realize just how many thoughtful lessons about human behavoir I was learning, and how many practical tips I would be taking away to apply to my daily work life. I loved the chapter on the difference between good networking and the kind that's just a sleazy waste of time. Even though I've been in the workplace for twelve years I learned a lot from this book.

A digest of the business self-help canon reworked to speak to twenty sonmethings. The audience are those working their first adult job. The author focuses on the various ways this generation has been brought up to believe in their `specialness' and how that belief is an impediment in the work environment. Remedies are given. The tone is ironic. The large print title on the spine simply says `How to Be Useful'. This is not useful in reaching the business minded audience. For full effect this book must be displayed cover out. Given the audience and unique content I recommend this book to all public libraries and colleges with a business minded focus.

Megan Hustad has read the greatest "success" literature of the 20th century so that you don't have to. In "How to Be Useful," she presents some of the best insights from Dale Carnegie and crew along with her own anecdotes. While Hustad's own stories are often from her own profession (publishing), her extensive research into the literature of success and its authors' lives is exhaustive and entertaining. The footnotes are occasionally off the mark, however, and detract from what is otherwise a quick read. Also, "How to Be Useful" largely ignores the changing American workplace: most white collar workers don't stay in a job for more than 3-5 years, so it's unlikely that anyone will rise in the corporate ranks from the mailroom to the boardroom as Dale Carnegie did. Still, if more recent graduates (and some seasoned office workers) read this book, work--and life--might just be a little more tolerable for everyone involved.

I bought this book for a class. It can be a bland read, and sometimes you can't even tell what the point is that the author is trying to make. Some of the points that the author does make are rather cold hearted, and I don't agree with them. Regardless, the book was super cheap, and it beats having to buy some super expensive textbook.

This is the best professional advice book I've ever read--and I've read quite a few.

Highly recommended for anyone first starting their career.

It's all the stuff they don't teach you in school that you need to know in order to advance in the corporate world.

This book should be titled, "A Young Professional's Guide to Survive and Thrive in Corporate America". It truly should be required reading for young professionals. This is the best book of its kind I have read - easy reading, well researched and simply informative and entertaining.