Customer Reviews

Le pouvoir de l'engagement total (French Edition)

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I read this book this morning and I found it to be useless. Mainly, the book frames its goal as becoming a "corporate athlete" and out of this root idea that I disagree with, the book goes on to tell you that humans get energy, spend energy, rest and get excited...and all that that we already know. None of this was actionable, but what was actionable was the psychological shift to becoming a "corporate athlete."

I prefer to think about how my engagements and pursuits in life, such as professional projects like jobs, can enhance my overall life, or how to use that energy to truly productive - and that's why I bought this book, for things of that sort. But it seems this book is written by those company motivator-types that come and tell everyone to get M-M-M motivated! \o/

Outside of the basics, food and rest and things we can manage easily when the rest is in order - when it comes to energy, engagement, our attention and enthusiasm - the meaningful questions seem to be - how do we get engaged? what keeps our attention and why? on what grounds do we gain enthusiasm for things? etc etc.........because the truth is - if you find work to be a not engaging, psyching yourself out will only go so far - there's probably something else going on - maybe the job just sucks, maybe it's how you go about it, or maybe it's how the goals are aligned there. It could be management, it could be relationships, it could be all sorts of things - but reading a book telling you "Oh, you should be engaged! People that are engaged and excited, they do better!" Like seriously....I don't know why this book has such high ratings....it's like hearing your father ramble in monotone about the virtues of being a hard worker - or someone telling you how you have to life fully and with a smile, because it's the way to go --- well, everyone would if they could. Out of a self-improvement book I expect meaningful actionable content.

There's a recent book on how the mind goes into states of truly complete engagement and what the conditions are, and it's called "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I strongly recommend that book. Understanding that won't be the "last thing you ever needed to learn" (how boring would that be anyway?), but I felt I got a lot more out of understanding that, even in the central ideas, than reading through this book this morning.