This book sets its premises well - you need to do the exercises to make the secrets work and - for practicality's sake - definitions and profiles are simplified. I must admit to not having done all the exercises, but the ones I did do, got me so emotionally involved that I was shocked by the result. They allowed me a fuller understanding of my situation, how it shifted along the way and - most importantly, allowed me to articulate what I want. I also appreciated that the work and home behaviours are different and perhaps a distortion of my natural preferences.
What would I have liked to see? A clearer link between the various secrets (how one might influence the other) and more methodical exercises in the conclusion (as opposed to a series of questions).
The Website was a big disappointment - mostly advertising for personal coaching. There isn't any real information there.
All around a helpful book which puts things into perspective and leads the way to conclusions even if it doesn't offer tangible solutions. ( )

This book is written and structured well. It functions as a rigorous, professional workshop course, the kind you’d pay big bucks for if it was delivered as four weeks of instructor-led training. It has a good balance of theoretical analysis, hands-on exercises – before, during, and after work – and illustrating stories. It’s a good guide for training yourself to look at your work and your workplace differently. The intent is to see where there’s a mismatch, and see what can be done about it.

The exercises and analysis help you to see whether you can change your perspective on your job and your coworkers. It’s good to have a formal process for doing this, which they provide in the form of a kind of gestalt role playing to see things from a third-person, bird’s eye view. This book is meant for repetitive practice for mental training and insight, as a kind of analytical mindfulness practice. Observe the hot buttons as they’re pushed at work.

The perspective-changing insights are presented as a set of four matrices each comprising two parameters. You try to determine which quadrant fits you and which fits the people you work with. You can then see how others misinterpret you, and how you misinterpret them. You observe and understand behaviour, motivations, task type, and skills needed.

The parameter I found most revealing was the preferred focus on either the task or on the people. The parameter I found most problematic was the approach of being either assertive or reflective. I think some Myers-Briggs types cannot be divided this way. For NTs, I’m not convinced that the assertive-reflective polarity maps onto the introvert-extrovert polarity in the way they assume. And when acting as a consultant, a reflective person can be forced to be assertive.

This book is more useful for employees than for contractors. I make a living doing technical writing as a freelance consultant. I’ve been considering “permanent” fulltime employee positions in the hope of finding more security. I thought this book might help me decide which way to go. It turns out to be too hard to use for a contractor because I don’t get enough time on-site with the client to really observe and determine how they work and what their motivations are. But if I do become an employee I’ll be able to make better use of this book. And for the next client, I’ll be better prepared to educate them up-front about what I do and what I need, in terms they might understand.

The book doesn’t specifically address creative professions. I wonder whether an additional dimension would have to be added for creative versus non-creative work or people.

If you have a good grasp of the Myers-Briggs types, you’ll find you can readily add that knowledge into the mix and use this book to even greater advantage. ( )

I see this as a primer for someone who doesn't intend to read many, if any more, books on this subject, and is looking for an upbeat friend in written form to push them to make changes.

It has solid exercises and good advice. If you haven't picked up a book like this before, and you are willing to invest in the work, the exercises are designed to make you think about what you're really doing, what you really like and why. The reminders are good keys to keep you on track.

Most of the book is written in language that is easily understood, though I don't care for the effusive style and over abundance of quotation marks.

This is not a scholarly work on cognitive behaviour therapy, but a practical approach for people who are down.

Interesting Notes in the back. I've never seen "Manic Monday" by the Bangles, Wikipedia and "The Karate Kid" listed in a work's Appendix section before.

This is yet another book from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. I received it probably about a month ago, and I’ve been trying to read it since.

Hmm, I feel almost as if my review could stop with that last sentence.

The basic premise of this long-named text is that you can find ways to enjoy your work by shifting your perspective, learning about the work styles of yourself and of your colleagues, finding keys to motivating yourself, and the like. All that is well and good, I’m sure. I happen to like my job, but I could see myself applying some of these techniques if I didn’t.

However. I could not get through this book for laughing. It’s not supposed to be funny; the prose is just that bad. Here are the opening two paragraphs of the prologue:

'Prologue: “Monday Morning Dread”

'The alarm broke the peaceful silence of the bedroom with an ugly metallic buzz, the dial glowing sallow green numerals of an obscene hour. Brian rubbed his eyes; consciousness came slowly. Soon, that old feeling of “work dread” began to smother his spirit. The day ahead of him drifted into focus, and his all too familiar feeling of dismay was close behind: It’s time to go to work.

'Like many, Brian lost his “will to work” years ago. The thought of a whole week at “that place” made him want to go back to sleep or to vanish and never return. The conflict, the oppression, the sadness, and the boredom were unbearable. Yet he could find no alternative. Bills needed to be paid, and he had become fond of eating.'

Where to begin? Even ignoring the tense change at the end of the first paragraph and the “unnecessary” quotation “marks,” this is bad prose. This is bad like NaNoWriMo at three am. This is the “if I insert enough adjectives it will be good” school of writing. It’s bad, and the whole book is like it. And where does Brian work, exactly? The gulag? And does he know that he can find another job and still pay his bills? People do it all of the time. And wouldn’t he have quit if the job actually was unbearable? These paragraphs confuse me.

Nevertheless, we’ll leave Brian aside for the moment. I will now turn to the back of the book. Remember, this is a non-fiction work that is trying to be taken seriously. It’s aimed at business professionals. It has pages and pages of spectacular quotations from reviews. And in the reference section, it cites wikipedia. Four times. Can I be more emphatic? It CITES WIKIPEDIA. Do I need to explain why this is stupid?

Prose, style, and scholarship aside — I think that this book would be useful for someone who is in the unhappy position of disliking a job they can’t quit. There are some good techniques and some good insights. You just have to wade through a lot of much to get to them.

I’ll give this a 3 for effort and a 1 for style:

2/5. ( )

While there are a couple of useful ideas here (task type , for example), I found many of the observations to be fairly typical of the genre. The intended audience is discouraged white collar workers and, as promised by its title, much of the book's focus is on staying in a job rather than in finding a new job. Although the book claims to be backed by "voluminous research", it lacks a bibliography and rather startlingly cites Wikipedia and print encyclopedias. Much of the advice rests on a psychological model which strikes me as too schematic. For example, it seems doubtful that "motivation is unchangeable" and "hardwired". As well, the book been indifferently edited: common solecisms make multiple appearances and the cover copy is marred by a typographical error. ( )