Mark Reiter

I bought this book as a 'bargain' book, and while I have enjoyed flipping through it, I am glad that I didn't buy it at full price. It's a cute conceit, and indeed some of the brackets are extremely amusing (e.g. the bracket for the best tooth-- I mean, really, does it get more enjoyably ridiculous?), but I was disappointed by how much of the book was devoted to sports brackets. I find the main humour of the title to be in applying that sports-specific construct of the 'final four' to show more everything non-sports, so those that didn't have that incongruity didn't do much for me. show less

Someone asks you, "What's your favorite food?"; you quickly answer "Spaghetti", because it's at the tip of your tongue. But then you start thinking...what about pizza? what about cheese fondue? what about donuts (and are they actually "doughnuts")? This is where you need bracketology. Yes, the system used in sports playoffs. With bracketology, you can put pizza against cheese fondue (and all of your other favorites) and really get to the heart of which is your absolute favorite, which show more favorite knocks all other favorites out of the bracket.

This is, of course, a silly book. It ranks cheeses, beers, speeches in history, dogs, golfers, cartoon characters, and much, much more. For a topic you care about, the bracket is fascinating. For those that you don't, well, pages turn for a reason. The editor invited guest experts to create the brackets, so you're not reading one guy's take on all of these disparate subjects. It gives one lots to argue with, and--if you're like me--a "to do" list of cheeses to try. show less

As far as self-improvement books go this one is a strong 'meh'. The approach to view your environment as a big cause for the behavior you end up having is something I gave little thought about up until reading this book but it's not something that I feel will have a huge impact on me.

I have a hunch the advice in the book works well for CEOs and managers because they are particularly analytical when it comes to their own traits, strengths and weaknesses. They are exactly the kind of people show more that a scoring approach to changing yourself would work on.

I would've loved the book if the author delved deeper into the reasoning of why his approach is valid and reached something that any non-CEO person would be able to use.

TL;DR: It's not a bad self-improvement book but it's highly tailored for upper management and corporation type individuals. show less

In my continuing work goal of 40 hours of professional development goal of this year, I picked up this book and devoured it Triggers starts with saying to not expect anything innovative. The theme is more about returning to basics over and over and over.

Some people joke about my numerous spreadsheets. I have a spreadsheet for documenting sleep, movies watched, restaurants , birthdays/anniversaries, and neighbors. He gave me ideas on how to improve on them. He also expounded on the idea of show more "good enough". For a period in my life, I shouted "Good enough is not good enough." Nowadays, good enough is plenty good enough for a good amount of things. And this book is more than just good enough.

I'd like to think that after reading that I'm a better person and I'm already implementing some of his ideas in my own life. show less