The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need - Daniel H. Pink
"Where do you see yourself in five years? What's your biggest weakness? What will be your biggest weakness in ten years? If you were a can of soup, what flavor would you be?"
I think I read about this book on the GeekDads blog which occasionally has items labeled "The Geekly Reader." It's a career guide as manga, centered on a chump named Johnny Bunko who hates his dead-end job. While he's out getting sushi, he breaks apart a pair of chopsticks and -poof- out pops Diana, a strange fairy-ish creature with an attitude and tips about career guidance.
It's a bizarre way to approach the subject, but it just may get the attention of some readers who might not pick up a traditional book on jobs. Each time Johnny gets into a bind, he breaks open another pair of chopsticks (he has six) and Diana appears to give him some more advice. It boils down to six statements, which I suppose it doesn't hurt to just list here:
1. There is no plan.
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses.
3. It's not about you.
4. Persistence trumps talent.
5. Make excellent mistakes.
6. Leave an imprint.
Within the first one there's a statement about the reasons we do things: for instrumental reasons (hoping they'll lead to something else) or fundamental reasons (because we believe they have value in themselves). Pink's suggestion is that successful people usually do things for fundamental reasons, and that doing things we don't care about because we think they'll lead us to something else is a bad idea.
In summary, it's a very short, somewhat entertaining book. I'd say I probably agree with most of the advice offered even though I don't always follow it myself, but it serves as a good reminder. I do think it's a book I could recommend to high-schoolers or college kids who don't really want to read What Color Is Your Parachute? or something like that.
Fed to jonathan's brain | August 21, 2008
| Comments (0)
