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How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job
Book Highlights
Title: How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job
Author: Dale Carnegie
Genre: Self-Help
Publisher: Pushpak Publication
Pages: 152 Pages
Difficulty Level: Easy
How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job: Book Review
Dale Carnegie is one of the legendary writers of his time. His works on personal development are considered to be among the supreme level. The kind of energy and years he devoted to derive his works is unfathomable.
In the book, How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job, he has put his efforts to provide the concepts which can expand the views of the readers on improving their productivity on job as well as reorganise their personal life.
The concepts are super practical, which is one of the good things about this book. Although, I’ve read many books in this genre where the thoughts seem like theoretical ones with limited practical application, but this is no ordinary author. He is The Dale Carnegie.
When you go through this book, you’ll realize that you can use these suggestions in your life, whether you are a professional worker, a student, or a housewife. The scope of applicability is very vast. Moreover a short and crisp book like this is a good book to read for the weekend and to ponder on how you could apply them in real life.
One thing I do not particularly like about this book is the way the texts have been extracted from his other book, “ How To Win Friends and Influence People” I would say about 70 percent of the extracts are from his previous book. How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job has small, to-the-point chapters with clear directives, while the earlier book goes on with explanations and use cases. This pattern becomes a mood killer as when you have already read a book with the same concepts, re-reading it doesn’t impress you much.
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Again I would like to say is though concepts are same but How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job shows how you can use them to live more energetically and create a better work environment while the other one is focused on bringing out the leader within you. It’s like different practical usage to the same concepts.
I would assign this book as a one-time read but suggest you find the time to read How To Win Friends And Influence People. That book is more detailed, and you will find the content of this book as well.
How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job: Book Summary
- Develop a better social life by following the tips in the book.
- Understand how the human psychology works and the best ways to get things done.
- Learn the abilities to become a better leader.
Who Should Read It?
This book will be helpful for people who have to interact with many peoples or many departments in their office because the tips mentioned allows you to get things done in a better and productive manner.
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How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job: Top Quotes
- Do not complain, criticise or condemn.
- Give honest and sincere appreciation.
- Talk about your own mistakes before criticising others.
How To Enjoy Your Life and Your Job Notes
Part One :Seven Ways To Peace and Happiness
- Chapter 1: Bring out the true nature of yours. Stop the desire to be like others by copying them. Imitating others will never lead you to success as you not only diminish your own power and strength but also there are less chances to thrive as the world only has an already A-rated player which you want to copy, why bother becoming a B-rated one.
- Chapter 2: Clear Your Desk of All papers Except Those Relating to the Immediate Problem at Hand. Do things in the order of their Importance. When You Face a Problem, Solve It Then and There If You Have the Facts Necessary to Make a Decision. Don’t Keep Putting Off Decisions. Learn to organize, Deputize and Supervise.
- Chapter 3: Relax more. Force yourself in the habit of regular relaxation. Mental exhaustion is the main reason for the low energy, when you learn to have a relaxed state, the energy level remains at par, and you achieve more work.
- Chapter 4: Boredom causes fatigue. Moreover the sense of worry and frustration increases the chances of feeling fatigue. Pick tasks that interests you and make you feel excited and energetic to reduce the boredom within your mind.
- Chapter 5: The main reason for dissatisfaction in life is our habit of focusing on the negatives. We tend to focus more on 10% negative things rather than on 90% positive events. Become grateful to what you have. Appreciate the things around you. Feel thankful to the air you breathe, the food you eat. Be appreciative of all the small things in your life. Bad things happen but this does not mean that your life ends there. Many people desire to have things that you already possess. So why would you destroy a beautiful life by wasting your time on the negatives.
- Chapter 6: Having an unwanted attack when you are doing something good is the indication of the jealousy and arrogance of other people. When people see you succeed, they want to see you burn down the ashes and become once again- nothing.
- Chapter 7: Criticism is inevitable if you are doing something different than others. Criticism can cause a lot of set backs and negativity around you. To prevent such situation, ignore them. Criticism have no value for you, if you feel that you are doing the right thing.
Part Two: Fundamental Technique In Handling People
- Chapter 8: Condemning or criticising people for their mistakes make them defensive and the main motive disappears. To make them understand the mistake use statements that make themselves realise it or how they would benefit if they do the task differently.
- Chapter 9: People have an innate desire to be appreciated and feel important. Learn the habit of finding the good points about other and appreciate them for their good works. People’s productivity improves when they feel acknowledged.
- Chapter 10: To make somebody do some task, look from their perspective and think that what does the other person will accomplish while doing the same task. Thus creating a win-win situation.
- Chapter 11: Become genuinely interested in people to learn more about them which helps in creating better relationships for long periods.
- Chapter 12: Everyone wants to feel important. It is in the nature of the humans. Appreciate the people around you and their works. This habit will create better relationships and provide positive results.
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Part Three: Ways To Win People To Your Ways Of Thinking
- Chapter 13: Learn to view things from other person’s point of view. Everyone have different experience, thus they get to view things differently. Put yourself in their shoes and listen to their words. Do not just pass on your judgement.
- Chapter 14: Many people might not agree with you on a certain topic and many a times there are situation where the opposite parties have a upper hand over you and you do not have any leverage. Therefore, getting into arguments is much futile in that case as the opposite party is more likely to stay their grounds. Nonetheless, this can be prevented by having a friendly approach and just lower down the defensive instincts.
- Chapter 15: Beginning a positive conversation could be done by discussing the commonalities first. If the other person shares same initial thoughts, then they are more likely to get in agreement with you. Therefore, try to achieve more Yeses than Nos.
- Chapter 16: Want to Get things done? Have an idea in mind? If you want to get it done, let the people responsible for work try to think the idea is theirs. Instead, try to pass on critical information about the idea and over time when they connect the dots they would feel as if they created the idea
- Chapter 17: What do you do when you know that the other person is at fault? Do you say it bluntly? Or you first here there side of the story? In most cases especially in businesses there are often disputes regarding the payments and other things. Both feel both are correct and stay their guard. However, the best thing you could do is to hear the story of opposite party first and make your way up to a common agreeable decision.
Part Four: Ways To Change People Without Giving Offence or Arousing Resentment
- Chapter 18: One of the best way the book has mentioned about calling out the mistakes is doing it indirectly. So that the person does not get offended and in the meantime all of the things get sorted out.
An excerpt from the chapter,” Charles Schwab was passing through one of his steel mills one day at noon when he came across some of his employees smoking. Immediately above their heads was a sign that said "No Smoking." Did Schwab point to the sign and say, "Can't you read?" Oh, no, not Schwab. He walked over to the men, handed each one a cigar, and said, "I'll appreciate it, boys, if you will smoke these on the outside." They knew that he knew that they had broken a rule-and they admired him because he said nothing about it and gave them a little present and made them feel important.
- Chapter 19: Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person. This is a great method which many of us can adopt if we are working among a large number of people. Everybody thinks different and may not work according to your vision. Bluntly pointing out the mistakes might get them corrected once, but what about other times? Speak about your shortcomings and then mention the mistakes casually.
- Chapter 20: Instead of giving orders, ask questions. A collaborative project is a difficult task when people don’t see eye to eye. So, to get things done in a better way, it is a good habit to try asking questions on how can the things be done and let them involve themselves and give their opinion.
- Chapter 21: Even if you are right and the other person is wrong. Do not destroy their ego by pointing out the faults and errors in their work. Give them the opportunity to save their face.
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