A warm, engaging guide that inspires readers to look at the concept of busyness in a whole new way.
Sullivan argues that busyness can be the enemy of productivity and shows readers how to streamline their efforts for maximum impact.
The author, a self-admitted “recovering Busyness addict,” details how her own sense of having to always be occupied negatively affected her life. Sullivan shares both personal and professional stories ranging from the serious (“destroyed my marriage”) to the laugh-out-loud funny (“accidentally ate cat food, mistaking it for pistachios”) about the journey that led to her current role as a keynote speaker, trainer, and thought-leader for her SheCAN! nonprofit organization. She cites various negative consequences of being overly busy, including compromised thinking, a tendency toward small-picture reasoning, and added stress. Sullivan encourages too-busy readers to change tactics, such as focusing on values instead of goals: “You can’t be accountable for a goal because a goal only comes at the end. You can only be accountable to the daily actions that lead to it. But actions are not inspiring on their own. You need to be inspired first to take action. And you get inspired when the actions align with your values.” Interactive charts allow readers to participate in the lessons, which ultimately culminate in the three-step “Busy-Busting Process” (which includes “Subtraction,” “Mojo Making,” and “Values Vibing”) that Sullivan details in-depth. While some suggestions may come across as easier said than done (her solution to excessive multitasking being “just DON’T”), the vast majority of the author’s advice is practical, educational, and, most importantly, manageable. Sullivan is able to tackle both big and small changes with equal vigor; her “happiness rituals” represent minor daily changes, while her suggestions on how to determine your values (and what to do with them once you do) obviously take a bit more time and effort. Through it all, the author’s amiable tone conveys an ideal blend of authority and self-deprecation that makes self-improvement a pleasure.
A warm, engaging guide that inspires readers to look at the concept of busyness in a whole new way.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798891382657
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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