How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath

7 stars

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Gallup Press; 1 edition (August 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595620036
• ISBN-13: 978-1595620033
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches

At first glance, you would have thought this thin book has little substance. 128 pages with almost every alternate page of a quote with a picture of a bucket, you might think you have been ripped off. However, happiness in life often lies in simplicity and one does not have to find all ways and means to be happy. This book is about that. Just a simple theory about a life that is a bucket and how happy you are depends on how full is your bucket.

The theory originated from Don Clifton, a psychologist who focused on the positivities in life to to promote happiness. The theory of the Dipper and the Bucket centralizes on the fact we have buckets to fill but often, we use our dippers to empty them. The book is split into 6 main chapters and their summaries are as follows:

Chapter 1: Negativity Kills
The chapter begins with history on how American POWs were treated in North Korean camps. Deaths were not caused by torture but an emotionally draining experience of killing relationships. Prisoners were infused with so much negativity that they lost the meaning to live.

Chapter 2: Positivity, Negativity and Productivity
Productivity is powered by positivity. Lack of appreciation, disengagement, unproductiveness can be caused by negativity. And this can spread from one person to another. Hence the dipper theory.

Chapter 3: Every Moment Matters
A good relationship should have a 5:1 positive-to-negative interaction ratio. It's always better to have more positives but an upper limit exists. This is because positivity must be grounded in reality.

Chapter 4: Tom's Story - an overflowing bucket
This part is a short autobiography of the author on his trials and how positivity helped him weather them.

Chapter 5: Making it Personal
There is no one single way to impart positivity to others. You must individualize each attempt,, catering to the target person's character.

Chapter 6: 5 strategies for increasing positive emotions
1. Prevent Bucket Dipping
2. Shine a Light on What is Right - instead of focusing on what went wrong, see what went right
3. Make best friends - have great relationships
4. Give unexpectedly
5. Reverse the golden rule

You can visit www.bucketbook.com for questions, tests and other reading material.

Million Dollar Habits - Brian Tracy

9 stars

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Entrepreneur Press; 1 edition (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599180294
• ISBN-13: 978-1599180298
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 i

Despite the title focusing on 'million dollars', Brian Tracy manages to put together an excellent well-rounded book on the topic on personal excellence and how to get there. The main concept of it is that habits get us to where we are and they can be learnt. Brain reveals to us tips on develop ingcrucial lifelong habits to better our life in all aspects - career, personal relationships, finances, fitness etc.

7 Steps to a new habit

1. Make a decision
2. Never allow an exception
3. Tell others (be accountable)
4. Visualisation
5. Affirm self (self talk)
6. Persistent practice
7. Reward to reinforce

The idea is not to overload oneself and take one step at a time, a habit at a time so we won't be overwhelmed. The following are categories of habits that can be developed according to one's wants and aspirations.

Habits to Succeed
- self-discipline
- be an optimist
- be mentally hardy
- know what you want
- be future oriented
- focus on your goals (do goal setting)
- excellence orientation/mastery
- know your key skills
- Develop your weakest skill that is material to your career (weakest skill = slowest pace)
- lifelong learning (read, learn from experts, courses/seminars)
- action oriented
- mix around with the right people

Habits of Millionaires
- take charge of finances
- frugality
- Law of attraction
- Wedge theory (save 50% of future increases)
- Insure

Habits to be paid more and promoted faster
- focus on jobs that are easy to do and easy to learn
- contribution orientation
- seek opportunity vs security
- find/do your ideal job
- Start earlier, end later
- Ask for more responsibility
- Take initiative
- Look like a winner
- Focus on customer service (internal and external)
- Be a good team player
- Help others to improve
- imagine you are self employed
- Be positive and cheerful

Habits of Top Business People
- Clarity
- Set goals and objectives
- Focus on marketing and sales
- Think like a customer
- Flexibility
- 7 points: Plan, organise, find the right people, delegate, inspect, measure, keep others informed.
- be open
- 7 foundations: productivity, customer satisfaction, profitability, quality, employees, organisational development, innovation

Habits for Marketing and Sales Success
- Specialize in one area
- Be different from the rest
- Determine your best potential customers (focus)
- Focus and concentrate on Sales efforts
- 7 Ps: product, price, place, promotion, packaging, positioning, people
- Meet, exceed, delight then amaze your customers
- Referrals and resales are key to profitability

Habits of Personal Effectiveness
- personal strategic planning
- Personal productivity (work hard, fast, smart, efficiently, better, on your strengths
- Focus (why am I paid? What are the high value activities? What only I can do? What is the biggest single contributing thing that i do for the company? What is the best use of my time?)
- Do the important only - Pareto, overcome procrastination, ABCDE method

Habits for Getting Along with Others
- make others feel important
- fearless and spontaneous
- be a relationship expert
- 5 points: acceptance, have gratitude, compliment always, build other's esteem, listen
- prioritize relationships esp with family
- learn forgiveness

Habits for Health and Well-being
- maintain ideal weight
- get rid of 3 white poisons: sugar, salt, flour
- eat right, slowly (> 20mins), timely (heaviest at the start and mid)
- do it slowly and steady
- Exercise
- Relax FULLY when it's time
- Sleep and rise early
- Drink lots of water
- Moderation
- practice solitude

Habits of Character and Leadership
- develop your character
- imagine and act like that ideal
- develop a vision
- aspire
- courage
- responsibility
- honesty and integrity
- 3 primary virtues: Prudence, Just, Benevolent
- Loyalty
- Faith
- Persistence
- Gratitude

The Rules of Office Politics - Dr Rob Yeung

8 stars

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Cyan Communications (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904879853
• ISBN-13: 978-1904879855
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.7 x 0.9 inches

"Rules of Office Politics" is an excellent guide to increasing one's awareness of office politics in any career. Office politics is unavoidable and needs to be managed.

A good insight, shared by Dr Yeung which I think is most important, is that office politics need not be unethical. A general impression of office politics is one of backstabbing or sacrificing others for one's benefit. To be well-versed in office politicking can be used to understand relationships better and leveraging on them for the benefit of others.

This short and sweet book is split into 3 sections:

1. Assessing the political landscape
- understanding the realities of work
- use the grapevine as a source of information
- observe, listen, ask questions
- be a confidant, keep secrets
- perception is more important than reality
- figure out who are the key people and what issues that matter
- focus on a few key people
- network
- know the rules of the game that the senior management play
- take your time

2. Building significant relationships
- identify goals and plan
- build teams
- know which button to push for each individual, be flexible
- play to others' needs
- accumulate favours
- deepen relationships
- know who has access to the big shots
- have a good mentor
- build credible reputation and develop a profile
- champion company ideals
- Leverage on situations, networks
- Use non-verbal leakage to convey messages
- be humble
- seek criticism not praise
- help your boss (manage him)

3. Confronting adversaries
- know how you are vulnerable
- concentrate on those who matter
- know the other's intentions
- collect evidence
- get second opinion
- steer away from official channels first
- pull adversaries to your side
- continual reinforcement
- prepare an exit strategy

To really appreciate the essence, I would encourage reading the book in its entirety and reflect on the concepts.

Marketing to the Social Media Web - Larry Weber

7 stars

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (June 22, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470124172
• ISBN-13: 978-0470124178
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches

"Marketing to the Social Media Web" gives any business owner a good reason to leverage on the internet to grow their business. It talks of the current trend where the internet is on the rise to take a bigger pie in any business' revenue. The book expounds on the paradigm shift all marketers have to make and how all these new tools change how people buy things.

To summarize, the learning points of the book are as follows:

1. The Web is not a one-way street for a monologue

Communication in a digital environment is an evolution from the traditional way of communication. It allows new possibilities in a globalized but shrinking world.

4 main strategies centres on reputation aggregrators, blogs, online communities and social networks.

Marketing must be more consumer centric. Customers are more vocal, hence marketeers need to participate in their conversations instead of a monologue.

Instead of broadcasting, the media needs to aggregate information for consumers to choose and pick.

The content must be compelling.

2. The marketer's new focus: Community and content

A community of interest and content is where real feedback is and where people are truly interested in a product. The control of information shifts from marketer to consumer. Hence marketing has to be honest and transparent because people can talk abt it.

Some opportunities to market (strengthening and expanding relationships):

- targeted brand building

- lead generation

- partnerships

- R&D via collaboration

- empolyee communications

3. Making the Transition to the social web

1. change marketing mindset - dialogue instead of monologue

2. A living brand - away from brand essence and brand recall. A stronger dialogue. better engagement

3. Segmentation by what people do, feel and think - for targeting

4. Targeting by behaviour instead of traditionally demographics - groups of interests and behaviours instead of narrow one-to-one

5. Communicate interactively - compelling environments to engage

6. Customer generated content - increasing visual content

7. Viral marketing - make pple share

8. Reviews by customers instead of only the experts, voting

9. Sponsor instead of publishing content, more meaningful dialogue

10. bottom up strategy - from the customers

11. let users decide

4. 7 steps to build your own customer community

1. Observe and create a customer map

2. recruit community members

3. evaluate online conduit strategies (below)

4. Engage communities in conversation

5. measure the community's involvement

6. promote your community to the world

7. improve the community benefits

5. Making use of 4 online conduit strategies

1. Reputation aggregator strategy (in search)

2. Blog Strategy (or podcasting)

3. E-community strategy

4. Social Networks strategy

Affiliate Millions - Anthony Borelli, Greg Holden

6 stars

• Hardcover: 253 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (April 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470100346
• ISBN-13: 978-0470100349
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches

This is a wonderful book for anyone who have never touched affiliate marketing before or have no knowledge about the subject. It is a book for beginners and goes through step by step on how to create compaigns and making a business out of it. A important point to note is that affiliate business tactics change in a short time and some of tools highlighted in this book might be obsolete in a couple of years. Some of the concepts might still aid anyone or give good advice to a current affiliate business owner.

The first portion of the book tells of the author's inspiring story of getting into the business and that anyone can follow suit. It also teaches the basic concepts of search and affiliate marketing. The second part emphasizes on building the campaigns. The last section talks about improving and managing the business, including the tax portion.

I note that this business is only suited for those who are willing to fork out a small sum of money to try pay per click advertising. And you need persistence. There will be falls so the idea is to persevere.

The Crisis of Global Capitalism - George Soros

4 stars

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1 edition (December 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620274
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620270
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches

This book is highly philosophical and takes a while to digest. It is not the typical investment book but rather the detail elaboration of the concepts Soros has borrowed and modified in his life. The concepts protrayed are a reflection of his investment philosophy and his view of the capitalistic world today.

"The Crisis of Global Capitalism" is split into 2 halves - the first half deals with the concepts themselves and are highly conceptual, the second half applies these concepts to the present capitalist system and highlights practical examples.

In short, Soros does not believe in equilibrium to exist as a final state but rather uses 'reflexivity' to describe how the market works. Reflexivity is the 2 way feedback mechanism between perception and reality. The former drives movement in the market. In a way, social forces and perception largely determine economics.

Soros believe that the current system will break down one day because of the huge growing perceptual differences that causes large swings. One day, the swings will go beyond the point of return (like a rubber band), causing the system to snap and crumble. Soros believes that it is necessary for an open society (another concept) where a proper feedback mechanism is in place to keep the swings small or at least in check.

*Note that my summary here is based on my interpretation of his writings and may not be representative. This is because I recognise my inadequacy to understand fully his concepts well.

Saving Fish from Drowning - Amy Tan

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034546401X
• ISBN-13: 978-0345464019
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.5 inches

Amy Tan can be hilarious with her prose.

Saving Fish from Drowning leaves the reader with a lot to reflect about especially about life. Sometimes we intend the best and impose our standards on others - trying to 'save' others from themselves or from their current predicaments, but in the process, we do worse for them.

This book is about a 'ghost' telling a story about her companions travelling to Burma. They got 'kidnapped' by a tribe in a case of 'mistaken identity' where one of them was recognised as a saviour.

Funny, witty and sometimes sad.

Great book to read.