Jenny Lawson suffers from depression. In Broken, she explores her experimental treatment of transcranial magnetic stimulation with brutal honesty. But also with brutal humour.
Take a stand with Booko: Broken
Tag Archives: #ideas
Take a stand with Booko: One Life
Megan Rapinoe is one of the world’s most talented athletes and beyond her massive professional success on the soccer field. In One Life she discusses becoming an icon to millions, boldly speaking out on the issues that matter most.
Ted Talk: What adults can learn from kids
Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs “childish” thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to learn from children as much as to teach. This is an inspiring ted talk to watch.
The anti-CEO playbook
Profit, money, shareholders: these are some of the priorities of most companies today. But at what cost? In an appeal to corporate leaders worldwide, Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya calls for an end to the business playbook of the past and shares his vision for a new, “anti-CEO playbook” that prioritises people over profits. “This is the difference between profit and true wealth,” he says.
The newest motivational titles on the market for business
February is typically when we are all back in the office and into the swing of the 9-5 work day. However this year things are a little different. COVID-19 has meant that many of us are working from home and our office hours have become more flexible. While having the coffee machine and fridge close by and a non-existent commute are all wonderful upsides to working from the home office, there are days when motivation is seriously lacking. The good news is, that it’s okay to feel unmotivated from time to time, but for those days when you just can’t seem to get inspired we have rounded up a few books that could help. Self-help is a hugely popular genre and we are super happy that there is a continual stream of new titles being released, but it’s these ones below that we think will help you on a rather -ahem- unproductive day at work.
Make yourself a cuppa and settle in for a bit of a read… it’s okay, it’s ‘kind of’ work related.
How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices by Annie Duke
What do you do when you’re faced with a big decision? If you’re like most people, you probably make a pro and con list, spend a lot of time obsessing about decisions that didn’t work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, or endlessly seek other people’s opinions to find just that little bit of extra information that might make you sure. Or, you might take pride in your gut instincts and go with that. What if there was a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess yourself less, and ultimately be more decisive and be more productive? Making good decisions doesn’t have to be a series of endless guesswork. Rather, it’s a teachable skill that anyone can sharpen. In How to Decide, bestselling author Annie Duke and former professional poker player lays out a series of tools anyone can use to make better decisions.
Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom by James Danckert, John D. Eastwood
No one likes to be bored. We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it?
Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance. When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working, we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective. Too many of us respond poorly. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need. The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives. Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance.
The Times Great Quotations: Famous Quotes to Inform, Motivate and Inspire by Times Books
Be inspired and moved by the words of Malala Yousafzai, Amelia Earhart, Michelle Obama and Banksy in a collection of great and memorable quotations from across the centuries. Thematically-arranged quotes from the most notable minds, orators, celebrities, writers and politicians that ever lived. Struggling to recall those elusive quotes and sayings? With this thematic approach, The Times has the answer with a selection of the best one-liners across multiple topics and including a people index to help you find who and what you are looking for. This is one of our favourites: No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
The Quokka’s Guide to Happiness by Alex Cearns
Meet the Quokka. Miniature marsupial, tourist attraction and the happiest animal on the planet. Unique to Rottnest Island and small areas of the West Australian coast, these cute little critters have featured in more selfies than the Kardashians – no pouting necessary, just an adorable smile! Featuring stunning photography from award-winning Alex Cearns, and uplifting quotes, The Quokka’s Guide to Happiness is a gorgeous compilation sure to bring a cheeky little grin to anyone’s face and anyone wanting to break away from watching cat videos on Youtube.
How to Thrive at Work: Mindfulness, Motivation and Productivity by Stephen J Mordue
This is an essential read for anyone experiencing low level anxiety or stress, this book pulls together the various individual strands of business logic, scientific research, self-care, spirituality and common sense to provide a one-stop guide to thriving at work. The widespread ‘more for less’ attitude is creating a dramatic rise in work-related stress and a higher ratio of staff sickness. Not only does this create a fiscal impact upon the organisation and the broader economy but it has the potential to create significant long-term mental health issues for employees. You cannot always alter the demands of your professional or personal lives but, by understanding more about how your brain functions and by actively pursuing well-being techniques, you can enhance the skills that help you manage and succeed at the challenges thrown at you and reduce the risks associated with burnout. With a focus on improving mindfulness, motivation and productivity, this book offers sound, practical advice and strategies for self-care whatever your working environment and whatever stage you are at in your career.
The Demotivated Employee: Helping Leaders Solve the Motivation Crisis That Is Plaguing Business by Cathy Bush, Tara Peters
This one is for those of you that have a team to guide. Do you ever wonder why employees are not as motivated and productive as you would like for them to be? Do you find yourself thinking that some employees are just “lazy slackers”? You may be surprised to learn that there are other explanations for employee demotivation that you may not be thinking about when you are leading people. Authors Tara Peters and Cathy Bush have worked with thousands of leaders who are shocked to learn that managers and leaders play a significant role in causing employees to lose motivation. Without even realising it, we take all sorts of actions during the process of leading people and organisations, and many of these actions actually deflate the motivation that people bring with them to work. In The Demotivated Employee, readers will learn what leadership behaviours they are engaging in that might demotivate their employees; how to better communicate with employees so this doesn’t happen; and how to work within the constraints of organisational culture to help employees thrive.
Enjoy!
The very best last-minute gift guide for Christmas
With just one sleep to go until Christmas it is absolutely fine to feel a tad panicked if you have yet to start your Christmas shopping. Thankfully Team Booko has rustled up a knock-out last minute Christmas shopping list that will make you look like you had planned gifts long ago along with a few ways of ensuring their gift arrives before Christmas lunch.
Audio books, e-books and vouchers can all be sent immediately so if you fancy opting for the fastest gifts then you can just alter the version of the book by clicking on the little blue edition button below the title. Here’s a handy little pic for you where we have circled the other editions available.
If the idea of choosing is all too much, or the recipient is slightly tricky to buy for, then a gift voucher is a fabulous option. Click through here for our guide to gift vouchers – they also make lovely gifts for those hosting the festive meal (especially when you send them on Boxing Day as a Thank You).
These are our top picks that are sure to delight this Christmas.
The Chiffon Trenches by Andre Leon Talley
Discover what truly happens behind the scenes in the world of high fashion in this detailed, storied memoir from fashion icon and former Vogue creative director André Leon Talley. During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job assisting Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decade’s long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, Talley moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion’s most important designers. But as Talley made friends, he also made enemies. A racially tinged encounter with a member of the house of Yves Saint Laurent sent him back to New York and into the offices of Vogue under Grace Mirabella. There, he developed an unlikely but intimate friendship with Anna Wintour, and as she rose to the top of Vogue’s masthead, Talley became the most influential man in fashion. The Chiffon Trenches is a candid look at the who’s who of the last fifty years of fashion, and proof that fact is always devilishly more fascinating than fiction. André Leon Talley’s engaging and detailed memoir is his story of surviving and thriving in the notoriously cutthroat fashion industry amidst racism, homophobia, other challenges to become one of the most legendary voices and faces in fashion journalism.
The Kinfolk Garden by John Burns
Since the launch of its magazine in 2011, Kinfolk has grown into an internationally recognised brand known for its minimalist aesthetic and strong community of inspiring and influential creatives. Kinfolk have applied this lens to cooking, home design, and work. Now, in The Kinfolk Garden, the team turns its eye to outdoor spaces and the many ways they enhance our lives and help us foster community. With a focus on spaces that bring the outdoors in and the indoors out and people who have found ways to expertly incorporate the natural world into their lives, the book explores the garden as a place for work, play, entertaining, and inspiration. Featuring 30 homeowners and their spaces in locations around the globe, The Kinfolk Garden offers an easy approach to bringing nature home.
Live Beautiful by Athena Calderone
From celebrated design expert and interior designer Athena Calderone, a look into how creatives decorate their spaces. Beautiful design isn’t just pleasant to look at; it improves the quality of our lives. In Live Beautiful, the highly anticipated design book by Athena Calderone, the EyeSwoon creator taps into her international network of interior decorators, fashion designers, and tastemakers to reveal how carefully crafted interiors come together. She also opens the doors to two of her own residences. With each homeowner, Calderone explores the initial spark of inspiration that incited their design journey. She then breaks down the details of the rooms-like layered textures and patterns, collected pieces, and customised vignettes, and offers helpful tips on how to bring these elevated elements into your own space. Filled with gorgeous photography by Nicole Franzen, Live Beautiful is both a showpiece of exquisite design and a guide to creating a home that’s thoughtfully put together.
Make Life Beautiful by Syd and Shea McGee
Who doesn’t want to live a beautiful life? For the one million-plus followers who turn to Syd and Shea McGee for advice on building a beautiful home and life, Make Life Beautiful is a behind-the-scenes look into how the couple transformed Shea’s small room of fabric samples and big dream of becoming a designer into one of the most successful and fastest-growing interior design businesses in America. Both long-time and new fans will not only gain insight into how the McGees built such a successful company but also be inspired to apply design principles to their lives. Inspirational topics to help readers build an authentic life include, renovate your life, visualise the outcome, listen to your gut and elevate the everyday. It’s a wonderfully friendly read packed with helpful information for the budding designer.
The Home Edit Life by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin
Buying a gift for someone who is house-proud? Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin are back again to bring both function and beauty to your everyday life. In The Home Edit Life they show you how to contain the chaos when it comes to absolutely everything: your work, travel, kids, pets and more. Because the truth is, you don’t have to live like a minimalist to feel happy and calm. The Home Edit mentality is all about embracing your life, whether you’re a busy person, a jetsetter – or both! You simply need to know how to set up a system that works for you so you’ll maintain it for the long run. Get to know your organising style, learn how to tailor it to your habits and, best of all, leave the guilt behind when it comes to owning things.
The Naked House by Mollie Player
This one is for the minimalists you know. The solution is almost always fewer things. That’s the Naked House philosophy in a nutshell, though the importance of top-notch organisation (“a place for everything and everything in its place”), design unity, cleanliness and quality round out this book’s description of the most desirable, peaceful home in which to live. With a tongue-in-cheek, personal style, The Naked House is an inspiring but not-too-serious primer on cleaning, organising and reducing clutter-and on changing the way you view the purpose and soul of your home.
Enjoy and we wish you all a very safe holiday season!
The Best Books to Grow your General Knowledge
“General Knowledge” are the bits and pieces of information – some useful, some mundane, some weird and wonderful – that we pick up without intense study into specific topics. Having general knowledge can help us win a quiz, win an argument, and become more entertaining (!?). Satisfy your curiosity about the world around you, by dipping into these funny, surprising and informative books:
On This Day in History by Dan Snow
Dan Snow is one of Britain’s favourite historians, the creator of the hugely successful History Hit TV channel and podcast. On This Day in History is his carefully chosen collection of 365 historical events – one for each day of the year. Crisscrossing 3000 years of Western civilisation, Dan Snow describes events that range from important (D Day), to influential (the meeting of Lennon and McCartney), to obscure (the Anglo-Zanzibar war, the shortest war in history), and even strange (Napoleon escaping from rabbits). He also raises the interesting question of what we choose to remember, and what we might have forgotten.
The Second Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
Named after the final round topic of the long-running quiz show QI (short for Quite Interesting), this second instalment of trivia focusses on General Ignorance, as in common mistakes and misunderstandings found in our “General Knowledge”. Read this and you’ll realise that Napoleon wasn’t short, octopuses actually have six legs, and oranges often aren’t orange. In revealing these curious misconceptions, Johns Lloyd and Mitchinson, respectively the series-creator and head researcher for QI, also try to show how these urban myths and mistaken assumptions arise. With a foreword by Stephen Fry, the original host of QI.
The Big Ideas Box (Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology) by DK
This Big Ideas Box contains three titles from the Big Ideas Simply Explained series, covering Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology. True to DK’s form, this series uses innovative visual design to make information interesting and easier to understand. A mix of high-impact graphics, succinct summaries and more detailed articles help to tease out these huge and complex areas of learning – covering 2500 years’ worth of philosophical thinking, the development of psychology since the Ancient Greeks, and of sociology since the Middle Ages. These primers will invite teens and adults to think, discuss and seek out further reading.
Brilliant Maps: an Atlas for Curious Minds by Ian Wright
Brilliant Maps is not so much about geography, as a smart and imaginative way to use maps to explain interesting facts about people, countries, culture, and more. (Ian Wright would argue that maps are the original infographic.) The hundred maps in this book present information that range from the sobering (number of executions by state) to the curious (countries with no rivers) and whimsical (countries with no McDonald’s).
Linked to the Brilliant Maps website, the facts presented here are thought-provoking, revelatory, and simply fun.
Answers to Questions You’ve Never Asked: Explaining the “What If” in Science, Geography and the Absurd by Joseph Pisenti
This book of fun facts and strange questions will be especially appealing to kids and teens. Joseph Pisenti, better known as RealLifeLore, is a popular YouTuber whose main channel contains video musings on the absurd side of history, geography, economics and science. Answers to Questions You’ve Never Asked combines nonsensical humour and serious analysis to answer off-beat questions such as “Where can I move so that I will never be tempted by McDonalds again?”, and “If Plato came back to life what would he think of modern democracy?”. A fantastic encouragement to stay curious about the world around us.
Interesting Stories for Curious People by Bill O’Neill
Bill O’Neill is a huge trivia buff who has written books of fun facts covering topics as diverse as World War I, American Presidents, and rock music. Interesting Stories for Curious People is his trivia book about a bit of everything – a collection of entertaining and fascinating stories about history, science, pop culture and just about anything else you can think of. Great for aspiring trivia champs!
Dare to disagree
Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us in this Ted Talk, a good disagreement is central to progress. She shows us how the best partners aren’t echo chambers and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.
How language shapes the way we think
There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language that suggest the answer is a resounding yes.
Ted Talk Wednesday: Life Lessons Through Tinkering
We have an inspiring Ted Talk for you today. Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a roller coaster! It’s a short, but great talk.