Review: I, Tonya

Darkly comic biopic of renowned and infamous ice skater, Tonya Harding. The documentary style regularly breaks the fourth wall with dry humour - usually during a pause in a beating Tonya is on the receiving end of.

Margot Robbie is never fails to convince as Harding - a redneck seemingly born with a talent to skate (and an unusually pushy mother). The supporting cast are equally good (with Janney as her monstrously abusive mother, LaVona, being another standout).

LaVona Golden: You're a dumb piece of shit who thinks she deserves to get hit.
Tonya Harding: I wonder how I got that idea?

I don't remember much of the incident which this movie has been pulled together around, but I imagine this movie has done a great deal to rehabilitate Tonya as a sympathetic and vulnerable person behind the brash exterior.  I was particularly struck by the realisation of how much we are all the product of our circumstances (cf Homo Deus) and the unjustness of Tonya's fate - both on the ice and in personal relationships. I hope she has found peace and the life she deserves.

Verdict: Skating on thick ice.

Review: Denial

Dramatisation of the David Irving Holocaust denial court case starring Timothy Spall and Rachel Weisz.

Spall, despite not physically resembling Irving very much, captures his manipulative intellect and arrogance well. It's not in any way a balanced portrayal though - there's no light to the shade.  Even the lighter scene of Irving with a younger member of his family feels slightly disturbing.

Weisz's Lipstadt isn't quite as strong, and that's partly because a deliberate and probably wise strategy not to pit her against Spall's Irving. But she does bring a quiet and impassioned sense of justice.  A couple of shout outs to Wilkinson's Rampton, and Scott for finding another slightly oily character.

The way the case against Irving is built (including a spine shivering visit to Auschwitz) was exceptionally told and gave me a new found respect for the subtleties of English law and those who practice it.


Verdict: Powerfully impressive takedown.

Review: The Greatest Showman

Exuberant musical take on the key beats of P.T. Barnum's life featuring Jackman, Williams and Ephron. It's rather creative with his life story and the facts at times - but it's all in the name of entertainment (and I feel sure the man himself would have appreciated, even celebrated the changes).

There's not much depth here, but themes of inclusion, friendship and family are universal and the wonderfully uplifting soundtrack carries it through the odd problematic moment.  So much so, I was surprised it ended when it did.

I even managed to annoy the missus by calling out the various aerial hoop moves!

Verdict: Elation in musical form.

Review: The Shape of Water

As homages to 50s creature features go,  The Shape of Water is a near perfect one.  The twist on the normal formula is that Hawkins' mute Elisa quickly grows to sympathise with and fall in love with Jones' amphibian man as she is denied the normal scream response.  I think I spotted nods to Amelie and Delicatessen too.

Hawkins' highly expressive performance is utterly absorbing and Jenkins' is her gentle foil who clues the audience in on any necessary exposition. Also of note,  Shannon adds another brutal and troubled hard man to his catalogue, while Stuhlbarg gives us another ambiguous one.

A word also to the marine inspired colour palette which imbues the production with a wonderful dream-like quality. At one point, a character gently mocks this and a modern trend in movie grading generally - by exclaiming "it's teal,  not blue".

Verdict: Wonderful fantasy romance.

Review: Rex

Surprisingly unsentimental tale of a marine dog handler, Megan Leavey and her dog, Rex, in Iraq.   Although based on a true story, there's a certain amount of dramatic license. But this aside, it's told in an unflashy way and takes its time to build so that when the action kicks in, it feels suitably shocking and earned.

Mara is convincing as the lead and despite the UK title, it's more her film than the dog's.

Verdict: Woman's best friend

Review: The Rise of Superman: Decoding the science behind ultimate human performance

Behind the hype of the title is a refreshingly market-speak-free read detailing how top performers in adventure sports and athletics manage to regularly perform seemingly superhuman stunts like ski-base jumping,  free-falling from space or even  - tapping into history here - breaking the four minute mile barrier.  The secret, Kotler asserts, is flow.

Flow turns out to be that quixotic sense of being so deeply absorbed in a task that time passes without you noticing while accompanied fantastic levels of creativity and performance. Or in my generation's parlance - being in the zone. Or if you're a runner like myself - runner's high (a low level version of flow apparently).

Kotler slowly unpacks the neurochemistry (an interplay of around half a dozen potent chemicals) and biology behind the metaphysics of flow through well told and inspiring examples of derring-do.  There are areas of our brains which give us near supernatural powers like being able to predict the future (in a limited way) and making non-obvious connections and acting on them unconsciously.

The good news, however, is that ordinary mortals like yours truly can also access flow in our everyday lives and also benefit from up to five times increases in productivity (according to a McKinsey study of executives):

Tips for activating flow

Avoid multitasking
Flow is experienced when the brain stops multitasking and so you are more likely to enter it - if you concentrate on one task.

Growth mindset
Some people that intelligence and abilities are fixed, others believe they can always expand and improve aka they have a growth mindset.

Autonomy
You have some level of control over your current experience.

Novelty
Different environments or situations like visiting a new coffee shop can help unlock flow.  Being in nature can be especially good.

Visualisation
Kotler uses various examples, including the breaking of the four minute mile, to show how visualisation can help the impossible become possible.

“What does impossible feel like, sound like, look like. And then we start to be able to see ourselves doing the impossible—that’s the secret. There is an extremely tight link between our visual system and our physiology: once we can actually see ourselves doing the impossible, our chances of pulling it off increase significantly.”

Michael Gervais, psychologist 

Clear goals
Chunking a big goal into lots of tiny ones helps enormously.

“I don’t think about breaking a record, I can’t ever think about the whole dive. It’s too overwhelming. I have to chunk it down, create tiny, clear goals. I go through kick cycles. The Voice (the voice of intuition) keeps count. I want to pay attention through one cycle, then the next, then the next. Keep the count, that’s my only goal. If I keep the count, I can stay in flow the whole dive.”

Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, Free diver

A writer is better focussing on a few great paragraphs at a time, than an entire chapter.


Immediate feedback
If you can get immediate feedback on what you're doing, then that helps drive learning and flow. One of the most profound flow experiences I had was during web development - I was right on the edge of what I was capable, but getting feedback (whether the program would run or not) almost every few minutes.

For individuals, this means tightening feedback loops (OODA loop style). That could mean daily rather than quarterly or annual reviews.

4% more
You are more likely to find flow when the task you're doing is 4% more challenging than your current capacity.  The benefits of this are cumulative over time and akin to Team Sky's aggregation of marginal gains.

Element of danger
Note: danger doesn't have to be physical or life threatening - to a shy person crossing the room to talk to someone new can feel dangerous enough.  Flow is often found close to boundary of fight or flight.

For those seeking flow in team situations, the following can also help:

• Familarity
• Collective humility
• Being engaged in the collective here and now
• Yes, And
• Choosing your own challenges
• Having the necessary skills

Finally, he finishes with an inspiring call to action drawn from another revolutionary author:

"We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for."

Alice Walker

Verdict: Thrilling and engaging, but not a how-to-manual

Review: Sphere

Thanks to the cast and occasionally great one liners worthy of a screwball comedy, time has been kind to Sphere.

It's mostly a three hander between Hoffman, Stone and Jackson - and their exchanges make it worth the entrance fee (in this case, about 25p from a charity shop).  In a near breach of the fourth wall, one of them even asks what the another member of the party is doing there.

Sure, it's not terribly original (cf The Forbidden Planet and every base under siege story in Doctor Who) and it doesn't feature groundbreaking special effects - the only OK CGI sphere seems to have absorbed most of the budget, but the film has a certain something.

Harry: Are you a religious man, Norman?
Norman: Atheist, but I'm flexible. 

The claustrophobic nature of the realistic looking undersea environment and largely implied violence winds up the tension to the max. There are some genuinely chilling moments. For example, Hoffman's response to the discovery that the entity is happy, sent a real shiver down my spine.

Verdict: Not quite aged like a fine wine, but more like the unexpected discovery of a slightly out of date chocolate bar at the back of a food cupboard.

Review: A simple life

A simple life charts the post-work life of Ah-Tao, a maid for a Hong Kong family, who have all but one emigrated. The remaining family member, Roger, shares a flat with her - but after a stroke she decides to move into a care home.

I liked that the story didn't take a predictable redemptive route and it is fascinating to see how another country undergoing great and fast paced change takes care of their older generation.  It turns out that old people's homes in Hong Kong, even relatively expensive ones, are no less depressing than those in the West.

The film is also populated by interesting characters - even if their back stories aren't fleshed out. There's one larger than life character in the home who seems so able, it isn't clear why he's there at all. I also enjoyed the well observed interlude with a celebrity pop star.

Verdict: Touching slice of a different culture's life

Review: Annihilation

Annihilation, to paraphrase the late Leonard Nimoy, is like a fantastically dark garden - there are moments of great beauty, but they are fleeting in this sci-fi fusion of the Heart of Darkness and The Blair Witch project.

The near all female cast is excellent as an exploration team who have all been damaged by past traumas and so have their own reasons for wanting to enter the Shimmer - a slowly expanding phenomenon from which no-one has previously returned. 

The special effects are mostly well realised and felt like they'd drawn on influences as diverse as Event Horizon and Hannibal. In short, some of most iconic imagery in this film tends towards the nightmarish.

I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying this is not a redemptive movie and nor is it going to feed you any easy answers. In some respects, and like the Shimmer itself - what you bring to the movie is reflected and refracted back at you.  For example, I've been thinking a lot about human intervention in nature recently - why we do it, and what does good look like - and Annihilation could be seen as a metaphor for that. Some have seen their depressive episodes in it. Others simply thought it was a bunch of pretentious twaddle with lots of plot holes.  For me, while there is darkness and provocation here - I found it ultimately up-lifting.

Verdict: Thoughtful mediation on life, being and ecology.

Review: Articoolo - a AI tool for writing articles

As an occasional writer I guess I should be afraid, perhaps every very afraid, about the coming onslaught of artificial intelligence. Or at least, that's what the current generation of writing bots might have me believe.

In my day job, I've sometimes used Narrative Science's Google Analytics tool to generate reports on how the website is performing - and usually been fairly impressed, even intrigued, by what it has surfaced. Unfortunately, the scope of the reports was fairly limited - leaving me still scrabbling around for other KPIs.

Articoolo promises to go further - produce artificially generated content on demand - and that's a bold statement.  So I thought I'd give it a whirl on the topic of plastics reduction in everyday life.

Below is the full unedited article:

Reducing Plastic 

REDUCE, REJUVENATE, REUSE, RECYCLE is a 4Rs concept, a remedy to control plastic waste. Think about the Solid Waste Management Hierarchy tree. Reduce on top of the tree. Reducing our use of excess or one off use disposable vinyl items is among the biggest advantages we might use, particularly at the customer level. There are literally 1000 of items used every day that needn't be plastic. As that's the lowest cost method they're made of plastic. When total costs are considered, then produce items like drinking straws from plastic, which have a lifetime of moments, simply to stay for 100s of years later, should inform us their true cost is far higher in comparison with the percentage of a penny to fabricate them.

Straws made from paperboard or newspaper continue to be accessible, but barely ever used. Over the country, California spends about 25 million bucks sending vinyl bags to landfill each year, and yet another 8.5 million bucks to remove littered bags from streets. Whilst a grocer pays next to nothing more for plastic bags and provides them to customers free of charge, the follow on cost to most of us is much higher. Paper bags are biodegradable and create a good second choice, but the giving from new paper bags every time remains a waste of energy and resources as compared with just reusing an existing bag.

Grocery stores along with other stores should be actively discouraged from the supply of plastic bags. There are many and various incentive systems used in some cities around the globe and forward thinking companies which are efficiently reducing their use of plastic bags. Most are only built around a fee for the bag. As soon when consumers realize they need to pay the real price of those environmentally damaging items, they'll stop anticipating or demanding them. The city from Toronto is an example from. Globally we use about a trillion plastic bags a year or 2, 000,000 bags a minute.

Where can they possibly go? STOP Using Plastic Bags. START Using Reusable Bags - Plastic Cups. How some of those are thrown away every day? Since the outcries against junk food outlets in the last 20 years, a number of them are now using paperboard cups which will biodegrade. Nevertheless, you may still find many, many more companies that give out plastic cups. They're also commonly sold in grocery stores when convenience things as there's no washing nor have to take home if used on a picnic. Disposable plastic cups are merely not needed. Cardboard cups will fill virtually all the requirements. Our modern age which promotes purchasing a coffee to go means a vinyl lid on every cup.

My honest assessment? It's pretty much on topic and I like the inclusion of the various facts and figures.  It does, however, need a decent subedit and feels like a non-native English speaker's attempt at writing an article in places.   As a first draft, I've read worse, and it would certainly help as a starting point if I was totally stuck for ideas.  In short, it's perhaps a good example of where AI and humans can work together to produce something better and quicker than they could alone (the centaur approach).

Verdict: Getting there.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight

Pay no attention to the cover, this is neither live action or animated in the style of the cover - it is much closer in style to the animated Batman I used to see on TV in the 90s.

This is also an alternative universe where the Batman is in late Victorian/early Edwardian guise (a motorised bike and a Zeppelins appear) stalking Jack the Ripper. Various other Batman characters appear eg Commissioner Gordon, Selina Kyle, Poison Ivy - but they are subtly or deeply twisted to suit the era.

Despite the lack of gadgets, there isn't much detective work on offer either although you do see Bruce Wayne/Batman employ some early forensic science and give a nod to some of Sherlock Holmes' methods.   The final reveal of who was the Ripper felt a bit left field and hard to stomach to me, and I will be scurrying to the source graphic novel to seek out the original ending.

Slight disappointment with the animation style and denouement aside, this is fun enough - but lacks depth for something pitching itself as adult fare.

Verdict: Fun and undemanding.

Review: Become a Speed Demon: Productivity tricks to have more time

I'm in the middle of Levi's Udemy course on becoming a super learner and wondered if his productivity course would have any value. 

If you detect a hint of scepticism, it's because I've read a lot of productivity articles and books like the Four Hour Work Week, Getting Things Done, Pomodoro technique etc. It's the obsession of our age - and often helped me keep my head above water during periods of heavy workload.

So rather than get the course, I thought I'd pick up the book and give it a quick skim. Sure enough, the by now old standbys for such a book like the Pareto Principle and Parkinson's law are all present and correct.  And this book is probably stronger on the work side of things than other areas like fitness and food preparation (!) For fitness, the Four Hour Body is probably not a bad place to start.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find a few useful bits and pieces so I'll collect what's new to me here - and give the book the nod as a great introduction to this area.

Unroll.me
Not exactly new as I've been using this for a few weeks now, but can't remember where I found it - but it's covered in Become a Speed Demon so I'll give them the credit.

Unroll.me offers two main features for email users. First, you can bundle several email subscriptions into one daily digest.  Secondly, it'll quickly summarise which email lists you are subscribed to and allow you to unsubscribe with a click.  It's a decent hassle saver and did I mention, free.

Unroll.me

Priority Star
This is a fun exercise for brainstorming and prioritising tasks - especially in a group by highlighting dependancies in a fun way.  I'm not sure if I'll use it, but it was certainly cool. This video is a good introduction:

Wheel of Life multitasking
Again not completely new, but since it's a recent discovery I'll give Levi some credit for his comprehensive explanation.  A wheel of life is a graphical representation of different areas of your life and how satisfied you are with them.

If you want to create your own wheel of life, there are plenty of guides and awesome ways to use one.

Wheel of Life multitasking asks you to consider whether activities and tasks can help with multiple areas of your wheel.

So for example, my upcoming trip to Amsterdam ticks the boxes for Family and friends (because I'll be visiting a friend or two), Romance (the missus is super keen to see the tulips), Personal Growth (learning a few Dutch phrases) and lastly, it's been a while since I went aboard which ticks the fun and adventure box.

Text expansion
I've been using a text expander on my Mac for years (TypeIt4Me), but it never more than vaguely occurred to me that such a thing would exist for my phone.  The iPhone, my preferred platform, even has it built in.

iOS/Android: Create your own time saving keyboard short cuts

Quicksilver
This application allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to launching of applications and other actions such as opening folders, or running searches.  This was new to me, and I'm not sure how much I'll use it. But I do like my new keyboard shortcut to play my favourite Mozart track while working.

Quicksilver

Avoiding decision fatigue through delegation
I really liked this last one. Instead of deciding on a restaurant or saying "I don't know", simply ask for a recommendation from your friend.


Verdict: Some handy tools and tricks here.

Review: Becoming Steve Jobs: How a Reckless Upstart Became a Visionary Leader

I've attempted to read a biog or two about Jobs before (Issacson's was the most recent) and found them generally a bit worthy and dry.

One of the key problems is that I roughly know the trajectory of his life and the major milestones, but want to gain insights into his approaches and thinking beyond the very quotable soundbites he left behind in abundance.

Becoming Steve Jobs is lengthy but highly readable. The chapter headings aren't particularly helpful if you are planning to dip into it.

I scanned through the index and circled areas that looked like they might be helpful - and attacked the book from that angle. It wasn't perfect as I found myself repeatedly dipping into the same pages.

Marketing and sales chutzpah
Jobs was a highly creative marketer and salesman. I enjoyed the story of how he sold their early phone phreaking device by going door to door in colleges asking if it was George's room (an imaginary phone phreaking expert) and if a conversation was struck up - a sale would be attempted.

"Steve had the gift of being able to explain profoundly complicated technology in simple, clear, and even rhapsodic terms."

Becoming Steve Jobs

Buddhist philosophy
Steve considered the monk-like sadhu life, before settling on Buddhism for his spiritual focus.  Key to Buddhism is the sense of always becoming - the notion that you can always strive to improve and for perfection.

The changing language of a project manager
Jobs' language would change over the course of a project. Initially inspiring:

"The work fifty people are doing here is going to send a giant ripple through the universe."

then coaxing:

"The journey is the reward" and "It would be better to miss than turn out the wrong thing". 

to finally:

"Real artists ship". 

Four quadrant product line up
When Jobs returned to Apple,  he focussed the company's efforts around just four products - one per each of the main customer segments they were going after.

This created a clear vision for the company to unite around.

Deep restlessness
Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) suggests that Jobs had something in common with Winston Churchill - deep restlessness. He describes this as:

"...far more important and powerful than simple ambition or raw intelligence. It is the foundation of resilience, and self-motivation. It is fuelled by curiosity, the ache to build something meaningful a, and a sense of purpose to make the most of one's entire life". 

The contrarian taskmaster
Jobs figured out early on that his contrarian thinking (eg treating computers like an appliance when most spoke to an industrial aesthetic) could lead to product breakthroughs - and that he could combine this with uncompromising ruthlessness in team management to deliver the previously unthinkable.

Jobs would later soften his approach.  Here's what he felt about firing later:

"I still do it because that's my job. But when I look at people this happens, I also think of them being five years old, kind of like I look at my kids.  And I think it could me coming home to tell my wife and kids that I just got laid off. Or that it could be one of my kids in twenty years, I never took it so personally before."

Steve Jobs 

Brain Trust
A Pixar innovation - this involved regular meetings between the directors of upcoming films with highly experienced animators and producers. The trust had no authority, but there was an expectation that any comments they made would be deeply considered.

Jobs 3.0
As Jim Collins notes, the tragedy is that we didn't get to see what an older and maturer, say 70 year old,  Steve Jobs would have been like.  He calls this Jobs 3.0.  It's interesting to speculate though. Personally, I think it's likely he'd have found philanthropy in his later years.

Joining the dots
As part of his Stanford commencement speech, Jobs chose a three vignette structure. His first segment covered connecting the dots in your life:

"Again you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and has made all of the difference in my life. "

Steve Jobs

On luck
Steve seems to have learned his philosophy on luck from Pixar's Ed Catmull - you can't control whether you have good or bad luck, but you can prepare for either and that's what really counts.

Opening the kimono
This evocative phrase is given to what happens when another tech company agrees to show some of their research to another.  Apple arguably made the deal of a lifetime when they exchanged shares for access to Xerox PARC's research including a demonstration of an early graphical user interface.

Getting fired from Apple
It took a long time for Jobs to come to terms with getting fired from Apple, but by the time of his Stanford speech he seemed to have done so:

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. "

Steve Jobs

Why a company exists
I'll finish this review with Jobs on companies:

"The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans, this abstract construct that's incredibly powerful. Even so, for me, it's about the products. It's about working together with really fun, smart, creative people and making wonderful things. It's not about the money. "

Steve Jobs

Verdict: Becoming Steve Jobs does what I hoped it would do, give some insight into his leadership skills.

Review: Charlotte's Web

Charlotte's Web is the story of a girl, a pig and a spider - and turns out to be a gently touching tale of friendship and sacrifice.

It's not a story with a lot of action - but somehow is all the better for it. The characters are simply but distinctly drawn. It would be a hard person who was not profoundly affected by the fate of one of the characters at the end.  Surprisingly for a children's book, it doesn't pull any punches about hard topics like death and the cycle of life.

As befitting a writer of a classic style guide, White's prose is wonderfully economical and precise.

Verdict: Life-affirming little gem

Review: Pride

Pride tells the uplifting, and occasionally sorrowful, story of how a group of gays and lesbians came to raise money and support the miners during their strike of 1984.   The result is a deeply comedic and sometimes moving study of friendship across a cultural divide.

It has a wonderful eye for period detail and really took me back to those pre-internet and far less enlightened times.

Verdict: Rare slice of social history

Review: A Message to Garcia and other essential writings on success.

This is a short read, barely more than a pamphlet really and proclaims itself as a candidate for the most widely distributed piece of literature within the author's lifetime.

"Fear is the rock on which we split"

Elbert Hubbard

Viewed more than a century on, the message of quiet initiative remains relevant - even if the central story, that of a soldier in the Spanish-American war entrusted with a mission to deliver a message to someone of unknown location, has long disappeared into historical exaggeration.

"We are gods in the chrysalis". 

Elbert Hubbard

His other essays continue the theme, and it's clear Hubbard has no time for idleness among the rich or poor.

"If the concern where you are employed is all wrong, and the Old Man a curmudgeon, it may be well for you to go to the Old Man and confidentially, quietly and kindly tell him that he is a curmudgeon. Explain to him that his policy is absurd and preposterous. Then show him how to reform his ways, and you might offer to take charge of the concern and cleanse it of its secret faults. Do this, or if for any reason you should prefer not, then take your choice of these: Get Out, or Get in Line."

Elbert Hubbard

With its extortions to be radio-active(!) and avoid attacks of cerebral elephantiasis (big headedness), I'm left with the impression that the author would have been amusing and eccentric company by today's standards.

Verdict: Humour and poetic turn of phrase lifts this early self-help pamphlet.

Review: The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Delightful early animated fantasy based on tales from the Arabian nights.  Tricked by a magician into jumping on a flying horse, the titular prince is transported to foreign lands where he encounters beauties and beasties aplenty.   Fairy tale lovers will be intrigued by the slightly different take on Aladdin and his magical lamp.

The film uses a distinctive silhouette animation technique which suits the limitations of early film - and remains fresh nearly hundred years on. The version I saw also benefited from a few spots of narration, penned by the original director, Lotte Reiniger and was in the original tinted colour.

Verdict: The original colour feature animation.

Review: High Plains Drifter

Early 70s revenge Western with flashes of darkly comic humour and hints of the supernatural.

Plot wise, it feels slightly confused - but all you really need to know is that there's skullduggery lurking in various quarters - and Clint means to make them pay.

Eastwood brings gruff charisma to the eponymous part. When he smiles though, his natural star quality is in danger of breaking the illusion.


Verdict: Solid Western with unusual imagery. 

Review: A Little Princess

Hodgson Burnett's tale of resilience neatly complements later The Secret Garden. Where that was the tale of a girl slowly being transformed by a near-supernatural place, A Little Princess is about a near already formed girl who must remain steadfast in the face of multiple adversities in one of the most mundane of locations.

I loved that she choose imagination as her primary tool to help her survive difficult circumstances.

If I had to pick, I probably prefer this of the two books.  Sara Crewe is a very appealing character and it has a less obvious plot. In addition, the magical and anthropomorphic elements feel a little less fanciful and laboured than in The Secret Garden.

Verdict: Classic story of childhood fortitude.

Review: Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose

As a middle-aged white bloke, a self help guide on women's workplace empowerment was perhaps a surprising choice for me to read.  But I like to expose myself to good ideas regardless of where they are coming from. It also helped that it was incredibly cheap from Amazon's marketplace and I was looking for a book to try out my new 80/20 book reading approach (more on that in another post perhaps).

Verveer and Azzarelli have produced a guide which is both motivating and practical. Be warned, it does tend to lean significantly towards storytelling. But many of the stories are memorable and may just be the jolt you need.

The first chapter I jumped into was "Find your purpose". Disappointingly, this turns out to be more of an instruction rather than offering tactics and approaches on how to do so.

"Dissents speak to a future age. The greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow".

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The chapter on leadership was more useful.  As a bit of a geek, I was fascinated by Google's data driven approach to getting more female engineers to apply for promotions. They found that if they accompanied job descriptions with two studies showing girls and women were less likely to put their hands in math classes and meetings (despite often being better than their male counterparts), they got more applications.

"What I found was that whenever you offer someone flexibility to manage what's important in their lives, you're avoiding them having to make a choice between what's important to them in life, and work will lose every time. The benefit of giving them a third option is that you will get loyalty you can't get any other way, no matter how much money you pay them". 

Susan Sobbot

"Why the Middle Matters" is a useful reminder of the power and influence middle management can exert given their position in the organisation - and their role in raising new ideas. As a middle manager myself, I can testify that it doesn't always feel that way, although I found myself nodding at the following observation:

"Knowing where you are in the organisation, and knowing the power you have to influence and the power you have to make recommendations - don't get surprised when your recommendations gets taken".

Bea Perez, Coca Cola

as well as the expectation that as the raiser you will deliver the solution!

The Entrepreneurs and Innovators chapter provides some sound tips on resilience in the face of setback like the one below:

"You know, Mrs Clinton, the best ideas die in bank parking lots"

Anon on the difficulty of women getting startup funding from traditional sources

  I was particularly moved by Pauline Brown on the power of sabbaticals:

"Little by little, things starting coming back to me that gave me joy".

Ideas provoked:

• Could staff leave letter to their successors giving the instant track on what works and what doesn't?
• Can Freshpaper help Asda with their plastics-free challenge?

Finally, the toolkit at the back of the book went beyond the usual homilies. I took away the following tips:

• Think strategically about what problems will need to be solved in the future, and what your role will be. 
• "Confident is the stuff that turns thoughts into action" - a wonderfully concise definition. 
• The higher you aim, the harsher the criticism you will get. 
• Substitute junk media for quality media - perhaps by keeping a diary of what you read and watch initially, going cold turkey and slowly introducing things back into it. 
• What matters to you? What do you find yourself drifting towards when reading? What do you want to change in your own life, in your community or in the world? Make a list of your top three?

Verdict: Toolkit is gold. Rest powerfully inspiring.