Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Secret, marketing, 4-hour workweek

Money, money! Success! There's no shortage of books, seminars and workshops to guide us, for  a fee of course. From Robert Kiyosaki's investment books (Rich dad, poor dad) to Timothy Ferriss' book 'The 4-hour Workweek', promises are made.

I have never read Timothy's book, but read what another reader has to say:
http://kclau.com/book-reviews/timothy-ferriss-first-chapter/

Timothy also recently came out with a book entitled "The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman". In the book, he claims to have out on over 30 pounds of muscle in about one month... Hmm, sounds like some outlandish claim, unless you're using steroids! But if you check Timothy's website photo, he doesn't look that huge...
Read what Christian Finn, fitness expert, has to say:
http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/4-hour-body.htm

For those in the management and corporate world, there's no shortage too of "THE best" new technique to implement, etc... though it's perhaps fairer to call them fads, rather than hype. Think TQM, six sigma, change management, etc.
For a balanced view, read Robert Bacal's, psychology expert's comments:
http://work911.com/articles/mgmtfad.htm


Take home point - read books with a pinch of salt. To sell books, seminars and workshops, controversial headlines are needed and sometimes publicity stunts too... So buyer beware!

NLP - should you learn it?

We live in a live full of hype, no thanks to the world of marketing and advertising... where it's the norm to exaggerate, or even lie just to promote a product, person, college, service, etc. Sales and money has become the number one priority, at the expense of truth.

If you flip through newspapers in Malaysia, I'm sure you have seen advertisements for NLP workshops claiming you will be able to do this and that... Likewise for hypnosis workshops... NLP seems to be lacking in academic scrutiny - ie, no rigorous testing, experiments, etc to validate their claims. This is not to say that 'everything' in NLP is rubbish...

Read Michael Lovitch's blog here http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/blog/recommends/should-you-learn-nlp/

Some 'discoveries' that have been promoted as NLP presentation skills techniques are not new... For example, telling a story within a story have been used by movie makers long before NLP made ehadway (just that NLP uses some jargon to name the technique). Likewise, the use of gestures and non-verbal expressions have been used by orators long before NLP came up with fancy terms.

Oh yeah... are you a robot? As humans, we have our ups and downs and associated feelings, emotions. Some NLP practitioners like to promote the idea of functioning in a 'peak state'. Nothing wrong with that... except that you need to think carefully - why do I need to work myself up? Lulls and down moments are part of life, and expecting 'high' moments (or manufacturing 'high' moments) all the time seems unnecessary, or evena rtificial.