Pan Books edition.

:59 Seconds is the title of an extremely interesting book that I read recently. In fact, I was so impressed by it that I actually bought several more copies and gave them out to friends and relatives.

Why did I like it so much ?

Before I do that here are the book details:

: 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman ( Pan Books, 2009)

The book is a collection of very practical tools that you can use to help you change your life for the better . It covers such topics as how to be happier, to reduce stress, be more creative, improve relationships and decision -making and many other such life-changing moves.

The difference between this book and the thousands of other such books on the market can be summarized in two short sentences:

1. Every technique in the book can be implemented in a very short space of time, namely within 60 seconds or a minute, hence the title
2. All of the tools presented are derived from actual experimental findings by researchers. In other words they are all fact-based.

One of the insights Meena shares with writer A Shukor Rahman,

Asian organisations emphasis more on personal trust while those from the United States tend to focus more on Key Performance Index (KPI). UK organisations, on the other hand, put a great deal of value on personal relationships.

You can find Meena’s profile on page 51 of the magazine.

At my college at U.C. Santa Cruz, my best friend Tim, who had a persistent interest in what he called my unique world view, would often discuss with me our future as individuals, that is, in the American way apart from family. The point of school, after all, was to develop our potential and find our calling; these plans were not always in accordance with our families’ wishes and the possibilities excited us. He envied me my carefree attitude which he attributed to the security of being able to return to Thailand if I failed in the States. As I stood in the doorway of his dorm room, dressed to go to yet another party, he looked up at me from the physics paper on his desk and commented on my insouciance.

“It’s like you have these diamonds in your pocket and you can cash them in if you need to,” he said.

Tutorial introduction page

It’s split into 7 steps with an interactive challenge to illustrate the point.

Challenge 1: Gems & Color

You can find the tutorial at http://www.gia.edu/

But markets are not always conversations, as writer Warren Ellis once pointed out years ago. I stopped reading about online marketing a while back. Thankfully, this thing lives or dies on other forms of merit.

I know very little about precious and semi-precious stones so I consider it a challenge to be moderating the Q&A.

My personal copy of Careers Unplugged is peeling out of its cover. I need to replace it lest people get the wrong idea about our books. To be fair to the printer, I haven’t been kind to the book. Careers is the kind of book you want to have lying open on a table. I’m not accustomed to a book about management skills so I’ve recopied certain passages (Chapter 8: Invest in relationship capital) to get a sense of the person behind the writing. This is what interests me about books. The person behind the writing.

Book cover