Book Review: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield was a book I really looked forward to read. It had been mentioned as reference in so many different books and so many interesting people, that I just had to read it. Even with high expectations, but no real glue of the style of the book, it surprised me how wonderful it was.

The book is about making things happen. How one can truly follow it's calling and actually make things happen. It's a perfect guide for everyone to start creating the things you want to and stop making excuses why you couldn't be doing these things. It talks a lot about writing, but the learning's can be reused for anything one wants to do.

Most important part of the book is the explanation what is resistance. Resistance is the force is in us, that prevents us doing things. It's the rationalization, fear and everything else in one package telling us reasons, why we shouldn't do somethings. Everyone finds it in themselves. If they don't, then they have lost the game totally to resistance.

Book does tell also about turning in to a pro and fighting the resistance. Still the important part relies in acknowledging the resistance. When you learn to know it's there, you can fight it. If you don't learn to recognize it, you don't have the change to beat it. Such a powerful and cunning it is.

I loved most of the contents of the book, and in addition I loved the way the whole thing was presented. Chapters were really enjoyable and short enough with excellent stories in those. It really was fun to read. Couple of times, it really struck me with such a good insights, that I got surprised and even offended before I realized truth in those. It was a true self learning journey for me.

As a foreign English speaker, the text was bit difficult sometimes. I've been reading lot's of business/science books lately and those use easier language most of the time. I can notice that Steven Pressfield is a novelist in his heart and he uses more variety in words than regular business writers do. That made the book even more interesting to read, but it also did it bit harder for non native English speaker to read.

Book is a true masterpiece. I loved and hated the book at the same time. It revealed to me so much of myself, that I got amazed. When you want to achieve something, get this book to you hand and read it. It's worth every page.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review - Linchpin - are you indispensable by Seth Godin

I've followed and admired Seth Godin's thinking for some time already. I guess I'm not the only one, since he seems to be one of the most followed person on the web. What I like in him, are the surprising angles he looks at things, almost magical ability to group things together and he's way of presenting his thoughts.

The book Linchpin - Are you indispensable? tells about people who make value to their work over their job description. It's about those who have skills that are hard to describe. It's about those who are not easily replaceable by anyone else. It explains those people, what are their skills and how they behave. What's best is that it also analyses what it would take for any of us to become indispensable.

In the book Seth Godin describes these people linchpins. Also he describes those as artists, people who create something different with their behavior and skills. He gives good examples of linchpins as people who make others feel comfortable and well served or someone who truly cares about the result, not only about doing their job.

In this book Seth Godin talks about how to become a linchpin. He explains how our lizard brains prevent us doing many things, how connections are important, why gifts has a such an important role in current world and economy and lot more. It is an extensive and brilliant insight to why some people just make things happens and others just stick with what they are told to do.

Many times during the book I noticed of things I could do differently and things I should continue to do even more. Like Seth Godin says in his book, it's not going to be easy to become linchpin, but it's most probably up to you. There's something in you that makes you special, you just need to really learn to use your skills.

I've always admired Seth Godin for his ability to say things in compact, even short, form. His blog posts and some of the previous books I've read are carefully shortened to give a clear and simple message. This time it's different. Book is not that compact and I could even say that it's not organized in such a smart way as he normally does. I got the feeling that the subject in question might have been such an important for him, that he might have not been able to really analyze his own doings so well, than with less important subjects. That's at least what I've noticed, what closer the subject is to your heart, that harder it is to subjectively analyze it.

It's a brilliant book, but it's not easy to read. Or the text is easy to read, but some of the ideas are such new and bold, that it takes some chewing to really understand meaning of all of those. To read it, it's for everyone, but I believe most of the people don't really take all of it seriously. I liked it and I hope I have the guts to take in to use the things I figured out during this book. 

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

What a beautiful sculptures lasting only milliseconds

Water sculptures by Shinichi Maruyama. Really beautiful video:


Water Sculpture from Shinichi Maruyama on Vimeo.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen