After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the [...]
I’m always trying to cut through advertising, to work out if something is really going to be useful to me. I wanted to present an insight into how I do that based on a recent book release. I know a lot of parents think that the answer to their problems is in something that they need to pay for , I don’t believe that’s true (unless it’s medical in nature) but the advertisers want us to believe it.
Whale Done Parenting: How to Make Parenting a Positive Experience for You and Your Kids
It was written by the team behind Whale Done! : The Power of Positive Relationships
I’ve always been aware of the fact that many self help books have something in common: they can be designed to generate lots of money for very little author effort. That’s particularly true for management books and parenting books. There are nearly 120,000 parenting books on Amazon and almost a million on management. The sheer volume tells you how easy it is to pump out the content and you can expect that a certain amount of recycling is needed to keep those topics alive.
As well as the probable recycling of content this looks to also be recycling the concept. The Whale in the title is supposed to indicate the fact that if positive reinforcement (amongst other related techniques) can get killer whales kissing their trainers they can be used to get (insert anyone here) doing what you want. In Whale Done it was staff, in Whale Done Parenting it’s kids.
So if we add that up, we have a book which appears to be recycling both content and concept, describing the fact that positive reinforcement, with an analogy to animal training, works well as a training tool for children.
Strike one for me is that I personally find the idea that animal training is analogous to parenting pretty offensive. That might not be the idea behind the book but it’s the idea behind the title and that puts me off.
Strike two is that this feels designed to sell, as opposed to designed to help. Catchy title, low price point, lots of mention about how the authors are previous best sellers. They’re using authority, legitimacy, value and reputation to influence my buying habits. I don’t blame them but I can see right through it. Although that would be the publishers not the authors.
Strike three is that even though it’s cheap it feels like a cheaper book to write. I have to question the value of it. Take away the analogy and how many original ideas are presented in the book? Am I getting much for my 11USD? I’m not convinced.
And they’re out. For me at least.
That’s basically how I try to cut through the endless parenting noise on the book shelves: do I like the concept? is there spin involved or is it of genuine value? how much effort went into creating it?
To be fair to the authors, and I do want to be fair because this is a review of the marketing and the concept, not the writing, parents who lack an understanding of the value of positive reinforcement would probably find this to be as good a book as any. For managers who need the same check out the other two books I mentioned. But for me it’s a no thanks.
Obviously I decided not to buy Whale Done Parenting, but if I ever get given it I promise to write a review as a balance to this article, it would be interesting to see if I’m right.
After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the right lifestyle choices for the first time, I needed help. So I followed somebody else’s process.
The Magic Lamp: Goal Setting for People Who Hate Setting Goals
Keith Ellis hasn’t written much, mostly just the book I’m recommending and a cyber thriller which I haven’t read, but what he wrote on goal setting I think is brilliant. It’s only got 19 reviews on Amazon, mostly positive, but it’s ranked around the 17,800 mark in terms of Amazon sales which is quite a healthy ranking.
What it’s got going for it is accessibility, simplicity and what you could call memorability. In other words it’s the kind of book you can read easily, follow easily and remember easily. For a self help book it’s much more likely to work for you than a more complex or over engineered manual.
The book describes a simple 4 step process to setting goals. The first step, listing and prioritising the goals, was a real help to me. I’m the kind of person who fails in goal setting simply because I want to do too much; not because I’m unmotivated but because I’m too motivated in an unfocussed way. Following Keith’s thinking on how to change this really made me realise the relative importance of my various intents. The second step is to JFDI, to actually get on with it, which helped me break my inertia. The third step is about managing and monitoring your progress and the final step is to just keep going, a section in which Keith Ellis helps you to predict and prevent all the many things that can derail you from your goals.
The book does have it’s weak points, certainly in the marketing spin in the book. It does not contain a secret and there’s nothing about this book specific to people who hate setting goals, other than the fact that it’s probably the simplest approach you can read. You’d have to want to set goals before buying it anyway.
Right now this is the only goal setting book I recommend. I’ve read alot of snake oil on this topic and this isn’t that. Many of my friends and family have bought this book on my recommendation and there is a well thumbed copy of it right beside my bed.
