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Work The System: The Simple Mechanics Of Making More And Working Less (2009)

by Sam Carpenter(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1929774877 (ISBN13: 9781929774876)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Greenleaf Book Group Press

review 1: I really hated this book, and every bone in my body is telling me to give it one-star. I've decided to give it two stars, and I'll explain why later.This book is about an epiphany the author had that everything in the world is a system. He says, once you "get it," your whole life will transform, and you'll never look at things the same way again. You'll start seeing systems everywhere you go. His way of making the readers "get it" is to keep repeating the premise in different ways, using anecdotes from his life. There's only so many ways you can say that everything in the world is a system, and it feels like this book exhausted them. Half the book is so repetitive that I wanted to throw it at the wall. The second half is about how he applied it to his business and personal... more life, followed by a sales pitch for his seminars. The book is also poorly written, and his anecdotes make him sound like an anal-retentive jerk.All he really means by everything in the world being a system is what every engineer knows about problem-solving: isolate the problem and make incremental refinements to it until it performs optimally; then document your changes to prevent duplication of effort; fix problems pro-actively and focus on maintenance rather than fixing bugs. This is like problem-solving 101. There's no epiphany here. This is what I hate about the business self-help genre: they try to bottle common sense and cliché wisdom and sell it to business people who prefer to receive their wisdom from other business people.But after reading it, I realized there is an element of epiphany here: problem-solving strategies can be applied to everything, not just engineering problems. They can be used in your daily life and business. It was an epiphany I had years ago, so this book didn't do anything for me, but I can see how it might be transformative for others. That's why it gets two-stars.The best example I have is my sleep patterns. For decades, I suffered from insomnia. I was so exhausted each day that I could barely keep my eyes open. I figured I was just a night owl. In college, I would stay up all night, squeezing in naps between classes. When I started working full time, it became a serious problem. Then I realized I could solve this problem the same way I solve my programming problems: isolate the sleeping habits that tend to exacerbate the problem, incrementally refine them, and document my discoveries. I started keeping a sleep log and building a list of rules. Currently, there are 17 rules. My insomnia is completely gone, and I feel great every day. I no longer waste time waiting for sleep, so I've also gained a couple hours of productive time every day.
review 2: Great book. What I've learned the most from it is you need to look at the world in general as a system and subsystem. In that way, you become an entrepreneur, finding ways to fix things and make them better. You'll learn how to manage people and your business overall by creating great manuals for everyone to follow. Take a step back and look at your business, identify the ROOT cause of each problem, write down the manuals, and make sure everyone implements them. This is the same principle as E-Myth Revisited if you've read it before. I gave it 4 star simply because the author kept repeating the same concept over and over again. He already mentioned he did this to make readers totally remember Work the System approach, but as someone who's already familiar with the whole concept, it's a bit too repetitive for me. Nevertheless, it's still an awesome book that will totally change the way you look about businesses and life in general. You'll be surprised of how many people own a job in a business despite being the business owner. This is what I mean. If you can't get away from it and don't know how to do that, then you have a "job" and the business owns you. I don't know about you, but a lot of people don't seem to mind with this system at all. To me, it's common sense really. What's the point of having a business if you have to work you butt off? I guess it all comes down to what your goals are and what you want in life. If you want passive income and freedom like I do, then it's no-brainer that the business has to do the work for you, not the other way around. What's important to keep in mind though is you'll need to work hard at first to set up the system and develop necessary skills, particular marketing. But once you're done, you're all set! After reading many books written by millionaires, the same theme applies throughout. Visit a middle class shop and you'll see the owner working 9-5, thinking there's nothing wrong with it. Of course, there are exceptions to that I'm not saying it's bad as long as the owner loves what he/she's doing and has already planned ahead the financial circumstance of the job. Regardless, it's always better to be able to put yourself out of the picture, just in case you suddenly can't work for any reason. Life's too unpredictable to have only you as an asset without a systematic backup. This is obviously a very rough review but you get the picture. less

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