Screw Work Let’s Play

 

I first got to know John Williams just over a year ago when he asked me to give a talk on our book Brand You at Scanners’ Night – a gathering for those who prefer a varied professional life. Shortly afterwards he won a publishing deal with Pearson and spent the summer of 2009 writing Screw Work Let’s Play.

The book’s intellectual foundations are much stronger than John himself suggests. On page 7 he says that “Your aim is to get into ‘flow’ as serial entrepreneur Roger Hamilton calls it.” Roger may well do so, but  Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience was the title of a book published by the Hungarian psychologist  Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1991.

In an interview with Wired magazine in 1996, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”  Having been the head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, he is now at Claremont Graduate University in California.

I mention this because Screw Work Let’s Play is essentially all about flow. Step One: you play until you find out what you love to do. Step Two: you find a way of using the activities you enjoy most to solve someone else’s problem. Result: you do what you love and get paid for it. John takes you through the process in ten chapters, which include exercises and interviews with people who have made a career out of doing what they love.  He also exposes ‘the 21 myths of work’.

John is a very clever marketer. Within the publishing business, the personal development category is often regarded as overserved if not saturated. Nevertheless, he has succeeded in writing and launching a best-seller that grabs people’s attention and ‘speaks to their pain’, i.e. the fact that so many of them hate their jobs. He has also used social media to the full in promoting it, alongside a public relations campaign orchestrated by Pearson. As a result, its Amazon ranking has remained very high since the launch on June 10 and the first (large) print run has nearly sold out.

If you are dissatisfied with your work, I highly recommend this book. If you love your work, I recommend it equally highly.  It will help you succeed on a far bigger scale.

Screw Work Let’s Play – How to do what you love and get paid for it: http://screwworkletsplay.com