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I just finished uploading 100 documents to a platform and assigning them to someone for review. A very operational task. It had to be done. It's definitely not something I enjoyed doing. While I was doing this task, I was reminded of some self-help and productivity books I've read in the past. Many of them stress the important of 'doing what you are good at', 'following your passions', 'doing what you find important', etc. You should stop doing all things that don't fit into these categories. Of course this advice is important and useful. There are many people out there that have never really thought about these things and do their work because they happen to do that work. This can easily lead to stressful situations or even a burn-out. On the other hand, is this advice realistic? If I would follow this advice I wouldn't have done the upload work today. I would have just left it there for someone else to do. As if there is someone out th...

In the business book category there are two types of books. On the one hand you have books that serve a relatively easy solution to a problem everybody knows is way more complex than the book tells us. Usually the author doesn’t have actual experience with the topic he/she is writing about. The book is largely based on interviews and other books. The author pulls these together and provides the reader with an overarching model or list of learnings the reader can apply. I’m not saying this approach is wrong. I regularly read these kind of books and enjoy doing so. But when I’m done I’m usually left with the feeling that the inspiring story is far away from the real complexity I have to deal with. On the other hand there are books which are clearly written by authors who have been or still are there. They clearly know what they are writing about, don’t provide easy answers or simple 1-2-3 steps to success approaches. These books try to help in your real situation and provide loads...