Free! Love your work, love your life

This book is not short on energy – in fact it’s brimming with it. Chriz Barez-Brown who once worked at the innovation agency ?What If! regards himself as unemployable so consults and inspires organisations all over the world. The book comes from coaching territory so the focus is on changing your attitudes and your behaviour and therefore your context at work. 

When in reimagining and advice mode Barez-Brown is in winning form – the idea of going for an interview once a month just to keep your hand in and to keep your proposition fresh is laugh out loud funny, though I doubt that recruitment consultants will be as amused as I was. And the advice is far reaching – getting enough sleep, eating the right things, how to manage your boss (don’t leave management to them), don’t waste time doing boring work.  

I was pleasantly surprised to find references to asceticism and even fasting. I hadn’t expected that. 

The section in the book which worked least well for me was the theoretical underpinning which came out as a kind of westernised pop Buddhism. 

The citations at this point included Mother Theresa, Teilhard de Chardin, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle. With the best will in the world these people aren’t coming from the same place when they talk about global consciousness and what it is, so why force it?  

If I am countering my prehistoric brain because it isn’t being helpful then accepting myself (including my prehistoric brain?) may not help.

So good on practicalities but got me argumentative on the theory. It's only 200 pages long, and that suits me.

Why bang on when people’s time is so limited? Workplaces are pretty desperate places these days despite the window dressing. This book has some really practical suggestions for challenging that.

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