Principles of Applied Stupidity

Principles of Applied Stupidity
Author: Justin Locke
Publisher: Justin Locke
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2008-04-01
Genre: Conduct of life
ISBN: 9780615207926

We live in a society where all things smart and intelligent are good, and anything that is dumb or stupid is bad. But wait a minute. You probably know at least one brilliant person who is a miserable failure. Worse, you probably know at least one blithering idiot who has risen quickly and easily to the heights of wealth and power, and all too often, they are your boss or your biggest client. What is wrong with this picture? Strange though it may seem, intelligence is not all that it is cracked up to be. And stupidity, while much maligned, is often a highly effective method of achieving success. If you constantly find yourself in situations where you are smarter than everyone else, and yet you are doing all the work while the C students are sitting around making all the money and having all the fun, this book is for you. In this groundbreaking new book, Justin Locke (author of "Real Men Don't Rehearse" and the #1 expert in the world on stupidity) shows you how to get in touch with your inner idiot and access the infinite power of ignorance and non-thought to address a wide range of problems and challenges, including management, leadership, communications, relationships, creativity, and more!

Best Practices Are Stupid

Best Practices Are Stupid
Author: Stephen M. Shapiro
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2011-09-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1101544465

What if almost everything you know about creating a culture of innovation is wrong? What if the way you are measuring innovation is choking it? What if your market research is asking all of the wrong questions? It's time to innovate the way you innovate. Stephen Shapiro is one of America's foremost innovation advisrrs, whose methods have helped organizations like Staples, GE, Telefónica, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and USAA. He teaches his clients that innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition. Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential. Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers. Don't think outside the box; find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output. Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results. Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

The Purity Principle

The Purity Principle
Author: Randy Alcorn
Publisher: Multnomah
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2009-02-19
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0307564363

For thirty years Randy Alcorn has been encouraging people-young and old-to pursue the rewards of sexual purity. Too often we settle for a compromised Christianity that's just a baptized version of the world's sad existence, rather than the abundant life to which God calls us. This book deals with - raising children to embrace sexual purity - providing an example of purity in the home - protecting purity in dating (at any age) - and maintaining purity in marriage. Biblical, practical, and concise, The Purity Principle is a one-stop handbook for individuals, families and churches. Some people have given up on purity. Some have never tried. Bestselling author Randy Alcorn shows us why, in this culture of impurity, the stakes are so high—and what we can do to experience the freedom of purity. Impurity will always destroy us; purity always leads to higher pleasures! Choose wisely. Let the insights of this amazing book—written for old and young, married and single—help you gain your footing on the path to truly lasting joy.

The Stupidity Paradox

The Stupidity Paradox
Author: Mats Alvesson
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2016-06-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1782832025

Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox. The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge. The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.

The Great Mental Models, Volume 1

The Great Mental Models, Volume 1
Author: Shane Parrish
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0593719972

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules
Author: David Graeber
Publisher: Melville House
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1612193757

From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence? To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice…though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy. Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible. An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.

The Road Less Stupid

The Road Less Stupid
Author: Keith J. Cunningham
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9780984659265

Stupidity from A to Z

Stupidity from A to Z
Author: E. Reltso
Publisher: E. Reltso
Total Pages: 20
Release: 2015-05-23
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1310644616

Camera: A handy device useful for blackmailing family members; Makeup: Goopy substances applied by women to their faces in order to hide their true appearance; Diet: A method of self-punishment; Insect: Any creeping life form that tends to freak-out humans on sight; National Debt: A sum so great it cannot be fathomed; Opinions: Those nasty notions of stupidity possessed by everyone else but us; Paper Cut: The most painful of all maladies; Politician: Someone skilled in pretending concern for his fellow beings while secretly wanting to gain power over them. These and other bizarre definitions are found in this quasi dictionary of nonsense.