Monday, December 21, 2009

10-10-10

Getting away from the mundane of life and walking into the library is a refreshing and rejuvenating exercise. Incidently my eye fell upon a book titled "10-10-10", with 14 day loan and nor renewal labeled with red on it.  My curiosity pricked me. what book is it the that you can not renew after 14 days. It must be something good that everyone read, so library, doest allow everyone to keep longer than 2 weeks  to make it available and accessible when readers demand is soaring.

The book by Suzy Welch is about decision making, and it is the right book at the right time for me. In my multidemensional role as a father, uncle and a small time manager, requires me to make daily decisions that are critical and have far reaching consequences in my own life and for others. With the help of this book, I feel I will be positioned at a vintage point when making decisions. 

Actually I could have read the book in two days, but it took me longer than expected. I should give a pat on myself for showing the audacity of gobbling up the book in two days.

The author claims she has conceptualized the 10-10-10, and she explained the usefulness and efficiency and relevance of its application to decision making of any issues, by it family, frienship, work etc. The first part of the book is pretty fast paced, with interesting real life incidents and anecdotes, that illustrate her contention. What is interesting is the author deconstruct any complicated ideas and personal dilemna, with a simple question.And then she goes to anaylize it on the parameters of 10-10-10. This is nothing news, basically every sensible human beings, do weigh the cons and pros of their actions in the long run.   The author does not adovcate any particular approach with definite answer. Yet the message is clear and loud, that applying 10-10-10 will make decisions easier and more resonable. It is a simple question, with profound insights into our life's values. It is when anyone who is in a dilemma, the right to ask what will be the consequence of today's decision in 10 minutes, in months and in 10 years. This approach is said to have helped many people in reaching to sound decisions. The book empowered me new knowledge, and the information  sound theoritical but can be implemented with certain mental actions.

 I was explaining this to a friend, and the friend bluntly responded in bewilderment: " who knows what happens in 10 months and 10 years. it is hard to tell the future", I was stunned by this revelation, there is reasons to what she retorted. But maybe we can not tell 100% of what is going to happen, we can still assume and plan the future in a most pragmatic ways as much as possible. The book is about a "steady discipline that can help us replace chaos with consistency, confusion with clarity, and perhaps best of all, guilt with not-guilt".

The author went to say, she wished to have a magic wand, to teach her kids everything she knows with a little tap of the magic wand on the forehead, so they chould skip all the hard parts. But she knows it wouldnt work. As The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once observed," Suffering is the sole of origion of consciousness". and Suzy the author of the book says "Learning how to live from experience is part of the human condition".

Over all, this book is about how to make good decisions. In our life it is impossible that we can escape the usual pain, blood, sweat, tears that are inherent to human growth. But learning to make the right decision will ease lots of the difficulties and daunting tasks.

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