I recently travelled on an aeroplane to the Boxing Day cricket match in Melbourne. Before the flight home I was killing some time in the Borders in the terminal, when a book caught my eye. It’s name? Hacking Work, by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein.
After reading the back cover, I bought the book immediately. Who wouldn’t want to work smarter and get more done with less effort? It’s me in a nutshell. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed.
For most non-fiction books, the back cover is a very rough summation of the goal of the book, along with a few of the more interesting little titbits. For this book however, the blurb is the entire contents of the book. The other 200 odd pages are just fluff.
Section 1 of the book tells the reader that they are special, are born to “hack” work, and that managers will get in the way of everything.
Section 2 of the book tells the reader that they are special, are born to “hack” work, and that managers will get in the way of everything.
Section 3 of the book tells the reader that they are special, are born to “hack” work, and that managers will get in the way of everything.
Section 4 of the book tells the reader that they are special, are born to “hack” work, and that their employees will try to hack work too.
Unfortunately, nowhere in this book are there actual instructions for any methods of actually getting more done in less time. There are occasional snippets detailing what people have done before, usually followed by “we don’t recommend actually doing this”.
I personally consider myself somewhat of a life hacker, and this is a travesty of a book about “hacking”. The severe degradation of the meaning of the word “hack” is beyond annoying, it’s almost insulting.
Zero stars. I wouldn’t read it if it was free.