Screw Work – Let’s Play
John Williams
Reviewed by Simon Jones
Morrissey once sang “The music you constantly play says nothing to me about my life” and my first impression of this book was that the tone and style of it said nothing to me.
In fact, half way through the first chapter, with its breathless, evangelical tone and its jargon of “playcheques”, “getting in flow”, and phrases like “entrepreneurship is the new rock’n’roll” my eyes were starting to glaze and I began to wonder how I’d get through the next 200 pages.
However, I’m glad that I did, because once you get past the style and into the substance, the author has a lot of very useful, sensible and practical advice for those who are looking for a new work direction. His basic argument is that people are more motivated to do things they enjoy; that doing some of these things – no matter how “wacky” or unusual they seem – can create a business opportunity; and that you can, by using some of the ideas here, make this successful.
The book is split into two distinct parts – helping you decide what you would really like to do (and importantly realising that this could be more than one thing – what the author calls being a “scanner”) and in overcoming the myths that stop people from setting up on their own.
Along the way, there are plenty of examples of people who turned their ideas and interests into successful businesses – not only household names like Innocent Drinks and the Eden Project but less well known yet successful companies like “Beyond Chocolate”.
I particularly enjoyed the story of the founders of Innocent Drinks, who ran a stall at a local music festival making fruit smoothies and placed a sign on it saying “Should we give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” with a Yes bucket and a No Bucket. At the end of the day, when the Yes bucket was full, they knew they had a winner.
Where the book scores particularly highly is in the chapters on how to use the internet and social media to market your business and raise your profile (even if the author does refer to it as “pimping your product” –yuck). There are plenty of useful tips on how to use Twitter, blogging, Facebook etc to create “buzz” around your product, and just as valuable how easy this can be, even if you are not that internet-savvy.
It’s a real pity about the style, as this would be an incredibly useful book for anyone who is leaving the public sector currently and looking around for something to do. I suspect however that the language will put off many who might gain something from it.
The book is also backed up with a website where you can “unlock exclusive extras”. And I have to commend the author – who at one point talks about using your “play” to create social benefits as well as wealth – because a percentage of the profits of the book go the War Child charity.
One final thought struck me while I was reading the book. While the author –correctly – suggests that anyone can do this, not everyone can. We will still need people doing the boring mundane jobs like collecting the bins, working in call centres, building things on a production line, administering forms etc, since the economy clearly wouldn’t survive if we all sold gourmet chocolates or created breathable cocktails. It’s not the scope of this book to address this issue but would make an interesting topic for someone to write on!
The reviewer this time was Simon Jones
