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Synopsis
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Crisis is sometimes a gift. I learned this lesson the hard way eight years ago.
After nearly two decades of merciless pressure in my business and personal life,
I was a financial, physical, and emotional wreck.
But in an unexpected moment of insight, the clutter, complexity, and unpredictability
of my life dissolved. It was a simple thing, really, but my perception of life was
altered permanently. For once, I saw with clarity.
I applied this new vision, this new way of thinking, to my near-bankrupt business,
to my waste of a physical body, and to my chaotic, lonely personal life. The mechanics
of it were simple: One at a time, I isolated problematic systems from the complexity
of sights, sounds, and events that composed my business, my body, and my personal
relationships. Then I removed those isolated systems for inspection, repaired them,
and reinserted them into the mix.
It took time and work but the results have been dramatic. Former 100-hour workweeks
are now two-hour workweeks. My income is ten times as much as before. My physical
health is robust, and I met and married the woman of my dreams.
Work the System describes the simple mechanics of repairing systems one
by one in order to produce an extra-ordinarily efficient business, body, or relationship.
With no esoteric theories, mystical suppositions or new-age/trendy presumptions,
the principles are clear and understandable. It’s simple mechanics.
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Quotes
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"...OK, I’ll say it. I have had it up to HERE with empowering, value-adding, TQM’ing,
paradigm-shifting, team-building, synergizing, reinventing, quality circling, de-layering,
in-sourcing, out-sourcing, diversity-training and the latest craze of "fun
in the workplace." The Work the System method is management based on common sense
and built on the mechanics of how the world actually works, not how we think it
should work. You’ll find arguments for concise documentation of protocol, treating
employees like adults, drawing black and white lines, working hard, eliminating
waste and intensely focusing on efficiency. No hocus pocus. No mysticism. Is the
method applicable to management of a personal life, one’s health, and relationships?
Yes, because the foundation of it is based on the simple mechanics of how everything,
everywhere works."
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"...Without question, blue blood, old-school psychologists who see endless dour
complexity in the human condition will deride the nearly absurd simplicity of the
Work the System message. Things are more complicated than that, they’ll
say. I thank them in advance for their oblique compliment. This book is a simple
and dispassionate, drop-the-load-dispatch that describes lives as they really are:
cause-and-effect mechanisms that can easily become logical, predictable, and satisfying."
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"...Late that night, I looked at my entire life. I took a vantage point outside-and-slightly-above
it. I saw that my fire-killing stance had been reactionary and defensive — and fundamentally
wrong."
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"...Each system, once seen and then examined separately, was easy to understand
— the antithesis of complexity and chaos. And now that I could see clearly, what
would happen if I repaired all of them, one by one? What would be the end-result
of that? "
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"...It is too bad that people finger-point because it’s not just a waste of time.
It’s a diversion from what they really need to do to get what they want. "
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