Oct 7, 2009
Bossy Wants To Tell You All About This Book She’s Not Reading
So. Last week Bossy’s mom sends Bossy an email about how she was on this website and while there, she read a post about a recommended book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which she immediately ordered, because the whole Bossy family is sort of all about her and everything she says.
So. Fast forward to Bossy and her husband taking a walk, and Bossy mentions this book and her plans to read it when her mother was finished.
So. Fast forward some more, to a time when Bossy will stop using the word so to begin every sentence. And there you will find Bossy, sitting at her desk which is dressed as a dining room table, when suddenly Bossy’s husband appears with a book he now slams down in front of Bossy. And it’s, yeah, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
“Someone lent this to me a while ago,” Bossy’s husband said. Apparently so much a while ago that he didn’t even remember having it, and he couldn’t even remember who that person was or why the book was lent.
Also? He never even read the book, which was situated on a book shelf in purgatory the Bossy Family Basement — and all Bossy can think is: every one of the scenarios that led to Bossy’s union with this book are featured in that very famous other book: The 7 Habits of Highly Dysfunctional People.
So Bossy decided to take The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to bed with her the other night, which was actually not a night at all but rather a day, and yes, Bossy is well aware that napping is also nowhere to be found in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
So Bossy took the book to bed with her and here’s what she learned: nothing because she fell asleep.
But then later that night, after she finished watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and after catching the tale end of Ghost Town, and after she watched the middle part of Juno when the girl first meets the couple, and after the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm — and has Bossy mentioned that her television provider gave the Bossy family three months of free HBO and sister mercy how any of you with HBO manage to move away from your TV screens is a miracle which Bossy assumes is addressed in a chapter all its own in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — but anyway, after watching all of that, Bossy once again propped herself in front of the book and here’s what she learned:
Something about how the guy who wrote the book was stressing out about his failure of a kid, and although he and his wife were attempting to help their kid become a more normal kid, they were only making the kid’s weirdness worse.
And something about how, at the same time, this author was researching success and how it was interpreted over the decades — how back in the early stages of this country success was defined as character-based, but since then we’ve slipped into defining success as personality-based and don’t begin to ask Bossy to explain the difference because she only made it to page 18 before falling asleep.
Also, the book begins on page 15. But stay tuned.
Um, yeah never read that book. Let me know how it goes. I’m counting on you Bossy! Read it and tells us all about it because if one of those fab habits is getting other people to do your shit for you, then I am 1/7 there baby!
Bossy, I have that book too which also sits in our basement. I thought it was so boring and I thought it was just me. Obviously I am not a highly effective person, nor are you. But at least we’re well rested !!!!!
I read that book several years ago…Bossy better hurry up and read it because Stephen R. Covey has added an 8th habit. He even wrote a book about it.
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
Since Brian died, I CANNOT FINISH and can BARELY START a damn book. Which is frustrating on account of I like to read and all.
And the problem is, MANY well-intentioned people keep giving me or recommending to me – BOOKS! Thus accelerating my downward spiral.
The current pile of books I am not reading on my nightstand:
Wild at Heart
90 minutes in Heaven
The Shack
1-2-3 Magic – Effective Discipline for raising children ages 2-12
Cat’s Eye
Journeying through Grief.
Did I mention that when I am not grieving I really hate non-fiction. I just can’t get into it.
KEEP BELIEVING
The hell with the book. Get through True Blood while you’ve got HBO. You’ll have a new Eric-vampire-husband in a heartbeat.
Of course, you must share him w/me!
The 5th sign of the Apocalypse is that book showing up in your radius. The only good thing it is for is the cure of insomnia – so sweet dreams Bossy!
And I agree with Debbie @ #5. Check out “True Blood” (I had to get the DVDs from the library) get your Eric husband and report back on THAT!
I started reading that book too. Guess my not finishing it is why i am so darned ineffective now.
reading a boring book would be… ineffective?
Eric the vampire, swooon! Layfette is so fun when he feeling good.
I’m stealing your purgatory line. My basement is where stuff goes to be forgotten about too. My husband “helpfully” moves stuff down there when company is coming & it never comes back.
Our old MA house used to be The Bermuda Triangle….stuff flew in, never to be seen again.
Napping? Makes me HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE when I have to go to work at 9PM to make the first wave of holiday product meld with the Autumn product before the store opens tomorrow morning.
ha! my supervisor has that book on the bottom shelf in his office…not so effective, either…
Forget the damn book – your bed looks awesome! I’d love to curl up there and read. (And by “read” I mean, watch a marathon of Top Chef or something.)
I saw this book on my run last week laying forlorn and forgotten by the side of the street. I actually stopped and laughed at the irony, and then continued on my run knowing that I’m not effective, so what’s the point?
They hold “7 Habits” workshops where I work. But I have never gone to one because hello? Effective people don’t take half a day away from their work to attend ridiculous workshops! Time out to read Bossy, however, is a different matter entirely.
I had a detestable boyfriend once who was totally into all those quick-parable/self improvement business books. Gah. I renamed the ’self-help’ genre the ’self-loathing’ genre. (Bitter, table of 1.)
And besides, everyone knows the path to improvement can be had in 10 easy steps. Any deviation from that magic number is highly suspicious.
Was this post about the book you’re reading/not reading? Because it SHOULD be about True Blood, and how you are going to watch season 1 by this weekend and season 2 by the next. Bossy, let me introduce you to your nordic vampire husband named Eric. SWOON!
or Mad Men on AMC …
Drug/HBO dealers all know this effective habit: the first hit is free. Then you’re hooked. The poverty party does not want to hear what happens 3 months from now.
BTW, why’d you only watch the middle part of Juno?
PS: Do not start to not read “How to make friends and influence people.” Personally, I think you wrote it and Dale Carnegie is just your pen name.
LIzzy that would have been a great picture for fail blog!
My son’s elementary school starts teaching the “Covey 7 Habits” in Kindergarten. It’s rather frustrating to have a 6 year old argue with that you are not thinking “win-win” or “beginning with the end in mind”…..
Don’t read that snooze brigade bullshiz! It will put you in the middle of a coma festival! Instead read Kathy Griffin’s memoir! Weee!
I don’t like it already.
No napping? NO NAPPING?! I’d rather not be a highly effective person, no, correct that, I KNOW I’m not a highly effective person. We can’t all be effective so I choose to be a part of the daily napping club.
I read that Recommended (mandatory) Reading For Management book so I have not so fond feelings about Mister Covey.
Who cares? I mean really.
Too much nonsense, wake up!
Bossy, you are already quite effective! I’m going thru a tough time with family issues, and for a few minutes every day you effectively put a smile on my face and lossen the tension in my neck. Thank you- for being you and for your blog!
I had to sit through the actual CLASS (3 days!) by the same name–on the Navy base where I work. Those are three days of my life I’ll never get back, and the most I remember about it is that we each got a beautiful, leather day planner out of the deal. Beyond that? I don’t remember A THING.
I am going to write a book and call it The 6 Habbits of Highly effective people and since people only have to read 6 in stead of 7 they may be more effective.
Me, too! I’m not reading that book either! LOL
I have that book. I took it on a cruise vacation once. You know…because it’s relaxing reading and all. Actually, now that I think about it, it DID put me to sleep.
Oh, please. Life is way too short to read gimmicky self-help books with numbers in the title. I will read Stephen Covey when Pete Dexter, Nick Hornby, Cormac McCarthy, Susan Orlean, Joan Didion, Charles Frazier, Annie Proulx, Graham Greene, Christopher Buckley, Grace Paley and the New Yorker are all out of print.
William doesn’t think Bossy is using the term “sister mercy” enough lately.
Bossy,
That “seven habits” book is so 15 years ago. When I last worked (15 years ago) we had a 4 day retreat about it. It was all about keeping your life in balance as we spent 4 days away from our families which was so 4 days more than you should have spent based on the book. Stephen Covey SCHMOVEY.
confession…I put the book down too. Ho Hum
My husband is trying right now to get through that book. He reads a few pages at a time, then puts it down, but he keeps coming back to it. I think I had a boss who made me try to read it, like, 15 years ago. But I don’t think I finished it. If I had, I might be way more effective than I apparently am now.
This guy (the author) is talking to my third-grader in assembly today. There’s another book about being a highly effective kid, or highly successful, or something, maybe just high. Anyway, for some reason I thought his name was Sean Covey, but I see here it is Stephen (unless the weird son is the one who wrote this other book and is the one talking to the kids). Now I have to go check the flyer and see what the guy’s name is and now I am most curious to ask my daughter how many kids fell asleep during assembly.