Discussion About Various ‘The Skinny On’ Books

I was recently provided with multiple books from the series I have discussed in previous posts known as “the skinny on”.  These books are small books around 200 pages which are full of cartoons and quotes and messages on concepts.  I have read through a few of the ones I have been provided with, and am looking forward to discussing material in them here.  I continue to enjoy these books.  They are all written by Jim Randel, an attorney and entrepreneur who has studied topics of financial literacy and personal achievement for thirty years.

The Skinny On: Time Management – And Other Life Challenges

One of them is about the topic of time management.  It is called “the skinny on: time management and other life challenges“.  Why is time management important?  Some people let their time slip away and some are disappointed if ten minutes of it goes to something that doesn’t further their cause.  Time management and prioritization separates those two.  When you think about time management, you start to value everything you do more.  It gets you thinking about what is worth your time and what is not.  Not everything can be worth your time.

On a separate note from what is in the book, I would mention that people make time for what they care about.  All the excuses people make are an indirect message about what matters to them.  When someone cancels on you to do something else that they “have” to do, know that no one has to do anything, and they are making a decision about what is more important to them.

In one part of this book, there is a part where the author a weekly time usage of his daughter, and it is used to assess whether she has enough time in her schedule to complete her goal of getting a 3.5 GPA for that quarter.  We can do the same for our weekly hourly usage.  The author finds out that he used something like 15% of his waking time watching sports.  This is the kind of information we can also figure out by cataloging  our usage of hours over a week.  You might find that you spend 10% of your waking time doing something you thought you used 1% of your waking time on, and that realization quickly results in you changing your routine.

One other tidbit I want to add from a section about procrastination in this book is about breaking big projects up into manageable pieces.  It really does make you able to start a project that you have left undone.  You write one small thing you can do for it, and then you realize that you can continue the project just fine, and it is not such a big deal(although the whole project is).

The Skinny On: Networking – Maximizing The Power Of Numbers

This book discusses a topic that is always of interest to me.  Networking is an item that should always be in our minds.  Those who always have it in the back of their mind are always meeting new people and connecting them to others.  Those who don’t keep this concept in the back of their minds have no idea about how many connections they are not making and building upon.

One section of this book says “Networking is about accessing people who can help you.  Everyone you have ever met can potentially help you.”  I have seen this to be the case in many ways.  Someone you meet might not be the person you need for financial information, but they might turn out to be the best person to help you regarding nutritional habits.  When I realized that most people have something valuable to you to provide, I realized that it didn’t make sense to put them down for their lack of knowledge in some single category.  Putting others down is not usually beneficial anyway, but that is a separate point.

Another section of this book contains discussion about an example where the author made a large chunk of profit through a connection he made between one businessperson and a wealthy individual.  His one hour of connecting them was very profitable, and it would not have worked had he backed down in the networking sense.  A message to take away from this is to not back away or down from others, as they may be wanting us to set them straight or connect them with someone or do a deal with them.  Backing away from people leads to them backing away from us, and then the linkage does not exist.  Who you know and what you know are both important, and you can’t have a substantial level of those “who you know” unless you approach and contact them.

The Skinny On: The Art Of Persuasion – How To Move Minds

The last The Skinny On book I shall discuss here is about persuasion.  This is a topic that many people love to think about and ponder regarding how they can possess more of it.  The movie Inception is partially so popular because many viewers can see themselves wanting to plant an idea in someone else’s head without them knowing about it.  There are other reasons for the movie’s popularity, but I am sure a substantial amount of viewers thought about this.

In this book, Mr. Randel hits on many topics related to persuasion that I was glad to see.  In one part, he discusses how related persuasion and manipulation are, and says that there is a fine line between them.  He then talks about how Machiavelli said rulers need to use manipulation and duplicity to achieve and maintain power.  While Machiavelli’s thoughts may have been valid and continue to be valid in some respects, the author does bring up that today’s world is much more connected through word-of-mouth and other speedy communication platforms, so a manipulation that is made public is soon heard of by multitudes of people, and the person is no longer trusted the same way again.

One very important point he brings up here is that preparation time is a huge factor in being persuasive.  This makes complete sense to me.  When you want to persuade someone of something, directly saying your thoughts is not so full of impact, as they could probably have those thoughts as well.  What you need to do is to package together layers of evidence until your message becomes so compelling that the person would have a hard time disagreeing.  This takes preparation because the layers and evidence is not readily produced by our brains.  We have to think through some of the refutations, and why they are not soundly-based.  It is after this process that we have a strong message.

A last tidbit from one of the rules in this book is that persuasion is about integrity.  When you are a person of integrity, it is not a struggle at all to persuade people of one item or another, because they know you have a reputation that your sayings are based on, and to give up that reputation would be to give up so much of who you are.  People see some folks as being awkwardly capable at convincing others of one concept or another, but you have to also think about the integrity a person has built up.  It can take a long time, or many interactions, before someone feels that you have this integrity, but once you do, you don’t have to struggle so much to be convincing.

Ending Notes

I appreciate the opportunity to have been provided with these creations, along with others, to read and discuss and learn from.  Some of the other “the skinny on” books I have been provided with this opportunity are about direct sales, real estate investing, the housing crisis, and credit cards.  Out of these four, the one on direct sales probably most applies to something I look to do, so I have also read through that.  I enjoy the books in this series as they are quick to read, enjoyable due to their wording and many comics/pictures, and there are also relevant messages about how the real world works.  Jim Randel is a solid individual and his breadth of works shows it.

Tagged as: Jim Randel, networking, persuasion, The Skinny On, Time, time management