The Fun And Easy Way To Achieve Total Stupidity

A mind-numbing salute to the greatest cultural legacy of the late 20th century, this guide serves up a smorgasbord of today's leading morons and mouthbreathers: Jerry Springer, Kathie Lee Gifford, Spice Girls, Mike Tyson, and Dan Quayle. Illustrations.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

Enhanced by a helpful resources section, an indispensable handbook for urban and suburban dwellers seeking a more rural lifestyle offers suggestions on how to select the right location, building or renovating a home, home farming, essential tools and supplies, and how to cope with such issues as schools, weather, and utilities. Original.

Describes influential business philosophies and marketing ideas from the past twenty years and examines why they did not work.

Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox. The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge. The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.

Get your way . . . the smart way. Persuasion is the art of changing the way people think, feel, and act through the use of language. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Persuasion provides strategies for the readers to master the art of persuasion in a positive manner. By using time-honored tools of communication, body language, and psychology, readers can use persuasion to do good things like convince kids to eat their veggies, women to get annual mammograms, and couples to communicate without arguing. • A practical book based on sound academics to help communications and psychology majors as well as businesspeople, salespeople, performers, teachers, and parents • Tips and tactics for writers and public speakers

What if almost everything you know about creating a culture of innovation is wrong? What if the way you are measuring innovation is choking it? What if your market research is asking all of the wrong questions? It's time to innovate the way you innovate. Stephen Shapiro is one of America's foremost innovation advisrrs, whose methods have helped organizations like Staples, GE, Telefónica, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and USAA. He teaches his clients that innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition. Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential. Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers. Don't think outside the box; find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output. Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results. Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

You're no idiot, of course. You know that life isn't like an old sitcom—when TV dads like Mike Brady or Ward Cleaver always had just the right answer for Greg, Marcia or the Beaver. But when it comes to earning the title "World's Greatest Dad," you feel like you're always going to be more like the father from Married with Children than the one from Father Knows Best. Don't retire your cardigan just yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Fatherhood answers all the questions any expecting, new, or veteran father could have on topics ranging from communication and ground rules to privileges and punishment.

Creating an Amigurumi of one's own... Amigurumi, the traditional Japanese art of knitted or crocheted stuffed figures, is a craft that is sweeping the country. In The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Amigurumi crafters will learn the basic stitches of crochet, how to make basic shapes (heads, arms, legs, torsos), stuffing techniques, and embellishments such as hair, eyes, and tassels. They will also learn how to make flowers and vegetables, and will acquire the tools to be able to let their imaginations run wild and create their own unique and adorable Amigurumi. Easy-to-follow instructions and patterns for the absolute beginner. The only book that teaches readers how to make their own Amigurumi (not just follow patterns) Includes several complete patterns Author is a foremost expert on Amigurumi