How to Be Useful; A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work by Megan Hustad

This is an enlightening, entertaining, and useful book. Hustad takes her readers from The American Chesterfield (published in 1860) to "The Apprentice," one chapter at a time. Don't pass over the narrative portions, but there are handy bullet-point summaries at the end of each chapter in which Hustad takes the important content from the book(s) discussed and gives her readers some straightforward do's and dont's.

Particularly useful is the chapter Checking Yourself at the Door, in which Hustad takes on the topic of clothing, going to the great Hollywood costumer Edith Head, who said some nifty stuff, like "There must be something you want more than anything else. Is it something that is possible for you to get? If not, get it off mind and start again!" Clearly, this advice from a multiple Oscar-winning designer is useful in areas of life other than clothing and even career.

One of my favorite pearls from Hustad is "Define your current employment as Makng Your Boss Look Good while gathering up whatever wisdom you can in the meantime...." In the chapter on why you should ignore anything written in the period known as "The 70's" (with the notable exception of John Molloy and I agree with her about that), she says:

Once you start seeing your day as a series of petty, predictable interpersonal games, people become pawns - chumps whose hopes and fears do not need to be taken seriously. Being so quick to categorize gets you Dilbert coffee-mug wisdom on one end of the spectrum, Sudanese warlord wisdom on the other. Neither is appropriate for the office.

Now, I happen to have a Dilbert mug that I adore and enjoy using for my morning cuppa. But it would never grace a work space assigned to me but owned by someone who was paying me for my time.

The chapter Self-Deprecation does an excellent job of teaching the difference between this essential art (think of it as a kind of psychological akido) and the completely non-productive mistake of self-disparaging (which is more like slipping on a banana peel). This is a skill that has to be practiced, and it will make or break you, because it makes you seem dreadfully humble about things that are actually enormous achievements.

Example, and this is not from the book, I was speaking recently with a student at Local Major University who told me her pre-set script for the inevitable interview question "Tell me about your biggest failure" recounts how she on the fly re-worked her program for educating African school children about HIV/AIDS after she was on the ground in Kenya and realized her cultural assumptions about how the plan would work were all wrong, pulled a Hail Mary out of the hat and the project ended up being an enormous success. This young woman has a bright future ahead of her, and maybe she doesn't need How to Be Useful, but most of the rest of us probably do.

I strongly suggest that, unless you are deliriously happy with your current career-path, are vested and making at least six figures (not including those to the right of the decimal), forget that the title suggests itself to be for newbies and read this book. There's not a single chapter in this book that doesn't contain useful information to anyone who wants to work in any field.

Here' a link to the book's website: howtobeuseful.com. Have fun.