The 7 Minute Solution
The subtitle of tells it all: “Time Strategies to Prioritize, Organize & Simplify Your Life at Work & at Home.”
Allyson Lewis, the author, is a time-management expert and motivational speaker whose thesis is “Time management alone will not make your life the best it can be. You must also know how to manage the meaning in your life.”
This book grew out of Lewis’s own search for wanting more in her life than simple achievement. The satisfaction in productivity, which comes from more effective time management, goes only so far.
“To experience deep life gratification, you must work toward the priorities that matters most to you. You must know and be living into your highest values. If you are not, then it is very easy to become simply more effective at being busy.”
The 7 Minute Solution is a guidebook, including the requisite forms, tools and checklists (all downloadable) to determining your high-value activities and effecting action on them. If that’s your thing and you’re looking to do more with your life than just get things done, then this may be your book.
Parents to the End
Here’s another book where the subtitle is definitive: “How Baby Boomers Can Parent for Peace of Mind, Foster Responsibility in their Adult Children, and Keep Their Hard-Earned Money.”
Linda Herman, LMHC, a Seattle psychotherapist and parenting expert, speaks to all of us who are parenting adult children. Yes, the kids did grow up but maybe not quite the way we expected, and now we’re having to deal with that.
“Most parents look forward to the day when they no longer feel financially or emotionally responsible for their children. But, for many, that day seems hopelessly far off: there is the fear–not unjustifiable–that they’ll be provider and caretaker for their children forever.”
Herman’s thesis, which she also blogs about on Parents To The End, is that we, as parents, have a hand in our children’s dependency. When we do too much for them, when we “fix it” the same as when they were two, we not only become enablers, we disempower our kids.
Parents to the End covers the theory and the practice of parenting adults. It explains, offers advice and, yes, questionnaires and worksheets to help the process. If this sounds like you and your kids, you probably want to get Parents to the End.
Find Your Reason to Be Here
Laura Lee Carter’s book is simply subtitled, “The Search for Meaning in Midlife.” Carter, who holds an MA in Counseling Psychology, has authored a number of self-help books as well as the blog MidLife Crisis Queen.
“Ever since I began writing professionally in 2005, I have worked hard to call attention to the plight of those of us who struggle in midlife. My sense is that if we better understand where we came from emotionally, we have a better chance of improving the rest of our time here on earth.“
Using her own experience as well as interpretations of socio-, psycho- and anthropological data, Carter offers a vision of midlife which is somewhat dire.
“Through my own experiences and those of thousands of others,” she writes, “I have learned firsthand to appreciate the unique challenges we face as a generation. As the rates of divorce, unemployment, depression, obesity, heart attack, drug addiction, and suicide continue to rise, I have been astounded to find a general lack of interest on the part of most in the United States, especially the mainstream media. Is there no interest in what is really happening to millions of Americans in their 40s, 50s, and early 60s?
If that’s your experience of midlife, then Find Your Reason to be Here may offer solace, companionship and suggestions for moving on to a more fulfilling midlife.
Jane Gassner
