By Paul Conti
It was brief. It was light. I didn’t get much from it. I thought from the title that it would be more slanted to positive psychology or gratitude. Perhaps it would turn away from the standard self-help of fixing problems and lean into strengths. It felt much more standard than that. But short. No meaningful citations. No revelatory concepts. A few questions for inquiry, and a weakly described concept of “drives” highlighted by “generative drive” that is supposed to be the big key. Since he didn’t define it well or justify it as the prime mover for well being, the concept doesn’t do much for me. Generative drive is the drive that makes you do good stuff. You should do more good stuff, so you should have more generative drive. That’s the book. I leave it not really knowing how to get more drive, but I recall that I’m supposed to get it. It’s such a flimsy premise and it’s not even directly tied to the title that I think he forced it just to justify the book. To sell a book about personal development, you need a hook or a concept to claim that you’re adding to the corpus of self help. It feels like he took a few minutes to sketch out the concept of drives and generative drive and then just cranked it out from there. The endorsements from celebrities rather than respected voices in the field should’ve been a clear warning that it wasn’t going to offer much. This will never be cited in future books for the book club. At least the time wasted reading it was short.