There is no secret, concrete formula to happiness. We have been told this multiple times by many authors and philosophers. And yet, we keep harping on setting goals and trying to reach these specific goals to feel happy. In Startup Your Life, sociologist Anna Akbari asks her readers to bring the enthusiasm and flexibility of Silicon Valley startups to live a life that is happy and exciting. She asks her readers to live their lives like an experiment and revel in these experiments.
Anna Akbari is a sociologist, writer, and entrepreneur. She holds a PhD in sociology and has taught at NYU and Parsons. She regularly writes for The Atlantic, CNN, Time, The Financial Times, and New York Observer and more.
Startup Your Life: Hustle and Hack Your Way to Happiness
Author: Anna Akbari
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (December 27, 2016)
ISBN: 1250099161, 978-1250099167
Startup Your Life Summary and Review
The author begins with an introduction to her past experiences and the challenges she faced as someone who entered the professional world in the worst possible times. A time when her advanced degree didn’t mean much as every industry was grappling to stay afloat. But this time of uncertainty forced many to think of going the freelance way and become an entrepreneur.
The author shows how her past experience with small entrepreneurial ventures helped her adapt to the changing world. This is when she realized that she can use the same principles to bootstrap her life and bring the same energy to be happy and feel fulfilled.
The initial chapters in the book give you the mental framework you need to think like an entrepreneur. Treat you life as a business venture and bring the agility of a Startup to your daily problems. The core of this advice is to not label every battle as a win or loss. Her advise is to focus on one thing, strip away the superfluous, change variables and keep experimenting until you get what works, and then move on to the next problem.
In Chapter 3, Outsmart Dumb Luck: Experiment-Driven Decision Making, she asks you to think like a researcher. If there is one other population that is as resilient as an entrepreneur, it the researchers in academia and real world. Find the most probable solution that can work and experiment. If it works, more to the next level, if not, try the next. There is a good chance that you might find something new in the process.
In the later chapters, the author delves into specific areas of life such as relationships, and how you can reinvent your image to make an impression in professional and personal spheres of your life.
Most of the advice that the author shares is directly applicable to a business venture, and so are the examples shared in the book. But the most important message here is take control,but be ready to fail and experiment. And as the author says,
“The road may be bumpy, but the ride is infinitely more enjoyable.”
Startup Your Life Review
The book is generating gradual interest and most rate it as above average. Publisher’s Weekly thinks the advice is mostly suitable for business related concepts and that readers will have to work to translate it to other areas.