Kruse's Keys: Read 'Shop Class as Soulcraft' To Expand Your Notions of What "Work" Is (Crawford)

First let me caveat this review by saying that I listened to Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (2009) as an audiobook and consequently didn't have the opportunity to take any notes or make highlights.  And with a book this dense, I'd normally be taking a lot of highlights.   While there was a lot of good and thoughtful information presented in this book many of the early chapters were too theoretical and philosophical for my taste.  If felt like a bit like I was listening to the literature review and background section of a thesis.  But then again, Crawford has a Ph.D. in philosophy so this deep dive is to be expected.

That said, I can’t recommend someone spend time reading this book in its entirety, rather I’d recommend you check it out from your local library and read Chapters 2, 6, and 8.  Truthfully, I expected the story of a think tank/academic Ph.D. turned motorcycle mechanic to be a bit more thrilling of a read.  Ultimately, if one can get past much of Crawford’s deep marxist philosophical discussion, there is much to be gleaned from his push back against the automatic glorification of higher level education versus acquisition of a trade or craft.  Whether admitted openly or not, society tends to looks down up the trades.  Crawford illustrates clear, however, the beauty and transcendent value of our plumbers, electricians, mechanics and craftsmen.  

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The United States has gone from a country of ‘makers’ (i.e., tradesmen, inventors, creators) to cubicle automatons.  
• Chapter 2: The Separation of Thinking From Doing
• On college: Approach college by going deep into liberal arts and sciences in you have four years and a deep attraction for knowledge and learning but if not there’s still a wealth of “doing” jobs out there.
• Chapter 6:  The Contradictions of the Cubicle
• On the language of management as an indicator of the manipulation of the worker a la Soviet bureaucracy
• The rise of teamwork and its link to corporate culture
• The present corporate work culture and emphasis on office speech and things like diversity and sensitivity training arise in organizations that don’t produce a tangible product
• Value and strength of the apprentice-master relationship
• Chapter 8: Work, Leisure, and Full Management
• US has clear separating functions of political power but has conversely allowed for consolidation of economic power.  

KEY QUOTES:

• “When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: "All human beings by nature desire to know.”
• “A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our relationship to our own stuff: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves replacing an entire system because some minute component has failed.”
• l,; “The current educational regime is based on a certain view about what kind of knowledge is important: “knowing that,” as opposed to “knowing how.”
• l“The rise of “teamwork” has made it difficult to trace individual responsibility,”

KEY REFERENCES:

An Interview With A Retired the Naval Officer Who Traveled the World For Four Years

NYT Review of the book

Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century:

KEY PAIRING:

Kruse's Keys: Read 'Essentialism' Because Less CAN Be Better (Greg McKeown)

I listened to this one as an audio book that I checked out from my local public library (SIDE NOTE: public libraries--one of America’s great treasures).  One one hand I loved the convenience of listening to this tale during my daily commute into DC; on the other hand, audibooks are the worst format if you are a notetaker and chronic highlighter.  So, really the worst format for me, especially considering the fact that you lose access to the book and any quasi bookmarks you made when you check the “book” back into the library.  

All that to say that my audiobook reviews are sure to be much less robust than those I actually read.  

Essentialism is a book for anyone who feels overwhelmed at any level of their life.  The author’s contention is that we all have too much going on in our lives--at work, at play, in our relationships and in our things.  This book gives the reader the tools and philosophical background in order to pare away the excess.  Ultimately, McKeown espouses the expansion of German designer and academic Dieter Ram’s mantra “less but better” (weniger aber besser) into one’s life at every level.  Whether or not one has the courage to actually apply it holistically is another question but I’d argue that we’d all do well to take stock of our lives and see where doing less but better might liberate us.  

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• “LESS BUT BETTER” This is the central point of Essentialism.  Shedding off burdensome layers of your life at all levels (time, mental, physical, etc.) so that you can be and do better by concentrating on what is actually important.
• Just saying “no” (without a qualifier or reason) is okay.  You don’t owe anyone a reason.  
• Focus on where you can contribute most and cut away everything else ruthlessly.
• This book pairs well with the seminal Deep Work by Cal Newport (my review is here).

KEY QUOTES:

• Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
• “The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.”
• “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.
• “Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.”
• “the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”
• “As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

KEY REFERENCES:

Fast Co Interview with Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams 10 Commandments of Good Design