Ending the Silver Bullet Cycle: Breaking the Habit of Following Snake Oil Trends

By Dan Grubb

From self-help books to office efficiency programs to life coaches, there is an army of self-proclaimed gurus selling their life-changing systems. The problem is, these systems consist mainly of exciting jargon and simplistic, arbitrary rules. By examining the underlying patterns shared by self-help seminars, workplace methodologies, and seedy figures such as con-men and cult leaders, Dan Grubb exposes these programs for what they are: ways for semi-talented public speakers to make a buck off of our angst.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Grubb
• Release date: Oct 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370281237

Dan Grubb

Dan Grubb is a former usher in Richmond, Va. He has been in 14 bands (three of them serious) and wrote for and starred in the wrestling-themed satirical radio comedy "Radical Recorded ‘Rasslin’" on WUVT-FM. He also writes and performs the Old-Time Radio-style comedy podcast "Bunkum". "A Fool's Errand" is his third book following his two collections of short humor, 2014's "Senator Bigfoot 'n Pals" and 2015's "Pity the Slug".

Book preview

Ending the Silver Bullet Cycle

Breaking the Habit of Following Snake Oil Trends

Dan Grubb

Published on Smashwords by Dan Grubb

Copyright 2017 Dan Grubb

Amazon Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

ACTIVITY 1

PENDULUMS: A history of silver bullet trends

ACTIVITY 2

SILVER BULLETS: How we aim them at problems but end up shooting ourselves

ACTIVITY 3

OWN YOUR LIFE: One crazy trick that can change your entire perspective

NEXT STEPS: Keeping Silver Bullets Out of Your Head

INTRODUCTION

I began writing this as a silent plea to my coworkers. We're an agile office using the Scrum method. This means that whenever we have a planning session for the next two weeks or the next quarter, we have to talk about how agile or not agile we are, write up stories and tasks for our work, assign points to our stories, enter them into the officially-designated software, and engage in some team-building activities to demonstrate how agile working is better and more efficient than non-agile work. This is in addition to our daily 15-minute meetings about what we're working on and our daily hour-long meetings whose goal is to have everyone in the same room