Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a story.

Many years ago, before universities passed out pacifiers and blankies at freshman orientation, I went to college. During that time, I majored in Old English Books and Visual Communication Design. English was administered through the traditional Harvard model. The VCD degree, while still 100% university accredited and therefore curriculum mapped within an inch of its life, was taught by people who actually worked in the real world. Instead of pretending we were all intellectuals and writing paper after paper, we put our work up on the wall and critiqued it.

It was in my VCD classes I learned that writings from real-world practitioners (like graphic designers) were eons more insightful than anything produced by the English Department Academics. Even when I read pieces by people with views I wildly disagreed with, like Michael Beirut, I could appreciate the insight honed by real-world experience. Reading non-academics was like climbing out of Plato’s cave.

Now, did I apply this experience and run screaming from academia? No I did not. But that is a story for another time.

Let’s talk about Paul Arden’s book WHATEVER YOU THINK, THINK THE OPPOSITE.

Full of ideas that you could write down on a blank page

This is a book written by a designer. An ad man. Someone who played long and hard in the marketplace of ideas. It’s a clever little book full of advice. (And full of visual puns.)

I grabbed it off my bookshelf for a re-read after AJA Cortes tweeted another fount of advice on how to dig yourself out of a 10 year hole today.

You know why? It’s a lot of the same timeless advice.

The premise is this: you are where you are in life because of how you think. If you’re thinking the same things as everybody else, you end up like everybody else (even if your idol is Hunter S Thompson). To be great, think for yourself, develop your own point of view, and start doing the opposite of what you think you should do.

From page 20:

It’s not because you are making the wrong decisions, it’s because you are making the right ones.

We try to make sensible decisions based on the facts in front of us.

The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.

Fear not, Paul Arden designed a beautifully bold spread to persuade you to make bad decisions. (Or as Jordan B Peterson would say, “do it badly.”) If you start to think differently, your life will start to take a different direction.

Arden also delivers some advice on ideas:

The effort of coming to terms with things you do not understand makes them all more valuable when you do grasp them.

This is given in the context of art appreciation, but it can apply to just about anything in life, from fitness to creativity to developing business ideas. Guess what? You have to do the work. But the work is important.

So is your ego and how you present yourself.

The design of this book is just as much visual as it is written. Arden mixes the ideas, the visuals, how the visuals are presented, and all the text takes form in short, punchy sentences. Advertising sentences. Twitter sentences.

It’s practical, motivational advice that’s fun to read, makes you think, and readable in 30 minutes or less.

Highly recommend.

Oh, and university? Arden says stay far, far away. Too bad this book was published when I was already walking that dark path.

Go read Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite.