2 out of 4 stars
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Change is essential to life. In From Drift to Shift: How Change Can Bring True Meaning and Happiness to Your Work and Life, Jody B. Miller discusses how change whether purposeful or accidental can lead to happiness in your life and the lives of others. Miller takes the reader through the lives of eight individuals and groups as well as pieces of hers, who have made a change (or shift as Miller calls it) for the better.
As I read through, I trying to comprehend what a “shift” is. The individuals and groups has such different stories. They were different ethnicities and followed different religions. They worked in different fields. Lived and grew up in different places. Some faced great tragedies while others had very normals lives. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed every story. But what was a shift and how did all these random people do it? There were chapter takeaways after every chapter, but I found them too broad, too tailored to the individuals’ story, and unhelpful. As I continued, I realized the random italic sentences in the chapters weren’t random. They were the shifts. Shifts can happen anytime and can be big or small. They can be caused by an event, a person, or your own personal decision. After I had this light bulb moment, I quickly finished reading the book.
I found the last chapter of the book “Now What?” underwhelming. I thought in that chapter Miller would further discuss shifting and what that could look like in your life. However, it felt more like a prep talk than practical advice.
Since I read the book cover to cover, I read the 5 chapters after the notes section, which were sample from Jody’s blog. I didn’t mind this until I read “The Balance of Work and Play” and wondered why was this was not discussed about earlier. This was the practical advice I was looking for earlier. It was like watching a Marvel movie. The movie technically over when the credits start rolling, but if you don’t stay to the end you miss some important information. It may work for Marvel but not for this book.
Also I found the formatting confusing at times. The book was filled with unnecessary text breaks. In principle, Miller used the text breaks correctly- when the point of view changed, when the time period changed, or to emphasize a point. However, she did this so often it interrupted the flow of the story. Also the text breaks were usually unneeded. When I ignored the text breaks the story flowed perfectly without them.
I give From Drift to Shift 2 out of 4 stars. The stories were interesting, but the message of the book was not clear most of the book.
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From Drift to SHIFT
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