3 out of 4 stars
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When I started reading this book, I could have easily counted myself as one of those people who only knew about Feng Shui from popular culture and movies, and that the real world version of it was a complete mystery to me. I was actually looking forward to expanding my horizon's and learning a little bit about it, and I was encouraged by the opening line: "The purpose of this book is to take the mystery out of feng shui and show you how practical it really is." Maybe I would find some nifty ways to clean up my workspace at work and make it more appealing.
This book is meant to teach not only what Feng Shui is, but also to show the reader some easy tricks to apply it without a lot of time or effort expended. There are a lot of bullet points and images to help drive home the points being presented in this text, as well as reader challenges and calls to action to get the reader to actually apply the messages while they are still fresh in their mind. This was something I liked, because it made the teachings presented here feel more real and concrete than in many other books where everything is about theory rather than applications.
There were some things about the book I didn't like. First, a general formatting quirk that annoyed me: the book is not justified-alignment, but rather left-aligned with double spaces and no indents. Since the text is short and choppy with a lot of single-line paragraphs this makes perfect sense, but at times and in certain sections it made it feel much more like a term paper than a book. The images were useful and descriptive, but they didn't really combat this impression because it felt like they were created with some sort of diagramming or layout application that a room designer might use.
None of this seriously detracted from the work, but it felt less professional and conflicted with everythign else that was being presented in this work. Some of it was useful, like tips and tricks to help cut down on feelings of anxiety or subconscious worries. For example, it discusses what to do in meetings, and how the ideal position is one where you can see the entire room and the door so that there can be no surprises. This is something I actually never really think about when going to meetings, but I look forward to applying it in my work place and seeing if it has any positive effects.
All in all, I really enjoyed reading this work and felt like the ideas being presented were simple and easy to apply, but actually very valuable and useful. It reminded me of reading something like Sun Tzu's Art of War where everything you read feels like such simple ideas that they might be common sense and yet are actually incredibly thoughtful and meaningful.
I will rate Practical Feng Shui for the Office by Kathryn Wilking with 3 out of 4 stars. Even though the text is very interesting and meaningful, the document itself detracts and conflicts with the message and makes it feel slightly unprofessional. Considering how valuable the text is, this feels like an important misstep that should be addressed by doctoring it up to look more like a professional book and less like a college paper.
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Practical Feng Shui for the Office
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-- 09 Jan 2017, 15:27 --
Was a really great read and I'm finding more and more ways to apply it to my workplace every day!
