Johnny Bunko: The Career Guide I Wish I’d Had
My little brother will soon be a junior in college, majoring in Communication and, are you ready for this? , Internet Marketing. I wish I could have majored in that.
Dan Pink keeps writing books that I want to buy for Steven. These books also tend to validate the decisions I’ve made in my own life, but that it took me a while to discover. I wish people had told me some things sooner.
I wish I hadn’t sat in Barnes & Noble in the ’90s, at the age of 22, and read What Color is Your Parachute? (I couldn’t afford to buy it at that time.) It didn’t help me. I skipped Who Moved My Cheese? I hated the name.
For a new generation, there is now Dan Pink’s Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need.
The book is short and sweet, and has six succinct principles, including
#1 There is no plan, and
#4 Make excellent mistakes.
There’s more to it than that. Pink quickly fills in the blanks. For example, there is no plan, so do what brings you joy.
I suppose the other thing to mention about this little career guide is that it is written in Manga style. Please don’t confuse this with something like the Archie comic books. In Japan, Manga is part of the culture, used from everything from advertising to learning. Reading Manga in Japan is not just the providence of geeks and nerds. Manga is for everyone.
Dan Pink was fascinated by this and applied it to the book. For visual learners, this is fantastic, by the way. There is an image and an associated event in the book to attach to each lesson. It is learning by visuals and by storytelling, and we all know that is effective. For the video game generation, this book will make perfect sense, in form as well as function.
It’s a short book, but fun. It drives home points no one shared with me. I did eventually abandon "the plan." I have to wonder – if someone had shared this with me sooner, let me know it was okay, where I would be today …
Beside, how many books have their own trailer?!
Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.
