INTRODUCTION

This is not an anti-motivation book. Some of the people I’m most in awe of are motivational writers and thinkers – people such as Edward Deci, William Kahn and Carol Dweck, who developed theories about self-determination, personal engagement and the growth mindset, respectively.

Nor is this an anti-quotation book. Some quotes are quite profound. I always get a kick out of the famous words of Christopher Columbus (‘You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore’), William Ward (‘Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it’) and the immortal W.C. Fields (‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There’s no use in being a damn fool about it’).

Simply, this is an anti-motivational-BS book. I wrote it to counter the pervasive non-wisdom of absolutist quotations and sayings that are either fundamentally untrue or full of holes.

It’s important to note, though, that the critical and perhaps even cynical approach of this book is not an attack on those whose words it discusses. The individuals I write about are invariably more successful and brilliant than me. My arguments are strictly only with particular one-off statements they made – statements that have been adopted by the motivationally privileged in ways that generalise, oversimplify or mislead, however unintentionally.

In fact I, too, am guilty of doing exactly that in the past. I’ve included some of these quotes (and others) in articles and books and speeches and workshops. I, too, have shared the social media posts and put up the posters and changed my laptop’s wallpaper. Sometimes I’ve diligently followed the advice, and I’ve ignored it just as often. I’ve done all that and more, neglecting the whole time my suspicion that something about these quotations wasn’t quite right. And that’s because many were actually quite wrong.

That, really, is what this book is about. It’s not a sanctimonious self-help guide. It’s not a patronising treatise on how you can live a better life. It’s just an attempt to correct the incorrect, no matter how warmly and universally it has been embraced.