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I’ve long been a fan of Curt Rosengren’s Occupational Adventure weblog, and its focus on injecting a healthy dose of entrepreneurial passion into your work. So I was very glad to hear that he is planning to publish a book in the next few weeks. Entitled “101 Ways to Get Wild About Work: Ideas for Turning Dreams into Reality,” it is packed with thought-provoking insights and exercises that you can put into action today to revolutionize how you approach your talents, dreams, aspirations and ideas.

I’ve long been a fan of Curt Rosengren’s Occupational Adventure weblog, and its focus on injecting a healthy dose of entrepreneurial passion into your work. So I was very glad to hear that he is planning to publish a book in the next few weeks. Entitled 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work: Ideas for Turning Dreams into Reality, it is packed with thought-provoking insights and exercises that you can put into action today to revolutionize how you approach your talents, dreams, aspirations and ideas. It will be published in both e-book and paper form before the end of the year.

Curt was nice enough to give me a “sneak peek” at the entire book, and it looks like a winner. It can be read like a regular book, or you can use the topical cross-index (which serves as a more useful version of a table of contents) in the front of the book to zero in on the areas you really want to focus on. Each chapter is only 1-2 pages in length, so you can easily digest one nugget, think about it and take action on it. Each chapter ends with a set of “taking action” bullet points that are designed to help you explore it further and make it your own.

Major topics covered in 101 Ways to Get Wild About Work include these:

  • Self exploration
  • Getting unstuck
  • Overcoming obstacles
  • Internal assets
  • Support
  • Creativity/intuition
  • Possibilities
  • Awareness
  • Change
  • Goal setting
  • Taking action
  • Staying energized

Some favorite chapters include these:

Create a wondertoolbox – “To help you regain your wonder skills, create a Wondertoolbox. What goes in the Wondertoolbox? Things like… I wonder how I could…? I wonder what would happen if…? I wonder what I could do? Make a list of ways you could wonder. Pick an obstacle and wonder. Make a list of obstacles you are facing. Pick one and wonder about it. Then pick one of the ideas and implement it.”

Let go of the line to make room for the song – Curt shares a story by singer Tom Waits, was quoted in an article on some songwriting advice for getting unstuck. “Take out your favorite line,” he says. “It’s hard to do. What you’re doing is, you’ve only got one line and you’re trying to hang everything on it. What you need is a better line.” In this chapter, Curt encourages the reader to consider any specific ideas that may be blinding us to what could be, and which may be keeping us stuck where we are.

Make your life an innovation quest – “The mighty question mark has limitless potential to add insights and innovation to your career, priming the pump for new ideas, approaches, and possibilities. Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You have to give your mind ideas and information to play with. What are the pieces of this puzzle? How have other people done it? Where am I getting stuck? How have other people overcome that? What unexpected approach could I take to achieve this result? How could I combine different approaches? Make your life a constant quest for innovation.”