Love and How to Get Through It

	Book review on HELP! – How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done by Olive Burkeman (2011) Reviewed by Gunnel Minett, 2011 published in Network Review No 106
	(order this book from amazon.co.uk)

This book is a collection of Guardian columns by the Guardian feature and column writer Oliver Burkeman. The columns cover a number of subjects that most of us encounter on a daily basis. They stretch from 'How to be liked', 'Why money messes with our heads', 'Why Sunday is the most depressing day of the week', 'The hidden pleasures of worry' to 'The amazing powers of kitchen timers' and 'The joys of filing'. In short, it deals with everyday issues that we all may contemplate at times.

It is not clear if the book is intended as a 'self-help' book or if it its aim is to make fun of many of the self-help gurus and their messages to the world. The author's own explanation is that he set out to solve the problem of human happiness well aware of the fact that the topic already had received an inordinate amount of attention from some of history's greatest thinkers - such as Aristotle and Paul McKenna. As a consequence he did not really imagine that he was going to make any staggering new breakthroughs. He confesses in the introduction that he was half joking which of course also meant that he was half serious. Happiness is after all a very important aspect of life, if not the most important.

Jokingly or not, the book actually comes across as a very useful self-help book. The main reason is that it questions a number of the clichés which self-help gurus feed us with via an endless stream of books and expensive courses. For instance Burkeman questions why we always have to become the best of the best in our self-help attempts when statistics will show that setting our goals too high usually has a negative effect. He also points to a number of useful suggestions from self-helpers that focus on helping us to improve the small things in life: he points out that these can have great results by making us feel more in charge and up-to-speed with the chores we need to do on a daily basis.

This is where the kitchen timer and filing systems come in. Learning time management is a relatively straight forward task that can open up our daily schedule and give us a sense of being in charge and able to better divide our time between relaxation and work.

The fact that the book is very light hearted and witty also helps to create a sense of perspective on daily life. Laughter is a well known cure for most ailments. So perhaps the real key to happiness is to find the right balance between seriousness and laughter, just as long as we are serious enough when learning about the proper way to file papers and the correct use of the kitchen timer.

(order this book from amazon.co.uk)