20 Tweets About Twitter For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

For this book review of Twitter for Dummies, here are 20 tweets (max 140 characters each), or 19 more after this one, by Tony Kessler.

If you’re new to Twitter, don’t expect to read book from cover to cover in one sitting. Use it like a textbook. Work your way through it.

Start by picking effective screen name. Book explains how. Avoid @drunkNtennessee or @sexycutegirl. Mine is @tonykessler. Follow me now.

If you’re tweeting for your company, do likewise. My work stuff can be found at @HRHero. Check it out and follow if you’re interested.

Like me, many people don’t tweet often from their personal accounts. That’s OK. You still have a perch to stay on top of what’s going on.

Book explains how to attract “followers” and pick those you want to follow. There isn’t one correct way to do it. Just wade in and start.

If someone you’re following proves to be too prolific, you have a way out: Simply click the “unfollow” button, and he or she is gone.

Think you can’t say much in 140 characters? You’d be surprised. It’s like headline writing on steroids. Here: 4 sentences in 1 tweet!

Be careful what you write. As book explains, whatever you write is indexed for all time. So, think twice. Or thrice. There are no do-overs.

How to attract more followers? Book’s best advice: Listen. Be genuine. Grow organically. You don’t have to resort to contests or giveaways.

Why is listening so important? You can respond more thoughtfully. Your experience and that of your followers will be more well-rounded.

Inserting links into tweets is a good idea. To get them to fit into 140-character limit, use URL shortener like bit.ly (http://bit.ly).

As book points out, shorteners like bit.ly track how well your link did, letting you know how many people click through or, better yet, RT.

RT? That means someone has retweeted your tweet (or sent it to their followers). Book provides handy 4-page glossary of Twitter terms.

Still have questions about Twitter ettiquette? Send DM (direct message) to one of your Twitter-savvy followers. Most will be helpful.

Thanks to those who answered my questions about how to get up and running: @ruthannharnisch @RossRunkel @danielschwartz and @philipmiles.

Regarding hashtags (Twitter keywords): They help with organization, but don’t overuse them. For @HRHero posts, I often use #HR and #emplaw.

Regarding your followers: It’s OK to manage the list. Yes, you can “block” spammers or people whose avatars are wearing no clothes!

I’m very proud of the list we’re growing. It’s a great group of HR pros, employment law attorneys, workplace experts, and other smart folks.

Twitter for Dummies has been out a while, but still helpful for Twitter newbies. Nice job by authors @pistachio @gruen and @leslie.

1. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. Lessons from business (pizza place, worm farm, Zappos) and life.

2. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The people who saw the real estate crash coming and made billions from their foresight.

3. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Why some people succeed– it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

4. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. How everyday people can effect transformative change at work and in life.

5. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Because life isn’t all about work.

6. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

7. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. What really motivates people is the quest for autonomy, mastery and purpose, not external rewards.

8. Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profit and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth by Inder Sidhu. They strategy of “both-and’ is far more productive than the limiting “either-or” approach.

9. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Counterintuitive rules for small-business success, like “Ignore the details early on” and “Good enough is fine.”

10. Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm. How the global financial system broke down in 2008, and what may happen if new regulations are not embraced.

11. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. A scholar and a journalist apply economic thinking to everything: the sequel.

12. The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely. How we can make better choices about money and relationships given the human tendency toward irrational, emotional decision-making.

13. Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Three keys to being a more effective leader.

14. More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby. Hedge funds and how they came to be.

15. The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick. The origin of Facebook.

1. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.

2. It’s Not Just Who You Know: Transform Your Life (and Your Organization) by Turning Colleagues and Contacts into Lasting, Genuine Relationships by Tommy Spaulding. The former CEO of Up With People expands upon the principles that Dale Carnegie outlined 75 years ago in How To Win Friends and Influence People, and shows us how to take them one step further to accomplish the impossible in our lives and careers.

3. Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers by Stan Slap. The author argues that emotional commitment comes from the ability to live your deepest personal values at work and then suggests a process that allows you to use your own values to achieve tremendous success.

4. The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People & Teams That Win Consistently by Tony Dungy. The author discusses te seven keys of mentoring leadership — and why they’re so effective; why mentor leadership brings out the best in people; how a mentor leader recovers from mistakes and handles team discipline; and the secret to getting people to follow you and do their best for you without intimidation tactics.

5.  The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The sequel to #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker examines the issue of who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages.

6.  The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

7. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.

8. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.

9. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. The author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies examines the question “How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?”

10. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.

1. The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. The authors maintain that just as athletes train, play, and then recover, people need to recognize their own energy levels. “Balancing stress and recovery is critical not just in competitive sports, but also in managing energy in all facets of our lives. Emotional depth and resilience depend on active engagement with others and with our own feelings.”

2. Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle. The founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund offers his insights on money, the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings, and what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives.

3. Awake at Work: 35 Practical Buddhist Principles for Discovering Clarity and Balance in the Midst of Work’s Chaos by Michael Carroll. Carroll — a meditation teacher, executive coach, and corporate director — shares Buddhist wisdom on how to transform the common hassles and anxieties of the workplace into valuable opportunities for heightened wisdom and enhanced effectiveness.

4. The One Minute Manager Balances Work and Life by Ken Blanchard, Marjorie Blanchard, and D.w. Edington. A blueprint for managing stress and making a lifetime commitment to fitness and well-being for busy, achieving people with overcrowded schedules.

5. The One-Life Solution: Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success by Henry Cloud. Cloud, aconsultant and clinical psychologist, examines the workplace and offers strategies and scripts for moving toward a more unified, coherent sense of self and a life that fully encompasses work, family, and spirituality.

6. How to Succeed as a Small Business Owner … and Still Have a Life by Bill Collier. Each of the book’s 20 chapters offers a lesson in setting goals, making plans for achieving your goals, and executing your plans.

7. Life Matters: Creating a dynamic balance of work, family, time, & money by A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca Merrill. The authors show you how to navigate the critical relationships between time and money, work and family, to create a harmonious, success-enhancing dynamic between each.

8. If You Have Employees, You Really Need This Book by Jerry Osteryoung and Timothy J. O’Brien. An action-oriented guide that helps you select, motivate, coach, train and retain a high energy and effective staff.

9. Striking a Balance: Work, Family, Life by Robert W. Drago. The author examines the deeply held but unexamined beliefs about work, womanhood, and society that are responsible for our out-of-balance lives, calling on us to challenge those beliefs and providing a road map for change.

10. Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Administration – How Zen Practice Can Transform Your Work And Your Life by Marc Lesser. The author follows the great spiritual tradition of teaching stories to beautifully describe the delicate path of living a working life as a spiritual practice.

1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. How and why certain products and ideas become fads.

2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. A maverick scholar and a journalist apply economic theory to everything from cheating sumo wrestlers to the falling crime rate.

3. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The hubris of predictions — and our perpetual surprise when the not-predicted happens.

4. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by by Dan Ariely. The hidden forces that shape our decisions.

5. Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis. Wall Street’s tumultuous 1980s, as witnessed by a young bond trader.

6. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis. The evolving business of football, viewed through the rise of the left tackle Michael Oher.

7. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford.

8. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed. How four central bankers pushed the global economy into the Great Depression.

9. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich. How two Harvard undergraduates created Facebook.

10. How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Learning more about how we think can help us make better decisions.

1. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.

2. Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profit and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth by Inder Sidhu. Cisco’s Senior Vice President encourages readers to look at every decision as an opportunity to seize, not a sacrifice to endure.

3. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.

4. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The sequel to #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker examines the issue of who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages.

5.  The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

6. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.

7. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. The author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies examines the question “How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?”

8. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. The Heath brothers (coauthors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die) address motivating employees, family members, and ourselves in their analysis of why we too often fear change.

9. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.

10. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. What really motivates people is the quest for autonomy, mastery and purpose, not external rewards.

1. Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today’s Profit and Drives Tomorrow’s Growth by Inder Sidhu. Cisco’s Senior Vice President encourages readers to look at every decision as an opportunity to seize, not a sacrifice to endure.

2. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. The visionary CEO of Zappos explains how an emphasis on corporate culture can lead to unprecedented success.

3. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. A groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas.

4. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.

5. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell The best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking defines a tipping point as a sociological term: “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” The book seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.” The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the precipitous drop in the New York City crime rate after 1990.

6. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling.

7. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Fried and Hansson argue that plans are actually harmful, you don’t need outside investors, and you’re better off ignoring the competition.

8. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. The author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future says the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today’s world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

9. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. The author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Collins concludes that it is possible for a good company to become a great company, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11–including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo–and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success.

10. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.

Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon has turned out one of the best-written business books I’ve read in a long time. Her big idea: Companies compete by imitating each another. The more they compete, the more alike they become. Example: McDonald’s offers fancy coffee; Starbucks offers breakfast. As companies ape one another, the products they offer become more of a commodity, meaning the price that can be charged goes down, not up.

Moon nails it when she discusses the mentality of the average consumer: “Once consumers realize that all airlines offer frequent flier programs, that all detergents offer enhanced stain-fighting, that all companies offer good warranties, they have less reason to be picky in their selections.” She says that the remedy is to make a consumer’s expectations irrelevant. Provide them an alternate reality, not the expected one. Look at Google — it didn’t clutter its home page; it kept it clean. Ikea tossed the traditional idea of home delivery and turned customer expectations on their head by providing a beautiful showroom (not massive warehouses), on-site childcare, and a cafeteria that serves excellent Swedish meatballs for less than the price of a Big Mac.

Moon has produced a wonderful, extraordinarily well-written book. She makes an interesting point at the end, stating that nobody knows “the way.” Why? Because we’re dealing with human beings. She writes:

I’ve decided it’s not that the truth is elusive, it’s that it is liquid. It comes at you from all sides, swinging at you from every possible angle. What this means is that the danger for the scholar is not in confusing what is true with what is false, it’s in allowing yourself to get seduced into thinking that’s it’s possible to be definitive about anything. Because when it comes to human behavior, the truth is more expansive than that. When it comes to human behavior, the truth is an ocean.

Michael Maslanka is the managing partner of Ford & Harrison LLP’s Dallas, Texas, office. He has 20 years of experience in litigation and trial of employment law cases. He is the editor of Texas Employment Law Letter, and he also authors the “Work Matters” blog for Texas Lawyer.

1. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The people who saw the real estate crash coming and made billions from their foresight.

2. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

3. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. How everyday people can effect transformative change at work and in life.

4.The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance by Tony Schwartz with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy. Advice on re-energizing and re-engaging yourself on the job and off.

5. Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm. How the global financial system broke down in 2008, and what may happen if new regulations are not embraced.

6. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. What really motivates people is the quest for autonomy, mastery and purpose, not external rewards.

7. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Because life isn’t all about work.

8. 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson and James Kwak. A call for the restructuring of the banking industry.

9. Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Three keys to being a more effective leader.

10. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Counterintuitive rules for small-business success, like “Ignore the details early on” and “Good enough is fine.”

11. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

12. The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein. A journalist’s account of the financial collapse, from origins to bailout.

13. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes by by Peter D. Schiff and Andrew J. Schiff. Through wit, humor and illustrations, the complex financial system is explained.

14. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The 2008 financial implosion on Wall Street and in Washington, by a New York Times reporter and columnist.

15. SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. A scholar and a journalist apply economic thinking to everything: the sequel.

1. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.

2.Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh. In his first book, the CEO of Zappos shares the different business lessons he learned in life, from a lemonade stand and pizza business through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Ultimately, he shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life.

3. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The sequel to #1 best-selling Liar’s Poker examines the issue of who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages.

4.  The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

5. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. The Heath brothers (coauthors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die) address motivating employees, family members, and ourselves in their analysis of why we too often fear change.

6. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.

7. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. What really motivates people is the quest for autonomy, mastery and purpose, not external rewards.

8. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. The author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies examines the question “How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?”

9. Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Three keys to being a more effective leader.

10. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard . This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.