The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living, authored by Randy Komisar contains details on his professional experiences when he was a part of many ventures. The book is an innovative description of the author and his learnings from those involvements and experiences. The Monk and the Riddle is an essential guide for the new generation of employed people who are willing to combine and achieve professional and personal success. Using various stories as examples, Randy presents questions that require deep-thinking on discovering contentment and satisfaction in the work we do, and stimulates the orthodox belief that a person should sacrifice their lives to make a living. Through this book, Randy connects logically as a persuader on the art of making a living, while making a life.
Message for Entrepreneurs And Creativity
All entrepreneurs predict their business success and rely on their predictions. Randy explains that the entrepreneurs are enthusiastic to believe everything on a conviction and most of them transform the world extremely by predicting the future, based on their instincts, often against imaginary probabilities. For the entrepreneurs, Randy advises to understand and gauge the chances of failure in business and multiply it with the failure cost to reduce the risk of failure. This method allows an entrepreneur to individually evaluate their own approach in the business.
It is an important aspect to understand how creativity can thrive in the context of earning a living. Randy believes that in creativity inspiration must be more valued than perspiration. To be a successful entrepreneur it is essential to recapture the essence of life with creativity, and break the monotony of thinking capabilities. The author suggests that the major contributors of any business must be creativity and humanity, which can be achieved if the person owning the business understands passion versus drive, and life in contrast to the kill.
My Educational Experiences. I understand that business is all about passion and purpose. Though business consists of creating business plans, funding the business, understanding the demographic, and interests of the consumers, I believe that business is all about people. It is a combined effort of the people involved in the business starting from the business owner, partners, vendors, logistics, marketing, administration, who create value and are connected together to achieve a specific goal. I have learnt that large businesses are not built on big ideas, but they are strongly built on small ideas. Understanding the correct business models help the small business to grow into large business. The changing trend in business requires business ideas to change consistently to be on the top spot.
My Learnings from this Book
Business evaluation is one of the most important take away from the book. I also learnt that it is essential to have a proper work-life balance. One question by Randy that rings a bell is “What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life?” This is a thought provoking question, which stimulates a person to get into a business which is passionate and have the determination to continue it for the rest of the life. Passion and drive are the main components in business and it is recommended to focus on passion than drive, as failure in business does not impact the passion. I passionately believe Randy’s view of the mutually dependent association of work and life. Randy also mentions that gaining self-knowledge is very important when improving in on your passions and gifts. Based on this statement I can follow my perception, and make assessments depending on the preferences that motivate me the most. The critical learning from the book is that owning a passionate business brings out the potential for creative expression and optimistic changes in professional and personal life, and the value of money is always lesser than the value of time.
