Get Epic Shit Done by Ankur Warikoo (Book Review: 4.75*/5) !!!

 

34^th Book of 2022

 

It’s quite obvious that publishers are now interested in publishing Youtubers, Influencers or Start-up founders as the new generation is following them religiously. I recently completed reading Raj Shamani’s 1^st book who is a Youtuber and just now, I have completed 2^nd book published by Ankur Warikoo, who was a Start-up Founder and is a Youtuber and Content-creator now. His first book “Do Epic Shit” got tremendous response last year and its quotes were visible almost everywhere- Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and where-not. The 2^nd book is named “Get Epic Shit Done” which Warikoo says is a next-level thing and not a sequel to his 1^st book. I have been an ardent follower of his life-related videos on Youtube and never missed them. I watch it with my parents. Watching him makes me feel as if a big brother is talking to me, someone I didn’t have in my life to guide me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read his 1^st book continuously but read it in parts hence couldn’t talk about it on my Blog. But I was very sure that I am going to read his next book as soon as it comes out and here I am.

 

The one issue that I always had with Warikoo is that he talks about happiness generally and advices people to not shy away from taking unconventional or undefined paths without worrying about what parents, family or near ones think about you. This is one reason why I feel scared because I have young cousins and I don’t want them to take extreme decisions just for the sake of it. I could never understand why doesn’t Ankur talks about hard work, hustle and efforts as he has been someone who has worked as an Entrepreneur which involves lot of work. Finally, with this book, all those complains have gone away.

 

As the title of the book says, author continuously empathizes on how to get big things done and executed in life ensuring that we don’t become mediocre or relaxed about growth and success. The previous book I read by Raj Shamani was a very aggressive speech on working hard whereas this is the same thing but spoken like a friendly senior/elder brother to make you realize where you are going wrong in life. The book is written in Teacher-student conversation format which is very similar to Bhagavad Gita where a confused Arjun is asking Lord Krishna questions and he is clearing all his confusions by letting him know the principles of life, success and righteousness without directly telling what actions to perform. He leaves it to him for deciding and executing. Similarly, here, the Student is someone who is at an age where education, career, relationships, personal growth are all important and something about which he is clueless because no one has taught him about it. Teacher, here, gives him friendly answers which makes him understand the root cause of every derivation and learn the art of helping himself in any situation.

 

The writing style is very simple. There’re no tough words used. You will not have to run for picking up dictionary at all. The book helps you uncover a lot of doubts about yourself so you’ll not even pick-up that God-damn phone in between while reading it as you’ll feel that this is one-time opportunity in life to learn about ourself. It seems that Warikoo is able to look inside you and find what’s making you confused and unhappy these days. All the questions that the student asks him – most of them are something you wish you had known at the time when you needed to know them or you are actually thinking of it right now. I’m at an age where relationship and career growth are a big issue in my life and the way it is covered helped me a lot to understand what actually needs to be done to get better in both the departments.

 

The book has some cool illustrations which you’ll want to redraw in your notebook so that you can retain it for a longer time. It helps you understand the textual contexts better. The book is divided in 4 different sections such as – Managing your life, career, people and yourself. There are total of 36 major questions that are asked in context to these four topics which then follows multiple questions inside to ensure that you understand the crux of the message that author wanted to deliver. There are many such quotes which can change your whole perspective or stay with you and guide throughout your life. For social media folks, they are worthy to be shared in the Stories/Status and get likes from it. Haha!

 

I would like to mention few things out of many that I liked from the book:

• The chapter on Writing our thoughts talks about how we pick only important ones as process of writing is slower than thinking and we want to capture only the best ones which later tells us about our priority.
• He also helps understand power of listening over anything else for being a good communicator.
• While taking decisions, thinking if we can bear the worst-case is something that can change life of many people fearful of taking decisions.
• I liked where it is explained how we have to deal with criticism from family members by separating the GIVER and what is GIVEN as criticism. Amazing advice that can help students and people in their 20s develop healthy relationship with their family.
• Nicely elaborated the difference between reading and watching videos. How reading enables complete focus whereas video ensures we are distracted by something regularly. I am glad Warikoo always promotes reading books.
• What a right career looks like is such a wonderful diagram to understand how to choose our career even if we want to convert our passion into it. You need to get the book to view the diagram, of course. 😊
• In the chapter about how to handle first 90 days in a job, Warikoo gives a very great advice to engage with people on personal level so that it becomes easier to then deal on professional level. This is a tried and tested thing even by yours truly. It works. 
• Living by ourselves and the factors that comes with it such as investing money, managing relationships, disciplined lifestyle, paying bill taxes etc.

 

Talking about the drawbacks – well, the book doesn’t have any but, in this case, Warikoo has. Haha! Because he has been so much active on Social media almost through all the platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Newsletters etc. that there is very less that he has still not talked about. Hence, if you have been his follower like me, you’ll realize that 70% of what has been written has already been shared by him on Social media. Like, he has announced that his next book is going to be about “Make Epic Money”. Now, he has already created multiple financial videos that I doubt the book will have anything new. His content is facing his own contents as its enemy now. Haha!

 

Overall, I give this book 4.75* out of 5. Highly recommended to everyone!

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA