Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson

 

Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson

I started to read Thomas Erikson’s Surrounded by idiots 3 months ago, and I lost interest quickly, but keep reading. The book starts slowly, even though the way it is broken up and the storytelling is well done, I struggled to find a reason to read it in my free time. I began to see it as homework for class rather than a book I wanted to read. I almost entirely gave up until Mr. Mitchell urged me to share my review after he saw the provocative title. This gave me a reason to keep going, and I’m thankful I did. 

The main idea of the book is that everyone can be put into four different personality types, corresponding to the colors red, yellow, green, and blue. I thought that this was oversimplifying human psychology, and thought maybe the author was the real idiot. Then I read the beginning of the book, and it said it was not an all-size-fits-all psychology book. This made me feel like I had to read the rest of the book as an apology, even though that faded quickly. The book shares a simple idea that sounds simple, but is important to remember, and that is that you need to think about how others perceive what you tell them to be sure that what you are trying to say is what they hear. 

Every color has different traits, and I will give a very quick and shallow summary. Reds are dominant, driven people who work fast but may come off as impatient and quick to anger. Yellows are social and energetic people, who can be seen as uncommitted and easily set off track. Greens are calm, thoughtful, good listeners who tend to avoid conflict at all costs and put others ahead of themselves. Blues are very detail-oriented: people who can overthink and take a long time to do a job. 

Even though this seems simple, it becomes more difficult when you find out that very few people have one color and usually have two to three. According to the system used in the book noone is all four. This is why actually reading the whole book was so important to understanding each, as well as possibly. If I didn’t, I could have fallen into the trap of oversimplifying people (which is kind of what I did in the previous paragraph), which defeats the purpose, and is why YOU should read the book and understand it yourself. 

Overall, although Sorrounded by idiots took me a while to get into, I think it was worth it. It doesn’t explain everything about psychology, but it gives a foundation of thoughtfulness about others. By the end, I found myself thinking about what friends, teacher, and Iarem based on the color system. Even without the other points, ts this fun part made the book worth it to me. I challenge you to read the book (hopefully faster than I did) and learn about others and how to be the best communicator you can be. Thanks for reading!

P.S. The interesting title is discussed in the book and comes from an interaction Erikson had in his professional career when he confronted a CEO of a company who was frustrated with his colleagues and employees. He said they were useless and worked too slowly, and that he was ”surrounded by idiots.” Erikson pointed out to him that the CEO was the one who had hired these individuals, which greatly upset him, and not in a reflective way. The man was a standard red and did end up forgiving Erikson and learning how to be a more understanding and better leader.

-Alex Deschler