Surfboard: How Using My Hands Helped Unlock My Mind

by Dan Kieran

The Surfboard is Dan Kieran's account of a week he spent in Cornwall building a seven-foot surfboard, even though he had never surfed a day in his life. He did this at a time when he felt he had reached his personal and professional limits: he needed to find a way to break through. Interspersed with the story of making the board – the intricate craft he had to learn, and the clarity of mind that came with that challenge – are the reflections on the obstacles, rewards and realisations he encountered while starting and running a successful business. This startlingly honest book is a finely crafted meditation on the importance of making things for their own sake and pushing beyond our preconceived limitations.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 20, 2018

About the author

Dan Kieran is Deputy Editor of The Idler, a bi-yearly British magazine. He is a writer, editor, and CEO and co-founder of the crowd-funding publishing platform Unbound.

Reviews

[Marcel Haußmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Als ich das erste Mal auf Das Surfbrett aufmerksam wurde wusste ich sofort dass ich es gerne lesen möchte. Dan stürzt in eine Sinnes Krise und bricht für eine Woche aus dem Alltag aus um ein Surfbrett zu bauen. Dadurch erhofft er sich eine neue Sicht auf sein Leben, seine Arbeit und seine Familie zu bekommen.
Ich fand den Gedanken hinter dem Buch wirklich interessant, muss jedoch feststellen dass es ganz anders ist als ich erwartet habe. Ich hatte mir mehr zu der Vorgeschichte der Sinneskrise erhofft. Was genau war der Auslöser wie war der Weg dorthin? Das Buch beginnt jedoch schon direkt mit der Fahrt ans Meer und dem Plan das Surfbrett zu bauen. Der Schreibstil war allerdings sehr angenehm und einfach gehalten so dass man einfach durch die Seiten kommt.
Der Bau des Surfbretts war für mich als Surfbegeisterten sehr interessant, da ich mich schon selbst mit dem Thema beschäftigt hatte. Es gibt auch immer wieder schöne Bilder über den Fortschritt des Baus. Ich hätte mir allerdings mehr über das Seelenleben des Autors erwartet, was seine Sicht der Dinge ändert. Was wirklich von Nutzen für ihn war um aus der Krise zu kommen. Erst gegen Ende auf den letzten 40 Seiten bekommt man einen kleinen Einblick. Für mich war das leider etwas zu wenig.
Aber Dank des Schreibstils und dem Surfbrett war ich doch gut unterhalten konnte aber leider keine Lebens bereichernde Erkenntnisse gewinnen.

[Geoffrey Gudgion · Rating 5 out of 5]

A confession: I would never have discovered ‘The Surfboard’ if it hadn’t been pushed into my inbox as part of publisher Unbound’s Reading Club. I flicked through a few pages, was hooked, and now find myself unable to categorise it. That alone is a plus in my estimation; I like books that break boundaries. Amazon, bless their tick-box little minds, have put it in ‘Careers’, ‘Woodworking’, and ‘Crafts and Hobbies’. It’s none of those. Think in terms of a ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ for the digital era. It’s a story of self-learning through the process of building a surfboard, but it is way more than an introspective memoir; the prose is brilliant, touching at times on poetry; e.g. he describes returning to his campsite after a hard day’s carpentry as ‘living along with the grain of the light and the wind.’

I must salute Dan Kieran’s courage. He’s a CEO, and CEOs are not known for sharing their innermost thoughts and vulnerabilities with the world, which must include employees, investors, and customers. Some CEOs I’ve known have shown frankly psychopathic tendencies. One or two have been so alpha-male arrogant that their pelvis seems to precede them into meetings. But Kieran comes across as a rare, refreshingly human example of the Executive species, the kind of guy who’d be good company philosophising over a pint.

Read the book to sample that philosophy. Just don’t try and put it in an Amazon genre box.

[Nic Brisbourne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading The Surfboard. Dan's meditations on life, purpose and personal growth helped me think more deeply about the company I founded and the fulfilment that comes with building it into a thing of beauty in its own right. Previously I would have described that goal as Building a perfectly functioning machine. The change in words is significant.