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AUGUST 5, 2025|BOOKS & REVIEWS


The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Defy by Dr. Sunita Sah


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I ask for my coffee extra hot. Sometimes, I do that, and it comes cold anyway. There would be times when that happened and I would drink it anyway. Most people don't like to cause a scene and sometimes that means we don't speak up. It's a small moment, but also a symbol of larger opportunities for defiance in our lives that we often let pass by.

According to Dr. Sunita Sah, the ability to embrace your defiant side is critical in learning to speak up for yourself. When I spoke to her for this week's episode of the Non-Obvious Show podcast, she shared some of her best tips to unlearn that common behavior or "just going with it" and instead getting more comfortable with being defiant. In a world where increasing complacency allows all sorts of bad things to happen, you could easily describe this as an urgent skill we all need to learn and practice for ourselves. For that reason, Defy is my pick for this week's Non-Obvious Book of the Week.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: NOBW Defy

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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

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This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.

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