No Excuses!

This is a quick read on ways the author has found to change and create habits for success.
I like the step layout for each action.

The 7 step method to achieve goals is helpful even though most of this is expected advice. Namely, the idea to list obstacles as part of Step 4. The truly powerful idea here is in what Brian calls the Disaster Report where you proactively consider how you envision failures and how you over come them. It helps to be concrete about fears that could hold you back.

I recommend this book if you want to shake up your goal making routine or be more prepared to push through fear.

This book is not without flaws. But its strengths outweigh its flaws by so much that I have to give it 5 stars. It's basic format is to state a problem that many people have in business, sales, discipline, motivation, etc. Then it will give you a very simple, common sense action plan for how to attack this problem. Each of the attack plans is concise and motivating. The fact that they seem like pure common sense on the surface doesn't detract from the fact that very few people I know actually do these things on a daily basis.

My problem with the book comes from the authors tendency to state opinions as though they are facts. He very often refers to studies done by this organization or that organization that shows x% of manager said this about what they are looking for in an employee or some other such statistic. But I didn't find a single actual citation for any of these studies. For all I know they are completely made up for the purpose of illustrating the author's point.

As a skeptic by nature, you would think that this massive oversight would ruin the book for me. And somehow it didn't. This is still by far the most effective book I've read on self motivation and self discipline.