10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea [Hardcover]

Suzy Welch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 2009

Today, the world offers us more options than in any previous era, but it also pushes us to have more priorities, to make more choices, and to make them faster. The result: a crisis of doing too much, or not enough, and making our decisions based on impulse, stress or guilt. This is particularly true of women. Suzy Welch draws on her own experiences and stories from the lives of others to reflect on how patterns of decision-making lead to frustration or sadness. But Suzy offers an exciting, effective strategy that can change that course. The rule is deceptively simple: when faced with a decision, determine the consequences and outcomes of your various options in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years; but the results are extraordinary. Using the framework of 10-10-10 will allow you to sort out the ramifications of your decisions and to match them with the expectations and values you hold dearest. Most importantly, it allows you to chart a path in the direction you want, and to head confidently towards it with focus, balance, and joy.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description
Any choice you make -any decision -will benefit from 10-10-10. We all want to lead a life of our own making. But in today's accelerated world, with its competing priorities, information overload, and confounding options, we can easily find ourselves steered by impulse, stress, or expedience. Are our decisions the right ones? Or are we being governed, time and time again, and against our best intentions, by the demands of the moment? A transformative new approach to decision making, 10-10-10 is a tool for reclaiming your life at home, in love, and at work. The process is clear, straightforward, and transparent. In fact, when you're facing a dilemma, all it takes to begin are three questions: What are the consequences of my decision in 10 minutes? In 10 months? And in 10 years? Sound simple? Not quite. Recounting poignant stories from her own life and the lives of many other dedicated 10-10-10 users, Suzy Welch reveals how exploring the impact of our decisions in multiple time frames invariably surfaces our unconscious agendas, fears, needs, and desires -- and ultimately helps us identify and live according to our deepest goals and values. 10-10-10's applicability is uniquely broad. Whether it is used by college students or busy mothers or senior business executives, artists, government administrators, or entrepreneurs, 10-10-10 has shown its effectiveness in decisions large and small, routine and radical, consistently changing lives for the better. Readers of O magazine discovered this pragmatic and innovative idea when Suzy Welch first introduced it in her column. Now, in this immensely useful and revelatory book, she fully explains the power of 10-10-10, a transformative idea that can replace chaos with consistency, guilt with joy, and confusion with clarity.

Suzy Welch on 10-10-10 Parenting

I'll never forget the first time my husband saw me use 10-10-10 with my four kids. It was back in 2001, and the six of us were standing around in the kitchen as I fixed dinner. Jack I and had just begun dating and, not surprisingly, the 11-and-under crowd was acting up. Finally, the shenanigans got so bad that Jack left the room, purportedly to check a baseball score.

And when he snuck back a few minutes later…tranquility had been restored.

"What the heck did you just do?" Jack whispered to me, incredulous.

"We just had a little conversation," I replied.

"You mean, you threatened them?" he suggested. I burst out laughing.

"Allow me to introduce 10-10-10, Jack," I said. "It’s how I raise my kids."

Today, 10-10-10 is how Jack and I--and thousands of other parents--bring understanding and joy into our families. It’s our philosophy and our practical guide. How? Well, 10-10-10 is a decision-making process. Applied regularly, it gives parents as a team a shared language to talk about choices and their consequences, in matters both major and mundane. It surfaces values and expectations. It diffuses crises; it teaches responsibility. Invariably, it increases trust. And best of all, it does so swiftly and with remarkable ease. Now, I realize parenting can’t ever be easy. But I assure you that 10-10-10 makes it easier. Indeed, you only have to see 10-10-10 in action once to discover, as Jack did back in the kitchen that day, that parenting can be transformed for the better, by how we decide to decide.

The Top Ten Facts of Life College Forgot to Teach You

1. Everything you think you know about your career will seem thoroughly amusing to you in a couple of years, if not sooner.

2. That's because, despite your best intentions at the moment and the desperate hopes of your parents, your career path will not be a straight line. Instead, it will zig and zag, over many years and rocky terrain, as you inch ever closer to the work you were--yes--born to do.

3. Such work will touch your soul, fill you with meaning, put you in daily contact with people who get all your jokes…and always feel just a little bit too hard.

4. You can find the work you were born to do more quickly and with much less angst if you know your authentic values from the get-go.

5. Discovering your authentic values is easy. All you have to do is ask yourself three questions that will make you squirm.

6. At the very same time that you are trying to make sense of your career, you will also be trying to figure out something even more important and more confusing. Love.

7. Despite your best intentions at the moment and the desperate hopes of your parents, your love life won't be a straight line either.

8. You can, however, find a happy ending more quickly and with much less angst if you understand the "The Theory of the Third Force" from the get-go.

9. Understanding "The Theory of the Third Force" is easy. All you have to do is come to grips with the fact that loving your partner isn’t enough. You have to love your relationship too.

10. Finally, as you make the crucial decisions that will help build your career and find love, remember this. School teaches you that life is about success. Life teaches you life is about happiness.

(Photo © Deborah Feingold )

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist Welch, coauthor of Winning (with her husband, former GE CEO Jack), offers an in-depth look at the decision making process that has brought her success and formed the basis of her work-life advice column in O, The Oprah Magazine. By imagining a decision's impact in the short and long term-in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years-readers will discover not just their innermost values, but the wisdom to pursue them with confident and empowering choices. While easy to follow and simple in theory, the process can raise painful and challenging issues, illustrated in numerous case studies, Welch's personal story and the science behind 10-10-10. Welch also demonstrates how poor decisions are often the result of stress and guilt, rather than a lack of understanding or knowledge; the practical upshot of her approach is the ability to break through the often paralyzing ambivalence that keeps people in dead end jobs and relationships. Anyone who feels stuck, rushed or simply too emotional to make important life decisions should find Welch's technique surprisingly useful, and her guide to it both rallying and rational.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1 edition (April 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416591826
• ISBN-13: 978-1416591825
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (109 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #496,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Suzy Welch, former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review, is a work-life columnist for O The Oprah Magazine. She is the coauthor, with her husband Jack Welch, of the New York Times bestseller Winning and of "The Welch Way," published in BusinessWeek magazine and internationally by the New York Times Syndicate. She lives in Boston.

Suzy Welch es una destacada periodista, autora y oradora. Es columnista en temas de trabajo y vida para la revista O, The Oprah Magazine y colaboradora de O's Big Book of Happiness (El gran libro de la felicidad de O) y ejerce como Ejecutiva Residente en el Centro de Liderazgo de Mujeres de Babson College. Suzy, madre de cuatro adolescentes, es ex editora de Harvard Business Review, y co-autora, con su esposo, Jack Welch, del libro Winning, que ocupó el primer lugar entre los libros más vendidos. La columna de ambos, "The Welch Way," (El sistema Welch) se publica nacionalmente en la revista BusinessWeek y se distribuye internacionalmente por la agencia periodística New York Times Syndicate.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

96 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Great Idea, with Stories, May 14, 2009

By 

Rebecca Haden (Fayetteville, AR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

How much you like this book will depend entirely on how much you enjoy case studies. Suzy Welch presents a very useful idea, and then fills a book with stories illustrating it.

The idea is this: before you make a decision, consider how it will affect you in ten minutes, ten months, and ten years. Shortly after I read this book, I was driving home from teaching class, debating with myself whether I should rush home to get back to work, or stop by the gym as planned for a 30-minute workout.

Using Welch's 10-10-10 idea, I realized that in ten minutes I might be feeling stressed about delaying work if I went to the gym. In ten months, though, I might see a difference in my health and energy level based on that decision -- but I probably wouldn't see a big difference in the success of my business if I went to the gym. In ten years? Regular exercise could make a huge difference in my health -- and I wouldn't want the level of intensity in my business that would have me unable to hit the gym regularly over the long term.

So I went to the gym.

Were you bored by that story? If so, then you're not going to get all the way through this book. However, if you like the idea and enjoy stories, you'll like it.

I love the idea.

57 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Idea Presented in a Good Book, April 21, 2009

By 

Dave Carpenter "Peak Performance Scholar" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea (Hardcover)

I am a big fan of techniques for improving the manner in which we handle the multitude of emotions, decisions, and events that life presents us every day. And, I especially like techniques that are simple, easy to implement, and effective.

Author Suzie Welch's 10-10-10 construct is a brilliant technique for aiding our decision making. It is simple, easy to implement, and appears to have the potential to be very effective (I have just started using it; hence the "potential" label). It is has the potential to be as impactful as the Sedona Method which has helped so many people to quickly release negative emotions.

For me, the book itself was not as brilliant as the technique. For sure, I highly recommend the book because of the brilliance of the technique. But, alas the book itself seems to come up a little short from the standard I try to consistently apply to those I award five stars. I did not find the stories to be as powerful as the technique. I think this is a result of the relative newness of the technique and the fact the author does not yet have the depth and breadth of stories that I am confident that she will accumulate over time, as more and more people use 10-10-10.

Notwithstanding my four star rating for the book, I highly recommend it as an introduction to a handy life management tool. If one couples this book with one of the many excellent books on "choices" (Helmstetter's "Life Choices" is my all time favorite), one has a powerful construct that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our choices, and the quality of our choices is enhanced when we view our choices in the light of likely results on a short (10 minutes), medium (10 months) and long term (ten years) basis.

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Major Disappointment, May 27, 2009

By 

B. Blanchette "Starved For Knowledge" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea (Hardcover)

I was very excited to get this book based on radio reviews I had heard. I absolutely love Jack Welch and regard him to be a genius of business leadership. Knowing that his wife was involved in many of his books I thought it was time to finally take the plunge and get one of their books.

The book was very disappointing. I love the concept of 10/10/10 and feel it is a good idea. The development of it would have been more appropriate in a magazine article. It is not a "book-length" concept. The real world stories could all be summarized as wave the magic 10/10/10 wand and problem solved.

Before you buy it, read the intro on the Amazon site (I think there are about 5 pages). These 5 pages are VERY indicitive of the substance and detail of the entire book. Truly disappointing.