Customer Reviews

Overachievement: The New Science of Working Less to Accomplish More

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

This is the message of John Eliot. Basically he says that none of the real champions of sport, business, art, etc ever followed a prescribed success formula as listed by the Steven Covey's, Tony Robbin's, etc. Instead they were just confident people who believed in doing things their own way and were passionate about what they were doing. Pause for thought for all of us trying to incrementally improve ourselves by reading scroes of self improvement books, biographies, paying too much attention to 360 feedback or appraisals listings of our weaknesses.

His key messages are:

1. Don't use your head. Lose yourself to the moment, passion. Don't get calm, get charged. Trust yourself. Don't overanalyse. Put pressure on yourself! Devise a method to get yourself in the right frame. Use it every time.

2. Don't put limits on yourself. Don't set goals. They aren't stretching, they're limiting. Chase a dream that is downright unachievable.

3. Hard work is overrated. The key is to do the right things, not necessarily doing things right

4. Don't try and hedge your risks. Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET

5. There is no such thing as too much self assurance. Arrogant SOBs who believe in themselves are the ones who run the world. Don't believe the experts (think Dell, Buffet, Gates, Paige&Brin, Columbus, the earth is flat?, etc). And confidence is not your track record... these guys weren't confident in themselves after they had proved themselves right... no, they proved it before.

6. Being a team player involves conforming and conforming will at the end of the day bring you nothing but mundane results being achieved by all the others conforming

I bought this book due to the overwhelmingly positive reviews so I must say from the outset I was disappointed. The information is thought provoking and I will try the techniques to see if they actually work. The problem I had is with the writing. It again appears to be a case of stretching a 100 page book into 250 pages. John Eliot throws every profession together, (with major emphasis on athletes) so whether you are an athlete or a shoe salesman these techniques are supposed to work. In this regard the book is unfocused, attempting to be all things to all people. As opposed to one size fits all, Eliot should have had chapters on how specific professions could benefit from his techniques. We are instead given anecdotes on how an athlete performed on a given occasion due to a change in approach.

I really wanted to like this book but found it too clinical and yes boring. Halfway through the book I found myself counting the pages to the end. I finally finished and felt I had completed a College textbook written by a sports coach that was just NOT engaging.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh but my expectations were very high and unfortunately not met.

Anyone who wants to grow and improve can benefit from reading John Eliot's book, which teaches you how to develop the power of focused thinking and, thus, to develop yourself in whatever you do. Eliot explains how to use focus to become an exceptional thinker and performer so you can achieve extraordinary things. He believes in following your passion, learning to live in the moment and incorporating some fun into your life and your job. These concepts can help anyone perform better, but they particularly call to those who want to transcend being "average" and to live with passion and purpose. Eliot explains that the human body is physiologically designed to perform exceptionally well under stress. Therefore, he says, don't focus on eliminating stress from your life. Instead, make good use of it. Although Eliot uses numerous examples from sports to illustrate his fundamental principles, readers without a great interest in athletics will still find his stories very interesting, applicable and helpful. Even if this sensible self-help book contradicts some popular self-perfecting advice, it provides a strategy for putting your passions and mental powers to work. We recommend it to those who lead stressful lives - here's how to make stress work for you.

I loved the book, and think the author does a great job of laying out the model and using examples from his reaserch. Bottom line, you are a result of your thinking and to become an overachiever you got to think differently. I agree, think normal be a normal person. Think differently be a different person.

Below is a quick sommary of the key takeaways:

1) Think "nada" while performing

2) Pressure is natural and can be a good thing, so welcome it and allow yourself to enjoy it

3) Be like Yogi - create your own reality and bring others into it

4) Have a dream - something that will drive you fw

5) Burn out, overcommitment will stop you... Be perfectly calibrated.

6) Have healthy commitment, play, enjoy, go with the flow, think about possibility, not risks and rewards

7 ) Become an overachiver

- One pitch at the time, or being present

- Target shooting, or focusing your energy on the the stuff that matters

- Have a routine - such as golfers before a swing to prepare yourself for the performance

- Effective philosofy - nothing is stopping you!

- etc...

Highly recommended book.

Can you picture Muhammad Ali taking notes at a Tony Robbins seminar?

Haha, no.

99% of self help books and websites are useless. Why? Because they don't teach you HOW TO THINK. All they do is give you exercises and tactics for accomplishing things. The funny thing is that none of the great achievers ever used any of these tactics, they just think different.

Many self improvement gurus try to come up with theories and philosophies about how to live life and be fulfilled. These are completely useless because 1) they are not based on science, 2) they are not practical, and 3) great people like Michael Jordan and Richard Branson never followed any system or theory like that.

This book tries to explain the way successful people think. These people do not sit down and write a list of goals they want to achieve in 30 days. They do not use NLP techniques. They do not plan ahead. They do not worry about the probability of failure. They are not realistic. They are not results oriented. They do not strive for perfection.

These people are irrationally confident in themselves. Deep down they really believe in themselves and they know that they will accomplish what they want NO MATTER WHAT. They have dreams, not goals, and they enjoy pursuing their dreams. They live in their own little world. Failures and criticism do not affect them.

The main lessons I got from this book are:

- The Trusting Mindset.

- Pressure and stress improve performance.

- Anxiety is a cognitive misinterpretation of stress and the fight/flight response.

- Confidence comes before success.

- Focusing on goals is counterproductive. CHASE A DREAM instead of setting goals.

- Successful people do not follow systems or formulas. They are extremely unrealistic and irrationally confident. They focus on POSSIBILITIES, not probabilities.

The reason I don't give this book 5 stars is because the author is not a very good teacher. After reading Your Brain at Work by David Rock (probably the greatest book there is on productivity at work) I found this book to be very boring. The author tries too hard to illustrate his points with the use stories. There are just too many stories in it and overall the book is kinda messy. I had to skip several pages because of this.

I also didn't like the second part at all. I didn't find it very practical and in my opinion this book could've ended at page 125 without losing any effect.

I will apply the teachings of this book and will let you guys know, 2-3 years from now, if it really changed my life or not.

I came upon this book via a search on Amazon while actually looking for a different book. The subject matter intrigued me, and as a result, I decided to go for it.

What a wise decision on my part. Part of my problem has always been over-thinking, over-analyzing, and an excessive amount of over-planning. The results? Things got done, but not nearly (!) as many as would/could have had I simply trusted my abilities and allowed myself to immerse myself in my daily activities.

Light bulb on!!!!!!

I won't attempt to summarize an entire book in one review, but for those of you trying to decide whether or not to purchase and read this book and apply its core philosophies: Eliot has hit the home run that no one else has even attempted to hit. He (Eliot) is not merely rising above many others who offer the same ideas; he is all alone in that arena.

The message is simple: THINK like those who overachieve, and your chances of success increase dramatically. In some cases, don't even think at all (Eliot makes a reference to Yogi Berra, my favorite in this book, which quotes Yogi as saying "I can't think and hit at the same time."). Focus only on what you are doing - not its potential end result, how you did last time, or what you might do in the future. It's all about peaking at this precise moment, because that's all that matters, and that's all you've got right now. Eliot uses the example of a golfer who, to some, plays 65 games of golf - one hole each - when shooting a 65. On each shot, no thought is given to the prior shot or to future shots - just the one at hand.

I realize that my words likely do not suffice in explaining how practical and extremely helpful this fabulous book is; that's hard to do in limited space. Having said that, there's no doubt in my mind that anyone would benefit from "Overachievement," and as a result, I give this book my highest rating. Just Do It.

I liked this book and will recommend it to my children (adults and teenagers, all) and friends. It is another contribution to the now decades old literature on how thinking affects performance. The author, John Eliot, is a Ph. D. and has a practice helping athletes, business people, and whomever raise their level of performance by thinking about their life in different ways. And that is really the point of this book. You can't just tweak this or that and expect to fundamentally change your achievements all that much. Eliot has the goal of unleashing all your potential, which he believes to be vastly greater than you can imagine in your present mode of thinking.

While there are lots of lists and charts in this book, as you would expect if you know this literature, it is the list of the Trusting versus the Training mindset that is most fundamental to the author's approach. Most of us are focused on being good, hardworking, dutiful, and conscientious employees that we think that this should produce the rewards. It won't beyond a certain point. And that point isn't where you want to be if you are after excelling in what you do. The Trusting mindset is a kind of belief in yourself, an agility, a confidence, and a focus that puts you "in the arena": It is impossible to win the contest as a spectator on sitting on the bench. Eliot takes all this apart and in such a way that you want to take the focus of control into yourself and go get whatever it is you are after. And that is the point.

So, if you are after a change of attitude and what a coach to help you get into the game in a strong competitive way, this is a good book for you. However, there is a lot more to success that your mental approach. However, without it, none of the others matter much.

Recommended.

I have read several books from coaching gurus that say a lot of the same thing. Though the author talks down many of these gurus, this book will provide many of the same results without all the fluff. One key item is setting goals. He downplays the value in setting goals or at least writing goals over and over, but does beleive it is important to reflect on yourself and what you want to accomplish. This author really has a neat no nonsense approach to accomplishment. If you are thinking of hiring a "coach" or want motivation from others that have been succesful, this is your book.

I am in awe with this book. I am at the very beginning but, being written in a style that is straight forward, it has already revealed itself to be amazingly unique in its content and, more importantly, extremely enlightening. So I couldn't resist but coming here to write a review and try to influence you to get this book sooner rather than later.

Why?

Because I think that whenever one of us gets better at what we do best, or at any other thing we do, the world becomes a better place. And also because I am thrilled to have found something that explains a lot of my own current "stuckness".

In essence, this book points out (scientifically) how there are ways in which the brain operates that are major obstacles to performance. The problem is, pretty much all of the popular "techniques" for better performance that we have inevitably acquired over time operate in that exact space. And thus we stopped performing. Or maybe never even got the pleasure to know what top performance means!

Here's something about one of my effortless performances. Growing up, I'd go to school and listen to the teacher's first lecture. After, as the teacher was reviewing the material (over and over), I would sit with an interesting book nested within the text book, lost in whatever was the novel du jour. Oh the fear of getting caught. Periodically, the teacher would point at me and ask me a question, and I would provide the (right) answer without having to think about it. I got a lot of great reading done that way. Today, with my work, as there are tons and tons of books and information available, and after having got a Masters degree in my field, I worry why I am not so much better at what I do, with all the information I "know", and being that I am constantly striving to be better.

It seems that I have found the answer. I have been believing it is all important to master "The Training Mindset", but being in that frame of mind completely excludes the possibility to be in the frame of mind that makes a top performance great and effortless for me: "The Trusting Mindset"!

Everyday has been a tug of war for me, especially since I have to constantly acquire new information to be able to do my job. It seems that no matter what I do, how much information I focus on, I am not the top performer I want to be. Unless there is a crisis, or fire under my bootay, or other pressing need that requires me to excel, then, no problem. But I can't sit around hoping for crisis just so I can excel. Right?

And here comes this book, pointing out, reminding, not only where the conflict lies, but also how to switch from one mindset to the other. At will. Sweet.

One quote from the book? "The Trusting Mindset is what you were in before you knew any better".

Here is hoping we all (re)connect with our inner squirrels.

The title of this book is self explanatory and I label it interesting because it discusses a lot of unorthodox thinking techniques designed to engineer superior performance. I call it flawed because the book uses elite athletes and high performance executives in its case studies and makes the ambitious assumption that all of their thinking techniques can be used by average people to achieve exceptional levels of performance.

The most important contribution of this book is the notion of using the "trusting mindset" as opposed to the "training mindset". When performing a task, the training mindset occurs when one actively tries to keep track of all the variables and nuances that one has been taught in prior learning sessions. The trusting mindset is a Zen type of thinking where one focuses upon nothing, instead trusting instinct to take over and deliver optimal performance. From my own experience I know that I often fumble the proverbial ball by over analysing a situtation so this was an important tool to add to my thinking arsenal. Eliot also discusses other important principles such as thriving under pressure, working smarter not harder and developing demonic levels of confidence.

However, the book's advice does diminish in quality when it advocates being "unrealistic" and putting "all the eggs in one basket". One of his examples actually begins with "What if...you want to play on the PGA tour...". Granted if you are already an elite athlete then indeed you do have to set "stretch" targets such as setting world records, breaking into the major leagues and so forth. However, if are an office worker with a weekend warrior golf game but with PGA tour aspirations then I absolutely fail to see how cultivating those aspirations will ever lead to any type of overachievement, at least on the golf course. The author eschews probability and risk/reward calculations, and espouses the view that anybody can achieve anything. However, I think this is a very reckless attitude to have and I'm a firm believer that at least some grounding in reality is required. The author's "anyone can do anything" philosophy is too extreme for my taste.

The second part of the book is about practical steps that can be taken to implement the exceptional thinking described in the first part of the book. This part of the book is a little lightweight and rehashes a lot of concepts that I have heard before. He discusses pre performance routines, evaluating processes and not outcomes and defining a performance philosophy among other things. To be fair the author does stress that the descriptions are necessarily generic because exceptional performance must be tailored to the individual. Nonetheless the reader is left with the impression that the author is at times clutching at straws. Overall I can't really recommend this book instead I would point to "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell for a much more practical and entertaining exploration of the trusting mindset.