The Procrastinator's Guide to Success [Import] [Unbound]

Lynn Lively (Author), Lynne Lively (Author)

Product Details

• Unbound
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill (June 1999)
• ISBN-10: 007136644X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071366441
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,123,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Procrastinator's Guide Review, April 24, 2000

By 

Mary (Philadelphia, Pa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Procrastinator's Guide to Success (Paperback)

This book has many good ideas but it is not well organized for procrastinator's. The content deals more with how to be successful at work than dealing with procrastination. Even then, there is a lack of cohesiveness. Author has good ideas but lacks a central point of view.

Really doesn't tackle deep issues surrounding procrastination at work. Serves as a pep talk for dealing with different work problems.

Found other books more effective and better organized.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't hestitate! Read this book now., January 18, 2002

By 

Natalie So(50192136) (MKT Dep of CityU) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Procrastinator's Guide to Success (Paperback)

This book is very suitable for two types of people. The first type is they don¡Št know what to do. And the second type is they know what to need to do, but don¡Št do it. If you are one of them, you must read this book immediately. You may not change your lazy behavior after reading this book, but you will know the right direction of being a person who know what to need to do and do it right now. Also, the author divided the content into two parts, one is for the first type of people, another is for the second type. Therefore, you can read the part you need. It can save your time also because of the clear structure. Moreover, many useful tips and techniques are given in each chapter. Apart from teaching the readers the way to overcome procrastination, the author draw out the benefits and drawbacks when you are procrastinating. Certainly, it is not enough to know what to do, it is useless if you don¡Št do it. So, this book will help you a lot if you want to be an active person.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very useful and motivating self-improvement guide, April 3, 2002

By 

Kate McMurry "Young Adult Author" (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Procrastinator's Guide to Success (Paperback)

Ms. Lively is a consultant and speaker on the subjects of procrastination, workplace decision-making and clear-thinking skills. She has also written an eBook called Managing Information Overload.

What makes this book a standout among procrastination books, in my opinion, is its offering of an alternate reason for being stalled in achieving your goals other than procrastination, which the author defines as knowing what to do but not doing it. That other reason for being blocked is that you are clueless about what to do because you lack adequate information or training. For this insight alone, and the accompanying advice for effectively scaling both these types of walls, this book is well worth reading.

Other reasons I gave the book 5 stars include the following:
(1) The author has a lively voice and avoids preaching.
(2) The book has a clear, readable Table of Contents and an Index, making it easy to look up what especially interests you or to go back over particular points in the book at a later time for further inspiration.
(3) While I often get irritated by the "homework" in self-help books, this author is, thankfully, far less cutesy and/or patronizing than most authors in this genre. One caveat: I would recommend that, if you are actually going to give these exercises a try, you get yourself a notebook (either spiral or loose-leaf) to keep your scribblings together. If you just grab up loose pieces of paper as the author suggests, you are going to end up with dozens of messy pieces of paper floating around on your already cluttered desk (procrastinators tend to be very sloppy as well as slow to get going!).
(4) This book isn't primarily geared toward teaching you how to make good choices, set goals, and gain useful problem-solving skills. As the author openly admits, there are many other books on the market specifically aimed at those topics. However, since the author asserts that in order to come out of procrastination, it is crucial to first figure out exactly =why= you are procrastinating, she very appropriately covers these important topics in a solid, basic, understandable way.