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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Now everyone can be CEO of their lives, August 9, 1999
By A Customer
Having read many self improvement/leadership effectiveness books, this was the first book to truly enable me to make the transformation from cognitive understanding to behavioral change. The book is an easy, engaging read with many real life examples. The step by step process goes beyond traditional goal setting. The reader can immediately apply the concepts to their personal life and move themselves into action. Upon completing the work pages in the book I had a personal strategic plan for making my next 12 months my "Best Year Yet." It was a fun, energizing experience.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A simple process that will change your life, February 23, 2005
This review is from: Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever (Paperback)
Favorite quote:
"Everyone should know the feeling of overcoming fear and mastering something. People who aren't taught that become soggy."
-Katherine Hepburn
Five years ago, I picked up this book on a whim for about six pounds in Mysteries bookshop near Seven Dials in London. Shortly before new year's eve, I got together with a few friends and went through the ten questions listed on the back cover of the book, creating in the process a one-page "Best Year Yet" plan.
Not only was the next year my best year yet, I have repeated the process every December since, (sometimes on my own, sometimes with friends), and each passing year has once again become my "best year yet".
Last year for the first time my business partner and I sat down and did the process for our then suffering enterprise; suffice it to say that despite the occasional hiccup, our bank manager is once again our friend!
The author is also an executive coach, and while many of the models she uses are not original, (she borrows particularly heavily from Steven Covey's seven habits), they are universally useful and occasionally reap (for me) surprising results. Despite the interesting stories, examples, and insights, this is far more of a "doing" book than a "reading" book, and it includes a complete do it youself Best Year Yet workshop in the back.
Beyond highly recommended!
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great for a Novice Goal Setter, February 2, 2005
This review is from: Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever (Paperback)
This book is dedicated to Goal Setting. The key concept here is to identify the key roles you play (or would like to) in life, rate your performance on each and then plan the year forward to succeed in each of these areas. The author provides a useful structure to approach goal-setting.
While a `role driven' method of goal-setting is a useful approach (and certainly novel to me), I felt it somewhat limiting to someone who is not new to this area. For example, one of my goals for the year is to do yoga twice a week. I would have to view one of my roles as that of a `yogi' to set a goal for yoga. And labelling myself `yogi' is a stretch - pun unintentional. But the role-based goal setting is a useful complement to regular goal-setting exercises.
That said, the self-assessment chart of how one performs in various roles provides a compelling visual and is a vivid motivator for change. The course / book is structured such that it leads to a single page of goals.
The commentary accompanying the exercises is occasionally verbose and perhaps even tedious. The points however are useful and the book would benefit from distilling questions / issues that lead to meaningful answers. The author has a wealth of knowledge, accumulated by conducting goal-setting seminars and talking to many hundreds of participants. This can be organized in a better way.
The entire effort took more than 3 hours (more than 6 for me) that the author promises - time well spent. Some exercises require reflection / self-awareness particularly when responding to questions such as `list the key values you uphold, in order of importance'.
Overall, for someone who is not familiar with goal-setting, this book provides a very useful process to goal-setting. For compulsive goal-setters this book offers interesting and different a viewpoint, which will undoubtedly strengthen the goal-setting process.
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