The Art of Deliberate Success by David Keane

I recently agreed to review books for a leading publication in the Australian training industry. It was an easy decision, as I frequently write reviews for my personal use as a learning tool. Below is my review of The Art of Deliberate Success:

The Art of Deliberate Success has the subtitle: “transform your professional and personal life”.  David Keane has drawn on his own experiences and that of over one hundred self-help management books to write it. He has synthesised the material succinctly (the book is just over 300 pages long) and presents in his easy-to-follow style throughout.

The reader gets the benefit of a lot of material, without the cost, preamble, selling hooks and filler that buying and reading each book would entail. Of course, you can read further in specialist areas if you wish and, for this purpose, Keane provides a book list with useful sketches of what each title covers and how you might use it.

The “deliberate” in the title is an acronym for the chapter titles of the book: decide; eliminate; language; information, beliefs, energy, responsibility, action, time and evaluate. I am cynical when it comes to acronyms, believing they are more often concocted to benefit the author with the “TM” suffix and royalties, than for the reader’s benefit. In this case, my cynicism was misplaced. The acronym works well and it provides a logical, right-sized segment for each of the areas covered.
 
The book starts by discussing definition as of success, followed by a questionnaire that takes about 20 minutes to complete. When you buy the book, the price entitles you to subscribe to www.theartofdeliberatesuccess.com. This means you can complete the questionnaire online (it adds up your scores), access useful worksheets and print out your results in graphical form.
 Other aspects about the online resources:

• The e.u.l.a. for the site was, in my opinion, reasonable and did not grant the provider extraordinary rights. Your privacy will be respected and your e-mail address will not be sold, transferred or bartered.
• While the site does have an option to increase your subscription if you want, this is not necessary for the average reader. The result is you get genuine support to help you get the most from the book, not a hook for the author’s business model.
• You use a linear slider to indicate your answer the questions. These sliders were not numbered, which eliminates the thought process of “I gave a two for question five and a three for question six, so can I give a one for question seven” type. I liked it.

The results for the questionnaire reveal the areas you should focus for effective change. Who is the book for? People who want to achieve personal and professional success. Trainers, coaches and facilitators who want to refresh their material. The latter groups will have heard some of the stories, anecdotes and quotes before, but will get some new ones too. To achieve personal change requires commitment over time. Sensibly, Keane recommends that you run short “campaigns”, to do this. In other words, focus on one thing at a time rather than attempt (and likely fail) wholesale changes at once.

Readers who want to use the book of achieve transformation will need to be committed to reading, enacting, reviewing and re-reading the book for a period of time. As a guide to the process, this book is an appropriate companion.

How to find your passion

Charles Handy from his book, The Hungry Spirit:

"I spent the early part of my life trying hard to be someone else. At school I wanted to be a great athlete, at university an admired socialite, afterwards a businessman and, later the head of a great institution. It did not take me long to discover that I was not destined to be successful in any of these guises, but they did not prevent me from trying and being perpetually disappointed with myself.

"The problem was that in trying to be someone else, I neglected to concentrate on the person I could be. The idea was too frightening to contemplate at the time. I was happier going along with the conventions of the time. I was happier going along with the conventions of the time, measuring success in terms of money and position, climbing ladders which placed in my way, collecting things and contacts rather than giving expression to my own beliefs and personality."

If the approach Handy wrote about resonates with you and you would like to know how to find your passion, Scott Berkun's blog has an excellent article here. Scott included this post with others in his book Mindfire which is a a thoughtful outline of answers to some interesting questions.

Good luck with your search!

Getting distracted online

A paper written by Joseph Ugrin and Michael Pearson on cyberloafing found that, of the time spend online at work, American workers spend 60-80 percent on things that are unrelated to work.  I don't think it is a problem in the US alone.  In one office I worked in, some colleagues theorised that to get a particular employee to do some work, you had to place a targeted ad on eBay.

The finding is unsurprising, given the Internet is a place that has a lot of interesting stuff, where you can do many different things, and it isn't that hard to get to.  For these reasons, many people become distracted online.  It is like trying to get schoolkids to concentrate when the fairground sets up next door.  A search for an item online fires up the synapses of your mind, creating interest, stimulating connections and promising chemical rewards that make it hard to resist the click away from...from...whatever it was I was doing.

Personally, I think that the best antidote is to take regular breaks, get up from your desk, move and change your environment. Breaks help you stay fresh and, as a habit, they disrupt what may be involuntary behaviour.

Distractions become attractive when you are mentally fatigued, bored and under-stimulated.  Regular breaks mean you can section your day and review how you went so far. If you went well, great.  If you didn't, you haven't wasted the day.  Unfortunately, in some (many?) offices, breaks are unfashionable.

Other techniques involve setting alarms, some use specially designed software, and yet others filter the available sites.

How do you overcome a tendency to distraction?