Personal Development

I'm not a multimillionaire. But when a book written from a self made multimillionaire promising to reveal a grand total of 422 personal and success "secrets" from a multimillionaire appeared in my vision, I grabbed it. Actually I am lying. I stole this book from Rich Schefren while in Florida at the office of Strategic profits ... yes you know the drill you see something you want you ask to borrow it and you conveniently forget to return it.

Anyway, I want to tell you a few of things I learned from this book, but first ... There are a lot of these books about, but most of them are mediocre. Also most are full of writer's porn. You know like monster chapters of text and text and boring waffle with the useful stuff you can take action on and change your life hidden in between. So to find a book with chapters around 2 pages long with useful actionable stuff in it, that conveys mindsets for success as well as ideas strategies and tactics, well that's my sort of book.

You can probably tell I don't love reading and that's probably true, conversely I love reading short snappy concise tight writing ... and that's what you get with "Confessions Of A Self-Made Multimillionaire". It is what it says on the cover ... "422 personal secrets tricks and unconventional techniques you'll never learn in any business school."

Some of the big ideas I got from this book were big and others were quite small but very useful. First of all the author Michael Masterson, mentions why you should (as long as you can) only check email twice a day. And why you should avoid checking emails in the mornings all together. This is a small tip nonetheless it has made a massive difference to me and the way I get to work every day for the better.

I remember writing out one section of his book twice because it hit such a nerve with me. Somewhere in the middle he has a chapter on how to overcome productive moods. He provides 7 steps to do this. I think the most useful part of this section was, when faced with a list of incomplete jobs he recommends you spend time separating the thinking from the activity by listing incomplete jobs in order of priority then breaking each job down into tasks that can be done in 1 hour or less in order of priority. I love this and use it every day...

You can find out more about "Confessions Of A Self Made Multi-Millionaire" at http://www.earlytorise.com/books

You ever been at a conference some place somewhere and someone gave you some free book?

Maybe that hasn't happened to you ever. And maybe if it has then maybe it happened at some crazy super weird conference that you probably just ended up at for one reason or another ... and the contents of the book you were given were worth less than the paper they were printed on.

Well anyway that's what happened to me.

Except I didn't get a crappy book.

I got "The Power Of Focus". I book I had heard of before and even had on my "books to buy" list.

So that's how I got it. I got it at an internet marketing conference I was at in February 2008 in Orlando, Florida. But, did it live up to the positive word on the street?

Well do you think I would make this page and bang all my keys right now if it wasn't?

Yes so here we go.

Without looking at it now, some of the things that stood out for me were ... if you have negative people in your life you need to get them out of your life. By out I mean, to not just send them to the recycle bin like you would some unnecessary file on your computer but to actually delete them forever in instead find positive people to take you to higher places.

Another takeaway was to give criticism in private and give praise in public. Yes this is a small detail, but it's important and it was an important realization for me.

And by far the biggest realization in the power of focus was that in order to actually focus on a particular piece of work you need to dispose of time in large chunks and be in a working environment where interruptions are kept to an absolute minimum. By minimum, I personally interrupted that literally - ever since I have had no cell phone much to the amazement and annoyance of some of my friends and family.

You can learn more about the power of focus book on Amazon.