Tom Connellan

If you like motivational and personal development books, you will like (or love) The 1% Solution for Work and Life (1%S). I strongly recommend this book. Ordinarily, I do not like books written in "parable" or "fable" form, much like The One Minute Manager, for example. 1%S falls into this category. Yet, I devoured this book in one night and took extensive notes, which I normally do not do.

The book is presented as one man's (Ken) quest to improve himself. He meets up with his son's soccer show more coach, who has clearly been using techniques to improve the soccer team. The coach introduces Ken to 5 others who each teach him one principle around the idea of building motivation in small ways to improve. The key idea is--you can't be better than everyone else at everything, but you can give yourself an edge by improving 1% at a time in hundreds of small ways. This process begins by taking action, which motivates one to accomplish more. The rest of the process details the refining of these actions.

I won't spell out the entire program; you should read the book if you want those details. Suffice to say, when I finished the book, I had a roadmap for self-improvement that I was eager to begin; it kept me up at night thinking about the possibilities! This is one of the better books I've read on personal development (despite the "fable" format that I detest, which ironically shows the strength of the book). I strongly recommend it. show less

The book is a clearly written and pretty straightforward read. It presents some good examples and counterexamples and provides some appropriate guidance for today's economy.

This is a short book and bears a striking resemblance the format of Kevin McCarthy's "The On-Purpose Person". They both tell of an individual who is seeking to improve their life, encounters a person with the special something they want, and are invited to meet with the members of a special group of mentors, then share what they learn with someone else.

The content of what they share is different in this book and surprisingly useful. The idea is we only have to improve our skills by small show more increments (i.e. 1%) in the right areas to see big results in our lives. The dialog is corny at times, but the information provided is useful and applicable. show less

I read this little book in one evening. I was really excited to see what it contained since it promises to change your life in 30 days. Of course, you know not to believe that it will, still it could hold some nuggets. In this book the ideas are put across in the form of a story where the main character, poorly developed and not someone a reader really cares about, is told to meet with a group of people individually for advice on becoming better. The main concept is that by becoming just 1% show more better in several areas you will be better than most other people. This supposes that you are nearly in first place already, but let's not get distracted with details. The main character decides early on to focus on improving one thing for 30 days. We are never told what that one thing is, just that it's something. He sort of fails, gets back on track later and says it's just made a huge difference in his life. Basically, the author is suggesting that you push yourself harder in several areas of your choosing not to be the best, just better than you are today. Not a bad concept, but this book really is poorly written. I could see this as a few PowrePoint slides, but not a book. Trying to make this a readable novel type of product just makes it that much more silly. The author would have been better off just putting out his data which he uses throughout the book to support his theory and making suggestions. I got very little if anything from reading this book. show less