7Breaths

I've already mentioned Nicholas Bate on my blog before, this guy is a real thought leader in the area of personal productivity. Initially only knowing his work from his blog, I've recently been able to read most of his books and they have been a great read.


The first book I read was JfDI - just f******g do it! The title is enough to inspire you to get up and get something done! It's a great strategy guide for personal change, and the f*****g in the title shows his passion for this subject. Here is a brief review:

Summary

Nicholas explains that for change to occur you need to engage 3 areas -

Brain (Intellect)
Heart (Passion)
Gut (Drive)

He realises that all 3 areas need to be working in unison to achieve your goals, something a lot of people seem to neglect.

To engage these areas he leads you through a 12 step process and as you move through these 12 steps you eventually reach a tipping point where change becomes unstoppable.

He focuses on 3 areas - Attention, Immersion, Momentum and applies these to 4 levels of change Brain, Emotion, Strategy, Tactics - this leads to the 12 step AIM 4 BEST strategy.

The first part of the book focuses on a detailed exploration of each of the 12 steps - the concept, things to reflect on, his own examples of applying these steps and finally how to deal with the ifs & buts which may crop up on that step.

The second part of the book then expands on the framework by giving detailed plans of how to achieve 7 desires - these range from loosing weight and being attractive to writing and publishing a book to just being happy.
In the third part of the book he reviews the AIM 4 BEST steps and explores the more subtle areas of each, he also reviews how to apply this methodology for personal and team change and improvement.

Conclusion

I found this a really useful book to help me kick start a lot of projects. By systematically reviewing my goals with the AIM 4 BEST framework I've been able to clarify a lot of issues and formulate a workable plan to accomplish them. Although there were desires in the second section which had no interest for me (I don't smoke for example) just reading through the steps to accomplish these was an worthwhile experience as they just reinforced the general framework you need to use for other types of goals. I think this is where the book really shines - it gives you a framework you can apply to accomplishing anything you want rather than just being a guide to achieving a limited number of goals. If you have things you want but are not moving towards them I would strongly recommend buying this book and applying the AIM 4 BEST ideas.