Mr. Nicholas Y Mensah

The book left a dual impression. Inspiring? For me - yes, I has already started to apply some its ideas in my life. Informative? Sure. There are a lot of good quotes and interesting facts about famous people.
But – I have to add these “buts” to my review. There are a lot of points where I am disagreeing with the author:
1) It states that you should choose only one goal in your life, and reject all the other as distracting. Well, if you have a clearly definable goal, it’s great, but what if the goal it is not clear or you have several possible goals? (That is, I believe, typical for the most of people).
2) Some of the examples of successful people are not so obviously good. For example, John Kennedy, is he a successful person? Reached the top, became the President of the United States. Undoubtedly successful. Was killed being the president. (success? Hmmm, not sure!). Steve Jobs has built a great company, Apple Inc. (a success!) Died at the age of 56 from cancer… (not sure we may name it success!)
3) Let’s see at the three "eternal" principles that were referred to along the book, that were used according to the author by ALL the successful people. There is in my opinion some logical inconsistency: necessary does not mean sufficiently. It is the same as to say that by buying the lottery ticket you win for sure: indeed, you MUST buy a ticket in order to win, but only one of many succeeds to win. The same is applicable to the books theme: many people are disciplined, a lot are passionate about their work, but just one of the many becomes successful.
4) The idea that a success should be reached without causing harm to the others, is not so easy applicable to the severe world of business. Bill Gates, one of the examples in this book is undoubtedly a successful person, but who will be able to calculate how many companies went bankrupt and collapsed, giving the way to his expanding giant Microsoft?
In general, summing up the above, I found this book interesting, inspiring and giving a lot of food for thought. Some of the ideas are easy, useful and perfectly applicable in practice. But the very basis of the concept seems not to be solid.
And one more thing – is it really success that should be the main goal in the life? What is more important, success or happiness? Not sure the answer is obvious...… (mehr)

This is a motivational/inspirational book where the author presents his method for achieving goals (he calls it ODD method).
Several remarks I've made while reading this book:
• The introduction (explaining how important are the principles outlined in the book) is too long for such a short book.
• On page 19 the authors warns the reader that if he doesn't know exactly what he wants, then this book is of no value him.
• Too many quotes. The author even quotes himself and quite extensively.
• Too simplistic, e.g. the phrase “Obey your inner voice” – and what if you, like many of us, have several conflicting voices? To which of them should we obey?
• There are several lists of famous people as an example of what can be achieved using principles of the book. Too many lists, too many names – without explaining how they arrived to that what they have become.
• Giving people like Lionel Messi (famous soccer player) as an example of what one can achieve using ODD principles is useless – there’re many players working even harder than Messi without even approaching his level – simply because he is a soccer genius.
• To my opinion the ODD principles are too simplistic and vague.
Looks like the author, after studying the issue of self-help, decided to summarize his knowledge in one book. The result is a collection of quotes, lists of famous names and an attempt to touch a variety of self-help subjects in a quite unorganized and, to my opinion, too simplistic way.… (mehr)