REVIEW: “<i>The 1% Solution for Work & Life</i>” by Tom Connellan

While I expected this book to be a simple nonfiction title that outlines how to make changes to your life using “baby steps”, I was surprised to instead find this book written in a sort of fable format. It tells the story of a man named Ken who is in the midst of a sort of “crisis” in his life. He feels that he just isn’t succeeding like he’d like to in several areas of his life, and is bothered by the fact that every aspect — work, family, etc — seems to be falling apart. But, then Ken sees a change in his son’s soccer coach … and, as a result, his son’s team. And, he just has to know what brought about the change.

From there, Ken meets a group of people who are working out The 1% Solution in their lives. It’s basically the Japanese method of “Kaizen” (small steps for continuous improvement), but explained in a step-by-step kind of format. Ken meets with each of the six individuals one-on-one, and each one gives him another piece of the puzzle. Ken takes notes, and decides to implement the principles he’s learned. Sure enough, he begins to notice changes, over time, in his own life.

The premise of this book is that you can have a more fulfilling life if you try to be just one percent better, today, than you were yesterday.

I loved that a lot of the book gave examples from Olympic athletes and their training methods. If you’re looking for people who excel at something, the Olympians are surely a good group to start with! These people take “extraordinary” and give it meaning.

Even though the book gives a sort of mini-review of each set of steps in the following chapters, it would have been nice to have an overall list near the end of the book. In a way, there was — the last chapter kind of sums everything up. But, you still have to read through the rest of the “story” in order to pull those bits out, so it ends up being a little too time-consuming for “referencing” back to (me being the note-taker I am, though, it’s not an issue — I’ll just write my own list and put it in the back of the book! LOL).

Another aspect of the book that I liked was that it mentioned New Years’ Resolutions, and how they are bound to fail. This kind of book is the perfect sort for people to read at this time of year, when Resolutions are at the forefront of (almost) everyone’s mind. There’s a better way to make changes.

It’s long been touted that the best way for you to make changes that will last is to take “baby steps”… slowly, gradually working toward your goal, one step at a time. And, that’s what this book is basically about. It gives you several tips & tools you can use to make small, but continuous improvements to any area of your life, all the while keeping your goal in mind.

So, I’d definitely recommend this one, even if the “fable” seemed a bit hokey to me, at times. If you can overlook that aspect, this is a good book with some great advice.

Rated: B-

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