Friday Forward: Inspiration & Motivation to End Your Week Even Stronger Than You Started It by Robert GlazerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
[ Links : Review at Youtube ]
This book Friday Forward by Robert Glazer talks about stories and real - life examples of productivity improvement and gives insight into how a person can improve personal capacity and do things better in all aspects of life. The author’s previous book Elevate talked about what capacity building is for a person and how to embrace it in life. And, in this book he gives real life examples of people who excelled and explains the reasons for it.
The Author, Robert Glazer says that Most of us are living below our full potential, and we have so much more capacity to achieve the life we want. Capacity building is a set of methods that we use to develop the skills of high level.
So, what are the various capacities that we should build so that we can achieve the life we want ? Lets go one by one -
#1 Spiritual Capacity : Spiritual capacity requires us to evaluate who we are and what we want most from life and then align our daily lives to those principles. The author says that building spiritual capacity requires us to deeply evaluate what is most important to us. Building the spiritual capacity requires determining our non-negotiable core beliefs and values through deep introspection and self-assessment. The better you know your core values the better will be your resolve to safeguard them. This helps tremendously when you are either having a difficult time or you have to make a difficult decision. So know your core values very well.
#2 Intellectual Capacity : Intellectual capacity is how we improve our ability to think, learn, plan, and execute with discipline. Setting and achieving goals, developing good routines and habits, and learning continuously are some of the ways to increase your intellectual capacity. By This way, over time you will have amassed a lot of good habits, knowledge and enough practice of setting and achieving goals. This will continuously prepare you for difficult and highly intellectual work.
#3 Physical Capacity : Physical capacity is our ability to improve our health, well being and physical performance. While our brains help guide us through life , it’s our bodies that are asked to do the heavy lifting day in and day out. That’s why it’s important that we maintain our health and wellness in all aspects.
#4 Emotional Capacity : Emotional capacity is about increasing your ability to have good quality relationships. It’s also about how you react to challenging situations and people. People who have high capacity can handle challenges and setbacks better. With continuous practice and self evaluation a person should be able to manage his feelings and react to difficult situations better. The better the emotional capacity you have the better you will be able to handle the difficult situations and understand others.
This Author has shared many stories and has tried to convey the message through them. Let's talk about some of the stories that the book contains.
There is one story in the book about a sociological study that happened in one of the European town that compared the two groups of neighbors : non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the holocaust and non-Jews who did nothing. The study revealed that what ultimately differentiated the rescuers from the non rescuers was how their parents disciplined good behaviour and praised good behaviour. The rescuers were explained by their parents the reason behind the discipline that they imposed on them. This also encouraged critical thinking and reasoning among their kids. The parents of the rescuers group instilled the importance of values in the very early life of their kids. These kids would comply with any rules only if that aligned with their important values and questioned those that didn’t comply.
Then there is one story about how being excellent can be the best way to market yourself. The story talks about a service provided by a big company against a local plumber. After repeated calls the contracted big company responded to the service required by a customer after five days and even then they couldn’t fix the problem. Then, that customer contacted a local plumber who not only fixed the problem but he also showed excellence in everything he did from keeping and maintaining his clean car to cleaning up the whole mess after the work was finished at the customer site. There can be no better marketing than demonstrating excellence day in and day out. The story says that When we choose excellence the others do notice it.
The book has many such stories which talk about the 4 capacities that a person can work to increase his productivity. The stories in the book are motivating and to-the point. I also liked the quotes in the book. Overall , I think this is a nice book which gives enough material to think about increasing your productivity in all walks of life.
