Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)What will YOU get from this book? That depends entirely on your background and what you already know, but I expect
- Most people will wonder "why did nobody tell me this before?"
- For the remaining minority, I am certain it will still provide some potentially life-improving lessons for you, if you give the book a serious try.
As said above, some people will find the first half of the book, `Book One', a bit dry and technical. Certain economic terminology is used from time to time, too - opportunity cost, utility curves, ceteris paribus and a few others - if you aren't familiar with these, you may have to head to Wikipedia a few times.
But see this as an investment which will soon provide a good return. It forms a very logical and functional system vital to understanding Book Two, where I suspect most people will derive the most tangible value.
Exactly what you gain from Book Two depends entirely on your circumstances, but it covers such a breadth of information that you will simply have to come across ideas, concepts, perspectives and advice that are ground breaking to you. Personally, Book Two was an education I somehow missed or forgot along the way (I have detailed my own experience at the end of this review).
I'll summarise it like so:
***Racing Towards Excellence is quite simply littered with invaluable insight, across a breadth of subjects covering virtually all aspects of life.*** Overall, as a potentially life-changing book, I cannot recommend this enough: And that is why I am insisting that my close friends and family read this too. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
What I personally gained from the book:
Perhaps most exciting for me has been Thinking Outside The Box (chapter 16), which turns a concept I saw as inevitably elusive into a relatively solid and even controllable tool. It provides astonishingly practical advice for improving your ability to think outside of popular boundaries, and explains the value and process of forming such ideas in a way I think all teachers I've ever had have neglected to explain.
Jan Sramek's section on Study Skills is, as you will no doubt agree, extremely thought-provoking. I see his methods as something to adopt particularly cautiously, but is once again an exciting prospect and could potentially yield huge rewards. As a 'hard working student' (I had never heard that phrase carry a negative connotation before), I simply wish this had been available to me many years ago.
While those are two chapters that stand out as particularly noteworthy, there are simply countless more pieces of invaluable information here... On all topics, I have taken away a little snippet of potentially life-changing information.
Plenty of others have reiterated the author's advice: this is not magical, you do actually need considerable effort to implement and benefit from all this advice. But actually, some of the things I've learned are already paying off. I have an infinitely better understanding of the human brain, how it works and how to exploit this (in memory retention, and using repetition to `tell our brain something is important', for example). I am blown away at the authors' insight into our 3 modern `key skills' - reading, touch-typing and memorization - and I am now rapidly increasing my reading speed and comprehension, which is rightly described as "the ultimate low-hanging fruit".
In fact, I've actually come out feeling like a bit of an efficiency freak, always trying give myself more time in life - something which I've always known should be the case, but which I previously never really adopted myself (see section 6.5 for more on this). I think that, having read the results of the authors' own time-saving behaviour, I've definitely been inspired: And I expect many others will be similarly inspired, too.
It'd be interesting to read what the authors have to say in another 10 years, and another 10 after that.
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Racing Towards ExcellenceThe life of young people around the world has become more complicated in the past two decades. The pressure is on; expectations are increasing and the race for children to outperform and succeed in life starts earlier than ever before. Unfortunately, the teaching of life skills required to succeed in this new competitive landscape has in general not kept up with these developments. The outcome is inevitable. High expectations, both of the individuals and those around them, collide with a lack of relevant preparation and result in unhappiness.It is the universities and corporations across the world that later face the consequences of these problems. Too often, students and recent graduates are either relaxed and 'happy', or successful, but rarely both. Numerous cases of burn-outs on the one hand and drop-outs on the other illustrate the problem. It is unfortunate, albeit perfectly understandable, that only a small proportion of students and graduates succeed in finding the elusive 'work-life' balance, and outperform in a way that leads to happiness. Why? Nobody has ever taught the majority of them how to do it.At last, finally here comes a book for a generation that is often almost as confused as it is ambitious. Racing Towards Excellence fills the gap; it explains how and when outperformance happens, how it leads to happiness and how to practically achieve both. Its principles are surprisingly universal and applicable to any field or activity, e.g. academia, business, entrepreneurship, finance, sports, arts etc.Amongst the thousands of self-help books, this book stands out with its refreshing attitude, well executed combination of theory and practice, and the unique background of the authors. Covering areas ranging from inspiration, vision, love and responsibility to habits, study skills, health and fitness, communication, networking, mentoring and productive leisure, Racing Towards Excellence is a must-read for all ambitious students and recent graduates.
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