I think the following from Amazon’s reviewer (Singha) just about sums it up:
1. Don’t use your head. Lose yourself to the moment, passion. Don’t get calm, get charged. Trust yourself. Don’t over-analyze. Put pressure on yourself! Devise a method to get yourself in the right frame. Use it every time.
2. Don’t put limits on yourself. Don’t set goals. They aren’t stretching, they’re limiting. Chase a dream that is downright unachievable.
3. Hard work is overrated. The key is to do the right things, not necessarily doing things right
4. Don’t try and hedge your risks. Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET
5. There is no such thing as too much self assurance. Arrogant SOBs who believe in themselves are the ones who run the world. Don’t believe the experts (think Dell, Buffet, Gates, Paige&Brin, Columbus, the earth is flat?, etc). And confidence is not your track record… these guys weren’t confident in themselves after they had proved themselves right… no, they proved it before.
6. Being a team player involves conforming and conforming will at the end of the day bring you nothing but mundane results being achieved by all the others conforming.

My take-aways to become an over-acheiver:
1. Design for yourself a pre-performance routine can help. But it must be yours. “A pre-performance routine is about getting your mind ready to perform.”
2. Pick a target to shoot and focus – like playing a tennis match.
3. Stress is a good thing for the overachievers – like Bill Russels’s barfing up before every game. Don’t try to remove the stress.
4. Do the best that are within your control and don’t worry about anything else. Be “Zen” like.
5. Define your philosophy of performance and engagement.
6. The over-achiever doesn’t dwell on his failures but rise above them – the ability to “mess around.” Michael Jordan is the best basketball player because he failed the most. John Wooden’s guiding principles, ” The team that makes the most mistakes wins.”
7. Use the “Trusting Mindset” during performance, not “Training Mindset.”

Great book on becoming an overachiever. Lots of good sports stories, which are the author’s area of expertise. Some of the stories a bit long but could be appealing to sports fan or athletes who want to achiever super performance.

It took me a while to get used to radio interview dialog format of this book. Key take ways from the interviews with the following people:

Jim Rohn: Don’t start the day without having it finished.

Mark Victor Hanson: Tithing. Four principles of success: 1. Figure out what you want. 2. Write them down. 3. Visualize it. 4. Get a team together and scheme it. Money is energy – velocity of money. Meditate, cogitate, ruminate and pray about your day for 15 minutes. About selling: prospect, present, persuade and close.

Wally “Famous” Amos: Do something about your idea. Surround yourself with a good team. Going the extra mile; do more than than is absolutely asked or expected of you. Promote your business. Give all the positive energy, all your love, all the attention you can do what you want right now.

Jack Canfield: Having high self-esteem (like poker chips). E(vent) + R(esponse) = O(utcom). “The universe rewards action, not thinking.” Regarding “Aladdin Factor,” five reasons people don’t ask: 1) ignorance: they don’t know what to ask for, 2) limiting and inaccurate beliefs that people have, 3) fear of rejection, 4) low self-esteem, 5) pride. Two ways to use subconscious: 1) ask the subconscious for information 2) program the subconscious (stupid employee) with information you want to have. Master-minding: hang around with people making twice as much you do.

Robert Allen: Internet marketing: it’s “yes,” “no” or “maybe,” when you make an offer. Look for mentors; your income is the average of your ten best friends.”

Sharon Lechter: You work to learn. “be-do-have” means be a rich person, do what the rich do, then you’ll have what the rich have.

Michael Gerber: Work on business, not in it. Business IS the product. Then you take it to the next step – become a brand. Great entrepreneurs tell great stories. The sole reason for creating a business is to sell it. The system is the solution, not people. Your company must become your software. Intelligent systems in the hands of ordinary people produce intelligent results. Ask yourself, ” What’s the one thing I could do that’s impossible to do, but if I could do it, it would immediately transforms my company?” Orchestration is to create a system so everybody does it identically – called a “brand.”

Jim McCann (1-800-FLOWER): Develop relationship with your customers. Figure out a business that you’re interested in and gets your excited. Don’t worry about the margins. Everyone is a brand manager.

Jay Conrad Levinson (Guerrilla Marketing): Differences against traditional marketing: 1) invest time, energy and imagination, 2) no mystique, 3) geared toward small businesses, 4) based on profit (not sales), 5) based on experience and judgment (guesswork). 6) maintaining focus (not diversification) 7) grow geometrically (not linearly) – enlarge the size of each transaction. Don’t look for competitors to obliterate, look for other businesses you have the same kind of propspects and the same kind of standard to cooperate. It takes 9 times of marketing message penetration to move a customer from apathy to the state of purchase readiness. Marketing is not an event, it’s a process. Patience, imagination, sensitivity, ego strength, aggressiveness, embracing changes, generous, energetic, constant learning, maintaining focus, taking action are the personal characteristics of a successful guerrilla marketer. People tend to patronize business that are of the following (‘ents’): commitment, investment, consistent, confident, assortments of weapons. People buy value and confidence in you.

This book reads like a TV-hit “24” script. Robert Langdon is the hero of the movie, instead of the Jack Bower. Of course, Langdon is a Symbologist Professor specialized in deciphering ancient mysteries and symbols, and etc. The novel is a real page-turner and having the a 7-day expiration period imposed by the ebook library help speed up my reading. I finished it just within a day of expiration, thanks to the recent plane trips.

The heavily tattooed villain, named Ma’lakh left a severed hand (Langdon’s friend’s – Peter Solomon’s) in the Capitol Hill building and tricked Langdon on a goose chase to find and save his friend. Peter’s sister, Katherine Solomon, a Noetic scientist also got involved and almost got herself killed.

The story involved CIA’s directors and many prominent characters who tried to cover up their Masonic society’s rituals – doesn’t seem all that important to deem a national security issue to me. But I got to understand a bit of history and customs surrounding the Masonic society.

Also, I learned a different angle of interpreting the Bible, like considering human minds as “gods” and the human minds of are capable of affecting matters – this is no different than Chinese Qigong. It’s a little anti-climatic to see that at the end the villain fails to find the Lost Word. And the Word is nothing but the ancient wisdom from the Bible, Koran, and etc. Is it really worth killing people over it? And the surprise twist that the villain turns out to be the son of Peter Solomon doesn’t seem very believable to me.

The book was fairly easy to read especially on my Sony Ebook reader, which is more conducive to sequential reading of novels like this. Also the detailed description of the many monuments and buildings in Washington DC makes me want to go visit there really soon. I hope they alter the plot for the movie edition to make the buildings stand out more and the motivations behind the characters more interesting and believable, if they ever make it into a movie.