The author offers 9 personal power hours of focus and 9 business power hours of focus – adding up to 18 total hours. At one hour a week, this means 18 weeks of focus. It’s really doubtful that each of the power hour can be accomplished within an hour a week. But it’s an ideal goal. I like the questions included in the book to ask yourself. They are a gold mine. It’s like having a personal consultants interviewing you on each area of your personal life and business career. Going through the exercises will probably yield a better result for most readers. The highlights of the book:

7 steps to activating the power of an hour:
1. Clearly identify what you need to change.
2. Apply critical thinking to identify the structure of the change.
3. Apply creative thinking to identify other solutions
4. Identify next steps
5. Schedule your change and take the first action.
6. Evaluate your activity and measure your success.
7. Reward your successful completion

Creating Fearsome Focus:
1. Clearly define what you will focus your effort on.
2. Define the action steps necessary to accomplish the project.
3. Surround yourself with the necessary tools and stimuli related directly to what you’ll be focusing on.
4. Do not allow distractions to divert your attention.
5. Launch into the project.
6. Evaluate the process of your effort frequently by consulting your action steps and immediately reengaging.
7. If you are confronted with a physical or mental distraction, simply acknowledge the distraction, do what’s necessary to dismiss or remove it, and then instantly reengage.
8. Continue until all action steps are complete.
9. Acknowledge completion and relax.

How to think critically:
1. acknowledge that you are a critical thinker and apply the skills regularly.
2. understand the blocks to critical thinking and avoid them.
3. Listen for and understand arguments.
4. Evaluate the legitimacy of the evidence.
5. Evaluate the case.

Personal Hour 1: Set the stage. 3 steps: clearly define what you want, define what specifically you’ll do to create the change, determine how to measure success.

Personal Hour 2: Identify the blocks like procrastination, ambivalence (two opposing opinions), have to or should do, excuses and justifications, and giving up. Other areas include business, career, income and financial situation, business relationships, personal relationships, intimate relationships, health, education, self-worth, spirituality, and etc.

Personal Hour 3: Destroy the blocks. 4 steps: 1. clearly identify and describe the block you are face, 2. Define specifically the result you intend to achieve by removing the block, 3. Define your plan and timeline for removing the block. 4. Take action.

Personal Hour 4: relationships: categorized to family relationships, mutually beneficial and supportive relationships, long-term friends, one-sided relationships.

Personal Hour 5: Finances: Setting up your plan: make it automatic, manage the professionals instead of money, make it digital, be frugal when you can but don’t step over dollars to pick up dimes, review it regularly.

Personal Hour 6: Self-improvement: Ask yourself the following questions. 1. What area of my life am I currently not improving that would have the most significant impact on the rest of my life if improved? 2. What is the most important skill I could learn right now and why is it so important? 3. When I look at the skill sets of my mentors and peers, which could I develop that would have the most significant impact on my life? 4. What specifically would that impact on my life be and what would it do for me? 5. What have I always wanted to study or learn but have constantly put on the back burner? 6. What is the most important skill I could learn or improve right now that would expand my income, career, business, relationships?

Personal Hour 7: Mental vacation: simply focus your mind away from all of your current tasks onto something you enjoy. Find a place where you can focus on something that’s relaxing and unrelated to what you’ve been focused on. Get in a comfortable position and relax. Begin to imagine your perfect day, your perfect vacation, or your perfect retirement. Make it real by taking time to focus on the sounds and images in your mind.

Personal Hour 8: Envisioneering: creative a master life vision. Japanese proverb – “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” 4 requirements that must be fulfilled in order to fully unleash the power of manifestation: 1. You must specifically define what you want. “If you ask for something in rich detail, imbued with emotion and feeling, layered with experiences, and something you can see so clearly in your mind that it becomes tangible, then you’ll get that too and it will be rich and empowering.” 2. understanding how you want fits into your master vision of life. 3. Giving your Master Life Vision power. Hold in powerfully in your mind and create it in the physical realm. This chapter has lots of good questions to ask of yourself. They alone are worth the value of the book.

Personal Hour 9: Overcome your fear and reinvent yourself. To overcome fear: take educated action via education and emulation.

Business Hour 1: Find your business focus. Break out the operational units: sales, marketing, operations, financial operations, manufacturing or service delivery units, and human resources.

Business Hour 2: Time Management. The glass ball (broken if dropped) vs. rubber ball (bounced back if dropped) analogy.

Business Hour 3: Management. Creating and Articulating Your Vision, Creating your business culture (empower employees, motivation and recognition, delegate for success – 1. determine who’s best suited to accomplish the task, 2. explain the task and expectations in as much detail as necessary, 3. give authority and support, 4. give positive feedback of understanding and commitment, 5. get out of the way).

Business Hour 4: Sales and Marketing. Lots of good questions to ask of your sales and marketing on unique differentiators, advertising, public relations.

Business Hour 5: Customer experience. Find our exceptional experience.

Business Hour 6: Making connection. Three types of connections: mastermind partners, power partners, casual connections.

Business Hour 7: Mentoring.

Business Hour 8: Give something back. Of course, how else can you reap the reward and leave a legacy?

Business Hour 9: The final hour – creating systems. How to create systems: 1. Clearly identify the system or process, 2. Identify the outcome of performing the system or process, 3. Identify who should run the system or process. 4. Identify the exact steps involved in performing the process, 5. Identify the expected outcomes at the end of each step. 6. Identify the confirmation signal that the system is complete. Best uses of your system books: to train new employees, to interview potential employees, to manage existing employees, to improve company efficiency, to open new offices or divisions, to evaluate problem areas, to allow someone else to take over if necessary.