Real feel: 3.5 ( )

Very well done. This book delivers on what it promises, but only if you are willing to put in the Time and the Effort to achieve your goals. This book is mostly aimed at business professionals and salespeople, but the third section of the book is devoted to personal growth and is applicable to everyone.

The underlying quality of success is discipline. People that are successful worked at it, and you can learn any skill you need to have. So like the book title states, there are No Excuses. You are in the driver's seat of your existence. You are the one making your own choices of how you spend your time and energy.

Anyway, this is a really good book, and I enjoyed it for how inspiring it was. ( )

Listened to the audio book. This had a lot of the same things as Eat the Frog so I got through it pretty fast. The author reads this in almost a monotone fashion which is not good when you are driving. ( )

No Excuses is a superb course of reminders about using self-discipline to achieve a best life. Tracy addresses every area, including career, fitness, and relationships. What I especially liked about this work was the way he balanced achievements that require action with those that require inner reflection and mindset, the latter without coming across as corny, like so many other works like this do. ( )

I picked up No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline by Brian Tracy specifically because it was a book that came up when I searched for 'discipline' on Audible.com. I was looking for a book that I could use for research on my search for better discipline. I got it from Audible because I figured I would listen to it during my commute and exercise time. Little did I know it would require all my discipline to get to the end of the book.

It started off great. The section, titled Self-Discipline and Personal Success, had a lot of good ideas on motivating myself to better discipline. I looked forward to hearing more on the areas of character, responsibility, goals and persistence. The only thing that bothered me was the book was read by the author. His voice drove me nuts. He didn't use much, if any expression. What really struck me, though, was the lack of conviction behind the words. It didn't sound as if it meant anything to him. He wrote it, so it must have. The director of the book should have pulled the passion out of him or gotten another reader. It didn't take long before I was forgetting what I heard because the of the voice droning on.

The next section really started to get to me, though. That section, Discipline in Business, Sales and Finance, is when he really stepped up on his soapbox. He writing style is so overly confident, it lost credibility. He explained, for example, how to be truly successful in life, one must own their own business. He continued by saying that if one is just disciplined, the business will be not just successful, but wildly successful. The treasures of the Earth will flow to your door if you are just disciplined enough. There I had heartburn. I know enough disciplined entrepreneurs that have had their businesses fail to know there is more to it than what Tracy writes. He made it sound insultingly simple. If a business fails, the owner just wasn't disciplined enough. Shame on them for not being disciplined.

Then I got to the next section, Discipline and the Good Life. Tracy weighs in on topics such as Personal Health, Fitness, Marriage, Children and Friendship. The advice because short, trite and even more insulting. I couldn't stand it. I nearly turned off the book several times. However, in the interest of studying discipline for this blog and my personal benefit, I slogged on. To him, it is all so easy. Just fix everything. No excuses. And life will be a bed of roses. Sorry, my life is a little more complicated than that. Perhaps I am just that undisciplined. I don't think that it is, though.

My recommendation is to ready the first 120 pages and stop. The exercises he puts at the end of each chapter are valid and worthwhile to use in this section. A little introspection is a good thing. Pushing to improve one's discipline is also a good thing.

Skip the last two sections of the book. Trust me. Have the discipline to do it. Don't waste your life. ( )