The Overachiever's Guide to Getting Unstuck: Replan, Reprioritize, Reaffirm by William L. Reeb | Self-Help Book for Career Growth & Personal Development | Perfect for Professionals Seeking Work-Life Balance

I saw an article by Bill Reeb on CPA Trendlines a while back that stopped me in my tracks, I believe he was listing out some of the characteristics of overachievers and one thing in particular caught my attention because it sounded just like me - something about the fact that overachievers tend to casually throw new projects on to their already huge pile of stuff to do without really considering how much time and effort those new projects will really take. At that moment, I realized I had been doing that for years and it was adversely affecting not just me but my kids and my husband because of the extra efforts I often insisted we all make or because the time and effort that I spent on inconsequential things reduced the time and attention I could devote to things I had already committed to doing with them. My daughter summed it up perfectly one day when she said “Mom, I’m only in first grade, we don’t need to do all of that on my project.” I decided to buy the book when I realized I was an overachiever who could use some help.ConsWhen I bought the book I was so excited to read it. I love reading business/self improvement books and can get through most of them fairly quickly, but I really struggled to get through this one. I know Bill Is big on karate, we too have been doing karate as a family but for me most of the karate stories just broke the flow of the book, kind of took me out of the zone, same thing with the golf anecdotes and it was hard to get back into the book. I thought the book would have been a better read with more of the business and personal stories from Bill’s or his clients’ lives, the ones that he included were very memorable. I also wish that there were numbered bullet points summarized in the beginning of each chapter instead of the chapters running on without knowing how many points there were under each topic. Some of the topic headings were really long, just made for clunky reading and not easy to recall. I did not care for the flowcharts either - they were too small crammed on to the page.ProsI wanted to end with the pros because after I laboriously got through it in a few months the first time, I realized that there were several good ideas in it that I had found myself using so I re-read it skipping all the karate and golf parts and I made notes, almost 50 pages worth of handwritten notes. If you can get that many pages of things worth remembering from a 150 page book, you know it’s more than just a good book. Most good books have a handful of things they’re trying to convey and use the whole book to convey those few ideas. Not this one, the ideas and techniques are pure gold,Some of my favorite parts were:Our beliefs and core values and how we have blindly accepted and assigned them high or low priorities that we never even think to question. This was one of the reasons I was stuck.Continuing to improve the basics so you have a strong foundation to keep building on.The concept of working on your weaknesses too so they don’t ultimately cause your downfall.Change takes time, don’t try to rush the process to make up for lost time.Time passes anyway, if you don’t do the things that you want, years will pass and you won’t be any closer to where you want to be.Balancing efficiency with effectiveness.The “hooks” needed for learning something new.Knowing when to replan, reprioritize and reaffirm to help you move forward.If you find yourself struggling to get through, read only 5 pages a day and you will be done in about a month. Highlight the things that you feel are important as you’re reading it. I’d give this book 1000 stars based on its content alone because of its ability to help you change your life if you’re an overachiever.