Geek Book Reviews

How Successful People Think by John Maxwell is a nice quick read. It is only 124 pages so it can be all be taken in pretty easily. The book is made up of eleven chapters that focus on the keys to effective thinking. They are:

Cultivate Big-Picture Thinking

Engage In Focused Thinking

Harness Creative Thinking

Employ Realistic Thinking

Utilize Strategic Thinking

Explore Possibility Thinking

Learn From Reflective Thinking

Question Popular Thinking

Benefit From Shared Thinking

Practice Unselfish Thinking

Rely On Bottom-Line Thinking I won't go in depth on all of these topics but I want to talk about a few things he says in the book. He starts off the introduction with this:

Good thinkers are always in demand. A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss. Good thinkers solve problems, they never lack ideas that can build an organization, and they always have hope for a better future.

This is very similar to the ideas I talked about in my review of Linchpin by Seth Godin. People have to start thinking outside of the box if they want to be successful. Just fitting in will not work in our current society. How Successful People Think teaches people how to think differently and think the way successful people do.

One of my favorite chapters was the Benefit of Shared Thinking. It is cliche, but two heads are better than one. You may be good at a lot of things, but you don't know everything and there is always someone you can learn from. I would recommend spending as much time as possible talking to people who are more successful than you are. That is something I learned from Dave Ramsey. He said when he was trying to learn how to be successful with money he took as many millionaires out to lunch as he could. Now that he's a millionaire, he said he has started taking billionaires out to lunch. If you want to run your own business, go to lunch with every CEO who is willing and learn all that you can.

If you want to become a better thinker I recommend you check out the rest of How Successful People Think on Amazon. It has a lot of easily actionable ways of becoming a better thinker.