The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life

The co-founder of the Stanford d.School introduces the power of design thinking to help you achieve goals you never thought possible.

Achievement can be learned. It’s a muscle, and once you learn how to flex it, you’ll be able to meet life’s challenges and fulfill your goals, Bernard Roth, Academic Director at the Stanford d.school contends.

In The Achievement Habit, Roth applies the remarkable insights that stem from design thinking—previously used to solve large scale projects—to help us realize the power for positive change we all have within us. Roth leads us through a series of discussions, stories, recommendations, and exercises designed to help us create a different experience in our lives. He shares invaluable insights we can use to gain confidence to do what we’ve always wanted and overcome obstacles that hamper us from reaching our potential, including:

• Don’t try—DO;
• Excuses are self-defeating;
• Believe you are a doer and achiever and you’ll become one;
• Build resiliency by reinforcing what you do rather than what you accomplish;
• Learn to ignore distractions that prevent you from achieving your goals;
• Become open to learning from your own experience and from those around you;
• And more.

The brain is complex and is always working with our egos to sabotage our best intentions. But we can be mindful; we can create habits that make our lives better. Thoughtful and powerful The Achievement Habit shows you how.

From the website: http://www.theachievementhabit.com

Back in the 1960s, mechanical engineer Bernard Roth met many engineers in the Silicon Valley, who worked for big companies such as Hewlett-Packard, and had dreams of starting their own companies. People just talked about it, and nothing happened. This observation inspired Roth to start teaching a class at Stanford in which each student had to choose a project having to do with their own life—writing a cookbook, building a robot, running a marathon—the only requirement was that the project was deeply personal. Now, for the first time, Roth brings his mantra of “Doing is Everything” to his inspirational and valuable new book, The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life.

      For more than 40 years, Roth has taught the class at Stanford University. He now teaches it at one of the world’s leading centers for innovation, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school), where he is the academic director and one of the founders. Addressing situations related to problem solving, personal growth, interpersonal relations and group relations, Roth draws upon design thinking—a set of general practices that are effective in solving design challenges—to help guide readers on the path to a more satisfying and productive life.

      By sharing his own personal experiences and stories of his students, Roth hopes to motivate readers to see their life in an honest and open way. To facilitate making this change, this book provides many tools and concepts, including:       

1. Why using reasons (excuses), even legitimate ones, to explain one's behavior is self-defeating

2. How to change your self-image into one of a doer and achiever

3. How subtle language changes can resolve existential dilemmas and barriers to action

4. How to build resiliency by reinforcing what you do rather than what you accomplish

5. How to be open to learning from your own experience and from those around you

6. How to solve difficult personal and professional problems

      Our behavior and relationships can be transformed, THE ACHIEVEMENT HABIT is a must read for anyone that wants to create habits that make their lives better.  

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