How to Succeed in Business Without Working So Damn Hard

How to Succeed in Business Without Working So Damn Hard
by Robert Kriegel

Here’s an author who grabs you with his titles and holds you with his content. Remember his previous best sellers, Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers and If it Ain’t Broke … Break It!? Bob Kriegel has the uncanny ability of creating titles that attract readers to his content, provide them with useful tools and techniques to enhance their performance, while enticing them to return for more to his next best-seller. He’s a pioneer in the field of human performance and the psychology of change.

Kriegel has made his name crusading for more efficiency in the workplace. Kriegel looks at the long work week and so-called “digital helpers.” In an age where gadgets are designed to create more leisure time and promote convenience, we are working more than ever. Our average work week is climbing higher and higher and, since the proliferation of cell phones and the wireless Internet, it has become harder to escape the office. Kriegel provides us with an out. This book lays the groundwork for a new, more efficient working style with the classic tagline, “Work smarter, not harder.” These days, it seems people are working harder than ever before. But does putting in longer hours necessarily translate into greater productivity? Robert J. Kriegel thinks not. All too often, individuals respond to a chaotic work environment by racing to meet deadlines, spinning their wheels, and missing opportunities to create positive change.

He suggests that finding success in today’s business world means breaking old habits and adopting new ideas that can dramatically increase performance levels, like having younger employees tutor the more senior, technology-phobic. As conventional systems are challenged, dramatic new solutions are revealed, and everyone gets ahead without working so damn hard. This book is a well-written and helpful antidote to the rat race.

(This book review was originally published in 2002 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 10.)