Jason W Womack - Your Best Just Got Better - Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More

Contents

Praise for Your Best Just Got Better

In these pages Jason Womack takes you through a process of assessing and reapplying the vital aspects of success and achievement in any field. Take the short road to improvement; let Jason Womack be your guide.

Jim Cathcart

Author of 16 books including the upcoming Make It Better

Jason has a remarkable ability to get your attentionits like putting a mirror up in front of yourself and suddenly realizing you are due for a major makeover!

David Fink

Vice President, Human Resources EADS North America

Jason Womack owns the personal productivity category in the training community. His workshops incorporate activities that create tangible learning by asking participants to make small changes that, when practiced over time, produce big results.

John Robinson

Federal Agency Field Training Consultant

Your Best Just Got Better helps you work smarter so that you have the time and energy to live your optimal life. Jason Womack shows you how to get out of your own way, eliminating both external and internal roadblocks and illuminating a path forward with easy-to-implement actions that make big differences.

Michael Deutch

Product Director, Mindjet

Jason Womack helps people realize their high productivity potential in Your Best Just Got Better .

Michael Guarnieri

Sr. Marketing Manager, Citrix Online

Jason Womack is an inspired and visionary business leader. His concepts and ideas for creating best business practices are based on deep insight and understanding of the psychology of human performance. Your Best Just Got Better is exactly the kind of tool we need to help us work most effectivelyin life and at work.

Frances Hesselbein

President and CEO, Leader to Leader Institute

Copyright 2012 by Jason Womack. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Womack, Jason W., 1972

Your best just got better : work smarter, think bigger, make more / Jason W. Womack.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-12198-6 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-118-22472-4 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-23003-9 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-23011-4 (ebk)

1. Success in business. 2. Success. 3. Change (Psychology) I. Title.

HF5386.W83 2012

650.1dc23 2011037179

To you,

so you make your best even better

Foreword

Throughout my career as an executive coach, I have focused on helping successful people get even better. And, they do! They do get better but not without the help of extraordinary people like Jason Womack. Jasons experience as a workplace performance expert and executive coach shines through in Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More. Following his advice will make you more productive; using his techniques and tools will help you to significantly improve your performance.

If you have any doubts about taking the time to read Your Best Just Got Better, I want to make it very easy for you to make up your mind to keep reading!

Three (of the Many) Reasons Why I Like This Book

First, Jason begins with the biggest obstacle to success and changeMe. Most people, especially those who are already successful, believe that because they do a certain behavior that has led to success in the past, the same behavior will lead to success in the future. I call this the Success Delusion. Overcoming the delusion requires vigilance and introspection. It requires, as Jason puts it, Identifying Our Individual Role in Making Our Best Better.

Second, Jasons chapter about the powers of positive and negative focus (Chapter 9) taps into a fundamental concept that is often overlooked. Dramatic performance improvement is not necessarily the byproduct of gaining new knowledge or doing more work; it is more often the result of getting rid of distractions and interruptions that take us away from working on our MITs (Most Important Things as Jason calls them).

And, finally, each chapter provides ideas you can begin experimenting with right away. Jason provides extraordinarily helpful tools for improving workplace performance. The exercises in each chapter help you focus on improving; that will help you maintain your momentum as you forge your path to more success.

The insight that Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More is universally applicable. It provides a roadmap that any individual can use to improve performance. And, with Jasons positive approach and upbeat writing style, this blend of simple, doable actions and pragmatic ideas will take you far down the road to peak Workplace Performance!

Life is good.

Marshall Goldsmith

Million-selling author of the New York Times bestsellers, MOJO and What Got You Here Wont Get You There

Prologue

I wake up before the alarm clock goes offagain. Here at home, unlike at my office in the city, it is serenely quiet outsideno noisy cars, airplanes, or sirens; just the gentle sound of water splashing into the fountain that sits on the patio. Across the room, embers glow through the window of the airtight stove, remnants of the fire I built the night before. I gently step out of bed onto the carpeted floor, which I manage to do without waking my wife. The dog looks at me as I leave the room, as if to say, Go back to sleep; the day will start later.