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A review by tabithar
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman
3.0
The first 1/3 of this book was so good I started talking about it with a friend. I spoke too soon. I have 3 key criticism of this book: 1) loss of focus after the first third 2) lack of practical/executable methods to improve one's personal focus 3) ironic solutions to helping focus in schools.
Ironically, slightly after the first 1/3 the organization and writing seemed to lose focus. The author bounced around seemingly erratically to the point that it made it difficult to force myself to finish. NORMALLY, books I force myself to finish get 2 stars. However, the first 1/3 was really good, hence the 3 star rating.
Based on the text's lack of focus after the introductory portions, it should not come as a surprise that while there are many stories about benefits of focus, there is no clear practical content regarding methods to optimize one's focus. It is vaguely suggested that some video games are in the works and that the practice of memorization can improve focus but that pretty much covers the points made with many less words.
The most cringe worthy of these problems culminated in methods presently being tried in school systems to help children's focus improve. School schedules from the past incorporated shorter periods of class time with more breaks. Additionally, schools used to require memorization of passages of text, multiplication tables, addition facts, etc. These standards have been dismissed in recent years. Based on the text, the expected outcome would be decreased focus for the students that propagated throughout their lives and culture. While the author observes from research that students are struggling more with focus, he seems to miss that there may not be a need to reinvent the wheel to help students focus. Rather than incorporating in more standards and ADDING things to be taught, the solutions might be simply going back to prior methods in which students had breaks worked in with natural changes in curriculum and memorized useful information (rather than adding new tablet based games to their curriculum).
I suggest either reading the first 1/3 and stopping (it definitely goes downhill from there to seemingly like a person chasing rabbit trails with focus as a topic but not an execution) OR...finding a different book to read.
Ironically, slightly after the first 1/3 the organization and writing seemed to lose focus. The author bounced around seemingly erratically to the point that it made it difficult to force myself to finish. NORMALLY, books I force myself to finish get 2 stars. However, the first 1/3 was really good, hence the 3 star rating.
Based on the text's lack of focus after the introductory portions, it should not come as a surprise that while there are many stories about benefits of focus, there is no clear practical content regarding methods to optimize one's focus. It is vaguely suggested that some video games are in the works and that the practice of memorization can improve focus but that pretty much covers the points made with many less words.
The most cringe worthy of these problems culminated in methods presently being tried in school systems to help children's focus improve. School schedules from the past incorporated shorter periods of class time with more breaks. Additionally, schools used to require memorization of passages of text, multiplication tables, addition facts, etc. These standards have been dismissed in recent years. Based on the text, the expected outcome would be decreased focus for the students that propagated throughout their lives and culture. While the author observes from research that students are struggling more with focus, he seems to miss that there may not be a need to reinvent the wheel to help students focus. Rather than incorporating in more standards and ADDING things to be taught, the solutions might be simply going back to prior methods in which students had breaks worked in with natural changes in curriculum and memorized useful information (rather than adding new tablet based games to their curriculum).
I suggest either reading the first 1/3 and stopping (it definitely goes downhill from there to seemingly like a person chasing rabbit trails with focus as a topic but not an execution) OR...finding a different book to read.