A tightly organized, well-presented case for a fresh way of doing business.
An executive coach offers a five-step process to unlock personal productivity in this guide.
According to Khouri, who leads the largest executive coaching firm for dentists in the United States, most supervisors are “constantly busy rather than purposely productive.” One reason: Managers find it difficult to say no. The author’s approach is to “triage requests” using a methodical practice he developed to protect his own time. Khouri admits the five steps he recommends may at first seem complex, but his lucid explanations of each are reassuring. The business book begins with a look at the shortcomings of the to-do list and multitasking. Both have their limitations, writes the author, and neither helps one know “when to say yes.” Khouri addresses other intriguing psychological barriers to decision-making before turning his attention to the five specific steps: 1. Create your Roadmap. 2. Define your relationship hierarchy. 3. Assess the quality of the request. 4. Prioritize and reprioritize. 5. Master delegation. In Part 2, the author covers each of these steps in considerable detail, using numerous pertinent examples from his own experiences and coaching practice. There are some excellent productivity boosters embedded in this section, such as “Khouri’s Seven Cs,” seven criteria that apply to developing solid goals, and the “Five Components of a Quality Request.” Part 3 is highly instructive; it demonstrates how to apply the five steps in a five-week period. The author also offers examples of how he used the process for three specific requests. A particularly useful chapter illustrates how the five steps can be applied to the bane of existence for many managers—email. Khouri concludes by explaining how his process can be integrated with a meetings and appointments calendar. Each chapter includes a “Productivity Corner,” an exercise that relates directly to the section’s content. In an engaging, creative touch, the author repeatedly references segments of the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life to playfully reinforce his methodology. This is a book that ingeniously applies psychology and time management techniques to address the challenge of being productive.
A tightly organized, well-presented case for a fresh way of doing business. (Appendix)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77-458139-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Page Two Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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