Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance

Relax. Set goals. Focus on the outcome. Lose yourself to the Zone. All reasonable, sensible, rational words of advice when you are facing a performance challenge, be it a big presentation at work, a crucial point in the game, or a career-launching music recital. And all utterly, hopelessly, wrong. According to John Eliot, Ph.D., “Such self-improvement balderdash will do nothing but relegate you to a career in mediocrity. Overachievers don’t think reasonably, sensibly, or rationally. If your wish in life is to fit in with the crowd, then this is not the book for you.” As Dr. Eliot has discovered through years of cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and real-world coaching, techniques such as goal-setting, relaxation, visualization, stress management, and flow just don’t work for most people. He’s proven that at high levels of business, medicine, entertainment, and sports, relaxing when the pressure is on is the wrong way to go. In Overachievement, Dr. Eliot offers the rest of us the counterintuitive and unconventional concepts that have been embraced by the Olympic athletes, business moguls, top surgeons, salesmen, financial experts, and rock stars who have turned to him for performance enhancement advice. For example: Using Your Head Is Stupid. Setting Goals Is for Couch Potatoes. All Those Eggs Belong in One Basket. Legends Never Say They’re Sorry To radically ratchet up your performance, you’ll need to change the way you think about becoming exceptional—and that means truly being an exception, abnormal by the standards of most, and loving it. Eliot will teach you that overachieving means thriving under pressure—welcoming it, enjoying it, and making it work to your advantage. Mixing scientific insights with entertaining and inspiring stories, Overachievement will help you achieve spectacular success on the job, on the playing field, or in any situation that demands you rise above and beyond what you ever thought possible.