This book was previously titled, "The Way We're Working Isn't Working."
"Be Excellent at Anything "is one of those rare books with the power to profoundly transform the way we work and live.
Demand is exceeding our capacity. The ethic of "more, bigger, faster" exacts a series of silent but pernicious costs at work, undermining our energy, focus, creativity, and passion. Nearly 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day. "Be Excellent at Anything "offers a groundbreaking approach to reenergizing our lives so we're both more satisfied and more productive--on the job and off.
By integrating multidisciplinary findings from the science of high performance, Tony Schwartz, coauthor of the #1 bestselling "The Power of Full Engagement, "makes a persuasive case that we're neglecting the four core needs that energize great performance: sustainability (physical); security (emotional); self-expression (mental); and significance (spiritual). Rather than running like computers at high speeds for long periods, we're at our best when we pulse rhythmically between expending and regularly renewing energy across each of our four needs.
Organizations undermine sustainable high performance by forever seeking to get more out of their people. Instead they should seek systematically to meet their four core needs so they're freed, fueled, and inspired to bring the best of themselves to work every day.
Drawing on extensive work with an extra-ordinary range of organizations, among them Google, Ford, Sony, Ernst & Young, Shell, IBM, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Cleveland Clinic, Schwartz creates a road map for a new way of working. At the individual level, he explains how we can build specific rituals into our daily schedules to balance intense effort with regular renewal; offset emotionally draining experiences with practices that fuel resilience; move between a narrow focus on urgent demands and more strategic, creative thinking; and balance a short-term focus on immediate results with a values-driven commitment to serving the greater good. At the organizational level, he outlines new policies, practices, and cultural messages that Schwartz's client companies have adopted.
" Be Excellent at Anything "offers individuals, leaders, and organizations a highly practical, proven set of strategies to better manage the relentlessly rising demands we all face in an increasingly complex world.

It's time to parent smarter, not harder. Filled with scientifically based and eminently actionable advice and strategies, Raising a Kid Who Can boils down the ten essential things that every child needs to thrive so that parents can stop drowning in information and get to the business of raising healthier, happier humans. Written by three mental health professionals who work with families, organized for easy skimming, and designed to be useful at any stage in a child's life, the book devotes one short, impactful chapter per principle, including Resilience, Attention and Self-Control, Psychological Flexibility, Self-Motivation, Compassion and Gratitude. The result is a new approach to a parenting guide, one that takes a wholistic approach to nurturing a child's development and help parents get right to the information they need, when they need it.

Through his years of intensive work consulting to companies including Procter & Gamble, Sony, Toyota, Microsoft, Ford and Ernst & Young, with his firm The Energy Project, Schwartz has developed a powerful program for changing the way we are working that greatly boosts our engagement and our satisfication with our work and increases our performance. In this book he marshalls a wide range of powerful evidence from business research and psychology that shows that the current model of work -- in which people are treated essentially as machines that should be able to perform at top speed for extraordinarily long hours, be able to multi-task, be always accessible and online, withstand often harsh and emotionally punishing treatment, and be primarily driven by the need to make profits -- is not only not optimal, it is specfically counter-productive because it saps us of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy. In order for us to perform at our best, we must make a set of key changes in our work lives -- and in order to develop the full potential of their work force, our managers and companies must institute changes that will provide us with the regular physical renewal, emotional reward, mental focus and stimulation; and sense of purpose and significance that we need.