Book Review of “It’s Called Work For A Reason” by Larry Winget

June 3rd, 2011 by Diane Conklin under Diane's Book Reviews. 5 Comments.

I knew by the title I was going to get a kick out of this book and it didn’t disappoint.  This is the first Larry Winget book I have read even though I’ve heard about him for a while now.

“It’s Called Work For A Reason: Your Success Is You Own Damn Fault” by Larry Winget is really a no nonsense business book and a book that if you were an employee at a job you could take a lot of great advice from as well. Although my guess is most employees wouldn’t enjoy reading it as much as business owners will – only because it will probably irritate most non-entrepreneurial types.  Trust me when I tell you Larry Winget doesn’t care.

There are a couple of things I really liked about the book.  First, I love quotes and Larry Winget has a lot of quotes from other people in his book.  Next, I really enjoy the fact that at the end of every chapter there is a short summary called “Larry’s short list for…”. It’s a nice wrap up and a great way to go back and review if you want to.

There are so many good reminders and points in this book that it’s hard to pin down just a few, but I was especially impressed when he talked about the fact that in a lot of situations we reward the wrong things. We reward movement, we reward busy people, instead of productivity and completions.

When you think about it doesn’t it make sense to reward the person who finished their work or project and not the person who managed to drag the work out?  That’s seems logical right? But, more times than not, we tend to think of the guy who’s sitting around not doing much as the guy who’s wasting time and not the productive one. Maybe, just maybe, we should reward him with the rest of the day off instead.

After all, it’s not how many hours you put into the work, but how much work you put into the hours, right?

We all talk about not having enough time – and we’re not going to get into a big discussion about that here, but Larry Winget says we all have enough time to do the one thing that must be done.

It seems to me that if you picked the one most important and productive thing, the thing that would make the most impact on your business and just did that one thing, every single day of the week, your business, and mine, would skyrocket in profits and productivity. Now, don’t stop at only that one thing, but at least do that one thing. It’s about priorities, isn’t it?

Ever notice we tend to find the time and the money to do the things that are mlost important to us? Same thing really.

If you haven’t read this book, check out Chapter 8 where Larry talks about his 8 ATEs of leadership and his 20-60-20 principle.  Pretty good stuff.

One of the last things he says in the book is “have fun and enjoy what you do, but most of all, do what you are paid to do. Results are everything, and they never lie.”

Being a person who takes responsibility for my “stuff,” myself, my actions, results, etc, I really like dealing with other people who do the same and that’s one of the reasons I liked this book so much.

I hope you do too –

Let me know your thoughts….

It’s Called Work for a Reason!: Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault

Tags: Bestseller, Big Spender, business, Complete Marketing Systems, Diane Conklin, entrepreneur, Gail Saseen, It’s Called Work For A Reason, Larry Winget, New Your Times, No Excuses, Personal Development, Results, Small Business, Strategy, Success, Success in Business, The Pitbull of Personal Development, Wall Street Journal, Work, Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault.