One of the best innovations of the e-book revolution is what I will call “the quickie,” a 100-page or so book which expresses a concept in greater focus and with far less fluff than the standard 300-page “business book.”


Heidi Grant Halvorson has published a best-of-breed quickie, “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently", available on the iPad and Amazon book stores for about $3.99.

The implication in the title is that successful people do things–at least these nine–differently than the rest of us, and Halvorson’s treatise is especially applicable to marketers, distracted as we sometimes are by the moment and the need to “get things done.”

The book will generate thinking beyond the two hours or so it takes to read it.

Here are Halvorson’s “Nine Things”:

  1. Get specific.
  2. Seize the moment to act on your goals.
  3. Know exactly how far you have to go.
  4. Be a realistic optimist.
  5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good.
  6. Have grit.
  7. Build your willpower muscle.
  8. Don’t tempt fate.
  9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do.

This is not a self-help book; the author doesn’t much care how we “feel about things.” She’s focused exclusively on what might be called the “thinking characteristics” of successful people.

“Successful people set very specific goals and seize opportunities to act on them,” she writes. “They always know how far they have to go and stay focused on what still needs to be done. They believe they will succeed, but embrace the fact that success will not come easily. They remember it’s about making progress, rather than doing everything right out of the gate.”