Book Review: Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
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In Focus, Psychologist and jou
alist Daniel Goleman, author of the #1 international bestseller Emotional Intelligence, offers a groundbreaking look at today’s scarcest resource and the secret to high performance and fulfillment: attention.
Combining cutting-edge research with practical findings, Focus delves into the science of attention in all its varieties, presenting a long overdue discussion of this little-noticed and under-rated mental asset. In an era of unstoppable distractions, Goleman persuasively argues that now more than ever we must learn to sharpen focus if we are to survive in a complex world.
Goleman boils down attention research into a threesome: inner, other, and outer focus. Drawing on rich case studies from fields as diverse as competitive sports, education, the arts, and business, he shows why high-achievers need all three kinds of focus, and explains how those who rely on Smart Practices—mindfulness meditation, focused preparation and recovery, positive emotions and connections, and mental “prosthetics” that help them improve habits, add new skills, and sustain greatness—excel while others do not.
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About the Author
Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., is a psychologist, lecturer, and international consultant. His best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence, has more than 5 million copies in print and has been translated into nearly 30 languages. Dr. Goleman was previously a visiting faculty member at Harvard University and for many years, reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times.
Born in Stockton, Califo
ia, Dr. Goleman has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize and has received the Career Achievement Award for jou
alism from the American Psychological Association. He graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology and personality development from Harvard.
Dr. Goleman was a co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center with the goal to help schools introduce emotional literacy courses. He is also co-chairman of The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based at Rutgers University, which seeks to recommend best practices for developing emotional competence.
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