Four Seconds

By: Peter Bregman

Narrated by: Chris Sorensen

Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's Summary

Peter Bregman, author of the Wall Street Journal best-seller 18 Minutes, offers strategies to replace energy-wasting, counter-productive habits that commonly derail us with truly effective ones.

The things we want most - peace of mind, fulfilling relationships, to do well at work - are surprisingly straightforward to realize. But too often our best efforts to attain them are built on destructive habits that sabotage us. In Four Seconds, Peter Bregman shows us how to replace negative patterns with energy boosting and productive behaviors. To thrive in our fast-paced world all it takes is to pause for as few as four seconds - the length of a deep breath - allowing us to make intentional and tactical choices that lead to better outcomes. Four Seconds reveals:

• Why listening - not arguing - is the best strategy for changing someone's mind
• Why setting goals can actually harm performance
• How to use strategic disengagement to recover focus and willpower
• How taking responsibility for someone else's failure can actually help your team

Practical and insightful, Four Seconds provides simple solutions to create the results you want without the stress.

©2015 Peter Bregman (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

A wandering generality

This audio book has much positive substance, but is (in my view) so thrown together in such a poor package as to be inferior to many other books you could better spend your time and money on, so I RECOMMEND YOU keep your powder dry on this one, and look elsewhere for better.

Specifically, the problems I had with this book include...

1.) Misleading Title and description...
The name and desciption of the book suggest it is focused on the particular topic of how you can better control your behavior and improve your life and relations by stopping yourself (for say, "four seconds") and (doing something). There is a chapter or two in the book on this, but the author then rambles, and on, flitting incoherently from one topic to the next. The rest of the book is...

2) Disorganized - This book presents a seemingly randomly presented collection of disjointed mini-lectures, with no overarching organizing structure to provide a coherent organizing principle or focus.

3.) Poor narrator / narration. The narrator is just terrible, with a voice like Tennessee Tuxedo, apparently capable of a grand total of ONE whiny inflection besides just reading out loud in a plain nasally voice. This alone makes the book a tough slog.

4.) Uneven - Another reviewer said this book is like a bunch of blog posts, and that's a fair description. This book does read like a blog, where whenever the author happened to think of something, he just added it on, and then served up the pile.

5.) Superficial - as in any book where the author flits like a butterfly from flower to flower, from how to ask for a raise (one of the weakest lectures), to how to console upset people, a bromide as to how to manage Email (really? another book with a diatribe about Email?), how to rationalize fad diets (and fad management techniques) and dozens of others, the treatment is necessarily superficial.

In summary, if you just to turn off, say, Howard Stern, or whatever rubbish fills the air on your car radio, and turn on some positive noise instead; offering well intentioned and uplifting intentions, this book is good material.

IF however, you want...
...something which is meaningfully specific,
...organized in a structure which facilitates comprehension and retention,
...and well read by a professional narrator so as to be able to tolerate listening at all,
here are a few better books just off the top of my head...

~ HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE - Dale Carnegie
~ CHANGE ANYTHING - by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, et al.
~ HOW TO FAIL AT ALMOST EVERYTING AND STILL WIN BIG - by Scott Adams
~ HOW ADAM SMITH CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE - by Russ Roberts
~ THE MYTH OF MULTITASKING - by Dave Crenshaw

24 people found this helpful

Timed Out

This book amounts to a puddle of sludge at the bottom of the organizational bucket.
Irritating narrator.
Take a pass.

4 people found this helpful

Childish both in content and narration

Just another one of those fad self-improvement books.
There's nothing revelatory in there, and the narration is slow and patronizing.

1 person found this helpful

Practical, entertaining and easy to access...

I grabbed this book in response to the "Four Seconds" portion of the title. something it that title made me think it was super short. Instead it was engaging which gave it a sense of brevity. The book itself is full of interesting perspective on taking conscious and deliberate action in order to direct better outcomes. I'm sure I'll listen again soon.

1 person found this helpful

This Book is Packed with Great Content!

Great book that’s full of valuable insights and practical strategies. Love the short chapters and stories.

Not what I expected :)

What I expected was a time management help book, because I desperately need that :) (I think the subtitle was a bit misleading into that assumption). Instead I have listened to so many stories that totally related to my life and have provided me the opportunity to step back, see myself in them and nod in recognition. I have just finished the audio version of the book and, if I have to find one thing, I would say the too mellow voice of the narrator and the pace he was keeping in his talk. I had to put the speed to x1.25 in order to go faster ! Other than that, I highly recommend this book: it doesn't reinvent the wheel; but provides so many useful everyday "a-ha !" moments for both the workplace and personal life.

brilliant text, painful reading

a goldmine of useful insights, strategies and tactics, which apply to all aspects of life. a real shame that Peter did not read himself, as material was not helpfully rendered in this reading.

Couldn't finish it

I can't comment on the content of the book (thus the 3 stars for story), because I was so negatively distracted by the narration. Sorensen has a very nasally voice. That alone isn't the problem- but when you have a nasally voice, if you're not careful you sound like you're whining. And unfortunately, Sorensen seems to intentionally choose to drawl out so many words, in virtually every sentence, that the drawl/nasal combo made him sound like he was constantly whining. I gave it about 45 minutes but just couldn't take it any more.

At least one thing for everyone

There is so much wisdom here that there is something for everyone. I will need to listen again and again to keep improving.

1 person found this helpful

Many thanks for daily changes to be better.

Many thanks for daily changes to be better. I have already implemented separate. thank you

2 people found this helpful