High Performance Habits

How Extraordinary People Become That Way

By: Brendon Burchard

Narrated by: Brendon Burchard

Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

These six habits will make you extraordinary.

After extensive original research and a decade as the world's highest-paid performance coach, Brendon Burchard finally reveals the most effective habits for reaching long-term success. Based on one of the largest surveys ever conducted on high performers, it turns out that just six habits move the needle the most in helping you succeed. Adopt these six habits and you win. Neglect them and life is a never-ending struggle.

We all want to be high performing in every area of our lives. But how? Which habits can help you achieve long-term success and vibrant well-being no matter your age, career, strengths, or personality? To become a high performer, you must seek clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage. This book is about the art and science of how to practice these proven habits.

If you do adopt any new habits to succeed faster, choose the habits in this book. Anyone can practice these habits, and when they do, extraordinary things happen in their lives, relationships, and careers.

Whether you want to get more done, lead others better, develop skill faster, or dramatically increase your sense of joy and confidence, the habits in this book will help you achieve it. Each of the six habits is illustrated by cutting-edge science, thought-provoking exercises, and real-world daily practices you can implement right now.

High Performance Habits is a science-backed, heart-centered plan to living a better quality of life. Best of all, you can measure your progress.

©2017 Hay House (P)2017 Hay House

Skip the First 3 Chapters

If you're even going to attempt to get through this book, skip the first 3 chapters entirely - and then be prepared to skip through big pieces and parts throughout.

The content you want and need is in there, and he has some great insights - but they are hidden between mountains of useless and repetitive information.

Brandon hasn't quite realized yet that unless you're writing an autobiography, the book is not about you. He spends the first three chapters just telling you how marvelous he is and how many people he's worked with and how many bajillion people watch his videos and subscribe to his stuff. He also spends tons of time talking about these "high performers" they've researched and talked to, and gives you a bunch of statistics about them and how great they are. Eventually you start thinking, "Isn't this book supposed to be for me?"

As previously mentioned, there are some great parts with exceptional insights - and I kept wishing for the "Cliff Notes" to download so I could get through the incredible amount of "fluff" (as other reviewers have mentioned). Brandon doesn't seem to have developed a way to bring variety to the way he presents information and concepts. Throughout the book, the structure is the same, with the introduction of an idea, telling you how high performers do it, a few fluff stories, a whole bunch of "me, me, me" stories and examples, and a couple of bullet lists of thoughts or ideas which you could have found on a blog anywhere else.

Brandon, if you or any of your staff read this... keep in mind that people want meat and potatoes (unless they're vegetarians). Don't talk about how great meat and potatoes are, don't talk about how you and other people have meat and potatoes and others don't, don't talk about the statistics of meat and potato eaters compared to non-meat and potato eaters - and especially don't talk endlessly about how you eat your meat and potatoes and how many athletes, celebrities, CEO's and others have eaten meat and potatoes with you.

Talk to the reader, identify with us. Talk to the people that have had meat and potatoes in the past but no longer do, and exactly how they can have them again. Talk to the people that desperately dream of meat and potatoes, and give them the exact plan and the motivation to do that.

There is a bad, bad trend happening in the self-help book world which I am finding simply because of the amount of books I like to read and listen to. That trend is the authors thinking that if they impress us with how great they are, and tell us over and over again how they think and how they do things and how they are successful - without connecting the dots to the listener - that somehow we'll like the book because we the paupers and they are the kings. (Noone wants to disagree with the King, right?)

In the end, the listener doesn't care about you... we care about us. When you align your content and book to focus more on us and less on you - you'll find even greater success than you're currently bragging about.

Brandon, do yourself a favor and listen to or read anything by Brené Brown - sure, we get to know about her - but in a true and authentic way. Brené doesn't talk to her readers from a perspective of "I am here and you are there," which Brandon does FAR too much... she talks to her readers from a perspective of "I'm you, and you're me, and we're right here together."

I really admire Brandon and consider him a mentor from the standpoint of wanting to do and accomplish many of the things he has done. Again, I REALLY DO like the content and I think it's useful, so you'll still get a lot out of the book. But he could deliver the content in a much, much better way and build a true connection with his audience.

What sells this book is the title! Nothing else.

The irony of this book is that it asks you to be high performance person by trying to waste more than 10 hours of your time.

After listening to it for about 1 hour at an accelerated speed, I got nothing from the word salad and began to suspect it was a scam that someone who never made any success before, but becomes successful(i.e. make money) by teaching others how to success.

Luckily, other people had very good comment on this book. So go find a summary and read it to get an idea. Don't waste your time on the whole thing.

This is like the author trying to teach you a recipe that can be finished in 15 minutes. But the author spend 10+ hours telling you how good the recipe is.

One Long Marketing Pitch

On content:
The first hour-plus will loop around the premise of why high performance habits are key to your success followed by Mr. Burchard's case for why he's the trainer to show you how only to be followed by another exhortation of why high performance habits are key. If that sentence drove you a bit batty, imagine having to listen to one elongated intro that extends nearly two chapters. You'll get to Chapter 3, roughly 15:12, before he names the habits that comprise the set.

What might frustrate you: You're advised to take the free performance assessment. Once you run through the questionnaire, you'll be inundated with marketing emails, some of which do not include a link to unsubscribe. (Borderline violation of CAN-SPAM.) The book seems set up to accompany the questionnaire and so you find yourself in this multi-layered ad campaign for his training advisement.

(One irony: He makes a point of how one client wrote to him about how conventional assessments like Myers-Brigg and personal attributes (e.g. gender and race) don't really tell the whole story of personal potential. And yet, on the questionnaire, you'll be asked questions about your race, gender, and marital status.)

On performance:
He has a pretty good reading voice. Unfortunately, he over-performs at times, by effecting the cadence and pitch of certain clients, as with the case of Kate, a female executive (and yet not for John, a male executive). This can across a bit off-putting.

Some good things but lots of fluff

Some good examples but lots of fluff! Lots of stories and examples that just waste time....blah. Just find the summarized book.

Yikes. Wayyyyyyy too much useless fluff.

I couldn't listen to one more word from this book. The first hour or two consists of him just talking about all the research he did for this, and how we might hypothetically be feeling right now. The actual habits are okay, I guess, but this book should have been less than one hour long.

GET TO THE POINT. That's definitely not one of this guy's habits.

Misleading. Author grabbing for your money.

My experience with this book was so unsatisfactory I had to write a review. 7 chapters into into the book and no realistic progression into ways of personal growth. Book was compromised of statements without explaination and a continuous infomercial about taking an online assessment which leads one to pay for courses for self-improvement. The author has a realistic agenda which is grabbing for more of your money and not caring about whether the audience is learning and growing. Do not purchase this book.

Beware of the fake reviews on this book giving 5 stars.

Listen for free. Fun to listen. Great tips.

- This book is free in the author’s podcast channel. I found that out only after I purchased, listened and really enjoyed it. So I highly recommend. Go to The Brandon Show podcast, and it is season 4, according to his info in his tool section on website.
- Great information. Yeah sometimes draggy, but that’s normal for this type of book, otherwise it would be a one page with 10 rules. No one will care. Info won’t sink in.
- As an audio book, since the author is reading it, it is excellent. Really enjoyed listening.
- Now it’s time to implement!

Fan of Brendon but DAMN DRAGGY. Don't recommend.

Not good. Draggy and dry. I am pretty disappointed as I am a fan of Brendon

DON‘T BUY! IT‘S A MARKETING TRAP!

I really like to read non-fiction book and care about ‚high performance’ so I thought I‘d give it a shot. I wish I would have read the reviews properly in advance! The whole book only serves one single purpose: to promote the author and get you on his website to buy more paid content and sign up for newsletters. He wastes chapter after chapter after chapter with fluff and constantly brags about himself without getting to any point and has very - very little original information that isn‘t in one of the all-time classics of the genre.
Completely annoying voice to top it of.
Stop wasting readers‘ time!
Readers: DO NOT BUY IT! WASTE OF TIME!

Very usefull information:)

Thank you for this book I enjoyed it:)
The first hour feels slow but then goes straight to details after so stick with it.

Nothing new here!

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

New material would have been good and to have been delivered at a faster more concise pace. It was really dull.

What was most disappointing about Brendon Burchard’s story?

He took a good hour at the beginning to get to even explain what the habits were. I know now that's because they are nothing that anyone in personal development won't already know.

How could the performance have been better?

Faster, more engaging, better stories, and having something to actually say instead of constant redirects to various of his websites to get you into his funnel.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from High Performance Habits?

All of it, he isn't as engaging as Robbins, as energetic as Cardone, or original as Rohn.

Any additional comments?

I like Brendon and whilst I have only seen a few of his videos I always thought he had a lot to offer. In this book he doesn't do that. In the genre it is slow paced, dull and nothing original. He gives a vignette early on where an old client asked him to give him the gold or take the hi-way, well there was no gold in this Brendon so time to take the hi-way!

Waffle

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I invested about 90 minutes in to this book and found myself getting increasingly irritated. There is so much unnecessary waffle it is staggering. I get the impression this guy has some serious hang ups around his own personal credibility. He goes on and on about his experience and accomplishments and expertise that it rapidly gets tedious. When someone feels compelled to promote themselves this hard it is very hard not to mistrust them.

Then you find yourself thinking that no one that has any experience of dealing with successful, high achieving people could talk like this. No serious person could ever put up with all of the nonsense just to get to six key points

There is probably some useful content here but if there is, it is so buried in a load of repeated boring chest beating that for me it will remain undiscovered.

The irony is that he even says that his original draft was 1400 pages and that it was challenging to reduce. My advise would be to try to boil it down to 14 pages then he might be on to a winner.

Would you ever listen to anything by Brendon Burchard again?

No.

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Brendon Burchard?

The content not the narration is the issue.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from High Performance Habits?

I would reduce everything by 90%

Sometimes the lessons get lost in the marketing

There are some nice principles in this book and some good habits you can definitely apply for results, but you have to get through a lot of hype, marketing, credibility set up and self-aggrandisement before you get to the meaty stuff. That has caused me to give up before now with some of Brendon Burchard's books, but this one I persisted.
I don't know that anything here is earth-shatteringly brilliant but certainly, they are principles and habits that we can all benefit from. There's a lot of unnecessary padding in this book, again a feature I find common with Brendon Burchard books. The struggle I have with this author is that what he teaches is generally good and useful but it's so verbose and full of the humble brag that it becomes off-putting. I think Brendon is a great person to learn from but please don't copy his style. This book could have benefitted from being at least half as long.

The unbearable beginning

After an hour of being told relentlessly and repeatedly of how amazing this book is with minimal substance I gave up. I figured that when someone has to sell their book this hard it probably isn’t that good. I had other books of similar topic I’d be better of spending my time on. The author is unbearable.

One hour in, still listening to a sales pitch

Nothing but a terrible sales pitch for the guys other services. Turned it off inside the first hour. Won’t be listening to any more.

waste of time just a constant repeat.

That isn't any depth to it, it's a waste of time he repeats and repeats, I got this boom on an offer I'm glad I didn't waste my money on it. It's CRAP.

read the chimp paradox that's is key to habits.

An Thinly Disguised Exercise in Self-Promotion

After 10hrs and 35mins waiting for the book to turn the corner, I am now going to find it hard to stay objective. I am well aware that the author would no doubt disagree with what I am about write, and class the spirit and tone of the review as 'bad energy' or something similar, but frankly he spends so much of this book listing all of the reasons why you should listen to his advice (and give him your email, and watch his videos), that a little re-balancing seems necessary, if I only for my own catharsis.

As the title of this review suggests, this book is about one thing, Brendon Burchard. So very much of this book is spent talking about his career, his upbringing or anecdotes from his life that he deems to be relevant to the framework. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that he himself, has himself insists on narrating it, and in the style of an online keynote to-boot! His forced laughter at his own poor stabs at humor is eye-wateringly annoying. So many of the chapters in this book are populated by paragraphs that are essentially just lists of the authors accolades, as measured in number of video views, financial compensation, or clients he has coveted, crises he has resolved, difficulties he has overcome, then usually concluded with an almost nauseatingly insincere reference to how "blessed" he has been to have achieved such lofty highs. It does genuinely feel like the author did not see the need to research many other examples outside of himself and his experience. The '3 years' it took to research this book could only have been 3 years of thinking about not much more than himself.

Of course one could forgive, and even expect these things from the self-improvement genre. The problem is that the once Brendan has convinced you to believe, or at least be open to, what he has to say, the lack of utter lack of clarity with which he goes to tried to explain his (not-so-complicated) system of 6 key habits is infuriating. He jumps from self-aggrandising anecdote to the 'hard-science' and 'data' amassed mostly, it would seem, by his beloved "high-performance" institute (an apparently pseudo-academic organisation who's main aim seems to be giving Brendan and his many premium products an air of academic and scientific validity, though even a cursory dig through the website finds his claims about it difficult to substantiate). He mentions his other books numerous times and constantly directs you to the HPI website to take assessments or access tools but which in truth is clearly designed as an email capture tool. This by his own admission, is his main marketing strategy. This is book is about why you need buy his other books, and buy in to his online eco-system.

This book may be a #1 New York Times Best Seller, but it seems to have become so in the same way that Taylor Swift's music video become the most watched on YouTube, through clever marketing and the viral effect that they spark, and not because of the substance of their content. High Performance Habits, The High Performance Institute, His High Performing Clients and yes, a High Performing Marketer, all helped to legitimise and sell this book, but in the end, the author failed in the first of those crucial '5 moves' in the writing of a bestselling book, that of actually producing a good book before looking to sell one.

OK but could be better

Main issues here are...

1. the too - deliberate - delivery - of - the - author. I write it this way to illustrate my point. Hesitation for effect now and then is fine but it becomes annoying.
2. content is OK but there's a lot of waffle leading up to and after the actual points being made and the advice being given. Audio could have been reduced by at least 25% in total with some judicious editing.
3. slightly holier than thou attitude with it's emphasis on 'service to others' and spirituality and healthy living. I know they have a place but bear in mind not everyone's a believer in a higher power
4. frequent references to support tools being available from a website which doesn't exist.

All that said, I'd probably listen again if push came to shove.

A bit slow to start with

The habits themselves are quite interesting if you can manage to get through a few hours of repetition of the very same ideas again and again. Especially in the introduction it feels like hours upon hours of just trying to make you excited and interested in the ideas. I bought the book, I'm already interested.

Enjoyed

I enjoyed this book 😄. I wasn't very sure at the beginning but after few chapters it started to capture my attenuation.