20,000 Days and Counting – Robert D. Smith (Thomas Nelson)

It’s fairly easy to understand that when you walk into any library or book store in world you will find shelves if not entire sections of books insipidly labeled Self Help. It’s easy to be unhappy and miserable; most people don’t need a guide book to learn how to do it. If one was truly helping themselves, then they wouldn’t need a book to guide them.

I wouldn’t necessarily label Robert Smith’s book 20,000 Days and Counting “self help”, as much as a reminder that you can choose the life you want to lead. The misconception that most people have is that life dictates how they live, rather than they themselves choosing the direction their life takes.

Groundbreaking? No not really. Smith really runs on a familiar path, in short, easy to read and grasp book. Where he is at his best is when Smith talks about living each day with “maximum intensity”. Life is full of distractions and time wasters which can drag us down, Smith really lays out a guidepost to focus with a new intensity.

 One of the down falls of most books in this genre is that they tend to drag on and lose reader focus and end up on the shelf gathering dust. Smith gives the reader prescriptive to dos that are easy to put into practice today…while the count up clock is ticking.