I HAVE READ THE BOOK A NUMBER OF TIMES. I HAVE PURCHASED A DOZEN OR SO COPIES..GAVE THEM TO FRIENDS. I EVEN TRIED THE PART IN THE BOOK WHERE WE BAKED COOKIES..TOOK THEM TO NEIGHBORS..INVITING THEM OVER FOR FAMILY NIGHT. I WROTE A BOOK INSPIRED BY SOME OF HIS STORIES..INCLUDING TWO POEMS ABOUT TOPICS IN THE BOOK. I HAVE PARTICIPATED IN MANY MISSIONARY AND YOUNG MEN ACTIVITIES..USING THESE PRECEPYS.. NICE JOB BROTHER SMITH. THE TITLE OF MY WORK..IS THE CONVERSION OF BIG FOOT! RICK C. JONES BILLINGS, MONTANA

This book by Hyrum W. Smith would be equally at home in the business or self-help section of a bookstore. Its message is as applicable to a CEO of a large company as it is to a recent high school graduate. Smith liberally peppers the book with anecdotes. These amusing stories provide interesting breaks from the instructional tone he uses in describing the ten natural laws for managing your time and your life. They also help put his abstract concepts - like the Franklin Reality Model and Personal Productivity Pyramid - into an easier-to-understand context. The stories illustrate the concepts of the book in terms everyone can understand. We [...] recommend this useful book to executives who want to learn more about managing their time effectively.

An incredible tool. Do not read this book and expect it to change your life. It is a tool used along with the Franklin Day Planner System. These together have changed my life. I have never been more productive and successful in my life. I have accomplished more in my career and my personal life than I had ever imagined.

If you buy only one self help book this year then this is the one.

This is the best self change book ever! I have read virtually everything you can imagine (& I even used the Waitely & Robbins tapes too), from Covey to Robbins, from Carnegie, Clement Stone,Swartz, You name it I have tried it.

Ok what makes this so good?

In one book of 217 pages you will by the time you finish:

Understand that you cannot control time but can control events (This is very powerful)

You need to understand what your values are to lay the faoundation for personal fulfilment, two powerful illustrations are given

Understanding that you get peace when what you do daily links with your values (This was an eye opener the 1st day I implemented it)

The need to get out of the comfort zone to reach any significant goal. (Yes its hard but the story of the labourer turned Dentist is amazing)

Daily planning leads to results from focused efforts

Each one of the chapters I read was the equal of the best books by other authors. This book really gets you going and implementing.
This guru developed the Franklin Planner that is still used 2 years later by 90% of the people who buy the planner. If you love Covey but find it difficult to implement I believe this book (By his business partner) is for you. I intend to do a further write up as I use what I have learnt.

I believe that this gives you the tools that you can embellish later. The main advantage here is that you will apply what you have learnt. I recommend it highly.

This book's target audience is stressed-out business people. So for them, I bet it is great. But right now I am a stay at home Mom, so coming up with a Mission Statement is not high on my priority list. But I really enjoyed the stories about Winston Churchill and Mother Theresa, so I gave the book one star per person. This book would be a great starting point to help you figure out what is most important to you if you haven't done anything like that before with your life. On a skiing scale, it would be for novices. I've been doing a lot of work on myself lately, so I'm an intermediate and I didn't get much out of it. One book that I did enjoy was Dr. Phil McGraw's Life Strategies. It's a quick read because he writes in terms everyone can understand, and it gave me a lot to think about.

Hyrum Smith does an excellent job portraying the tools we all need to use in our life if we are to succeed. As I just happen to live in the same area as he does it would be wonderful to run into him someday. Most of the material he's used in this book has been used (either books or tapes) by him before. However, like any positive material, it is all worth repeating. The only drawback to this book (four stars) is that it dwells so much on Hyrums experiences- rather than giving usable advice to its readers (the old WIIFM). This book did leave me with the warm fuzzies, which by the way, is one of the ways I rate a book. If you are a reader of self-help books, this is a winner.

The concepts presented in this book have completely turned my life around. I've tried numerous "self-help" or "self-improvement" books but most tend to focus on the problems you have in your life, rather than your core values. In What Matters Most, Hyrum Smith brings these values to the forefront and helps you focus on the important things in your life.

It's unfortunate some people are not happy with the book - especially when they haven't even looked at it! While some of the concepts may have been published elsewhere, this book presents them in a wonderful and easy-to-read format. What Matters Most certainly doesn't rehash The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People - rather it compliments it quite well. In fact, I've started to read The 7 Habits book again and it all makes much more sense now.

I highly recommend this book to everyone.

It doesn't give you any real information other than that you should buy all the other books from Franklin Covey or attend their seminars. If you are interested in this kind of stuff you are better off with First Thing First or What Matters Most. Also check out Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Hyrum Smith did have a couple of gems, such as "Learn to say NO!", in this CD audio book, but not enough to require two CDs. The gladiator analogy, although interesting from a historical perspective, is repeated too many times to be useful. He did demonstrate that he understood the effects of information overload, but really didn't offer much to counter it, other than a long sales pitch to buy the Franklin-Covey products.

I liked the idea of the gladiator/free lancer profesionally trained soldier as modern worker and have read/listened to a couple of books using the same subject (Live Rich by Stephen Pollan was the best). Hyrum Smith has taken the topic and just ruins any thought of businessman/woman as warrior. It is bland as plain generic vanilla and not as motivational or informative as expected. The first CD was a re-hash of the Franklin/Covey books written before with some statistics about information overload thrown in and the second has about 15 minutes of usable information. I have read Hyrum's work before and honestly I expected better.

Here's the short version: 1. Life used to be much more simple. 2. Soldiers used to use long swords and shields until the romans introduced the short sword and shield. 3. Use whatever tools make you effective in business and check out my website to buy them. the end.