By: Suzy Welch
Reviewed By: Glain Roberts-McCabe
The Premise: According to the book cover, 10-10-10 promises a life-transforming idea. A fairly hefty assertion, one might say. In a nutshell, 10-10-10 is a structure to help you think through the consequences of your decisions in the short-term (next 10 minutes), mid-term (10 months) and long-term (10 years). Through a variety of applications – career, family, parenting, worklife – Suzy Welch walks you through how to use 10-10-10 to analyze your choices and make decisions that you can live with. Expanded from an article originally written for “O” magazine, this book is filled with Welch’s own personal applications and stories which help illustrate the 10-10-10 point.
The Bottom-line: There’s no question that the concept of 10-10-10 is clever, but it probably doesn’t warrant a 200 plus page book to outline it. A reprint of the O Magazine article would probably have been sufficient. But then again, a magazine article doesn’t a book tour make. 10-10-10 is a great provocation and – for overly spontaneous types – probably a great “slow down” mechanism. The key is to be grounded in your values for the process to be truly “life-transforming”. And that’s where – in this reader’s opinion – the main gap exists in the book. Although Welch touches on some questions that can help you excavate your values, a simple values inventory would have been a useful addition. 10-10-10 probably isn’t the silver bullet it’s being hyped to be, but if it helps you make one better decision, it’s probably worth having in your toolkit.
