This was a great book to remind us that we don’t need to be an expert at everything. It is just fine to have some knowledge of areas without having to know all the things.

I liked the system the author uses throughout the book amd will follow these steps in areas I have ann8ntwrst in getting better at, but not needing to be the best at .

They say it's better to be a master of one rather than a jack of all trades. This book shows that with the way the world is, you can disagree - and do everything well!

I really enjoy Pat Flynn's casual and conversational writing style! At first, I wasn't sure that I'd enjoy this book. I assumed that it would be yet another "quick and dirty" list written by a rich white man vaguely outlining how you too can be successful and how easy it is!

I appreciated the honest way that Flynn discusses how nothing is easy, but it can be possible if you put in the work. While it wasn't revolutionary, it was REAL.

As someone that has read a lot about "being the best at what you do" books, this was a new approach to being proficient at something without having to be the best. I didn't know it was sort of a way of life called Generalism but I enjoyed reading about it.

Pat Flynn has a very friendly way of telling his story in this book. It was like listening to a friend talk to you about his life experiences and giving you advice on what worked for him. I'm aware that not everything he said it's applicable to me, for example, but it was nice hearing what he had to say.

While reading this book you have to keep an open mind because it goes against most of the things we are taught since childhood. My parents, for example, taught me to give my 100% into everything I did but Pat says to only "perfected" or give it 80%. He heavily relies on the 80/20 rule.

As a blogger I can personally see where he's coming from. You can't give your 100% to everything all the time, but you can give it your 80%. In my particular case, I found out that this rule is applicable and reliable.

Some moments when he used the Generalism and didn't say it wasn't for everyone, is the reason why my review is not a 5 star one. You can generalize your advice all you want but make room for people that don't agree with you. There were few of these moments but they bugged me.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book and I got the audible version. He narrates and the whole book is 4 hrs and 23 mins long but I'm giving it a go and I liked it better than the written version.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book provided by Netgalley. The opinions expressed are my own.

Kind of the antithesis of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, Pat Flynn's How to Be Better at Almost Everything claims to teach you how to be a generalist using "skill stacking", applying existing knowledge instead of specializing, to master everything from fitness to guitar. He includes checklists of daily routines, workouts, meditation, and more. This book is trying to be too many things at once, and the author--writing in first person--includes his personal thoughts on the existence of God, eating habits, and philosophy. I'm not sure what the takeaway is supposed to be for readers.

How to Be Better at Almost Everything takes an intriguing premise on honing skills. Flynn claims that reaching 80% mastery in a given skill and stacking it with others will lead to success. I really enjoyed the book, it was a quick read, and I'll consider Flynn's advice as I work to improve my skills.

Many thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

I've always liked the idea of Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none so the title of this book really spoke to me. You read books like Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" that talk about the merits of becoming an expert at something but there aren't a lot of books (at least that I've seen) about the idea of generalism. So this was something I was excited about reading.
I have a feeling that regular readers of Pat Flynn will like the style of writing for this. It did not resonate with me at all. The vast majority of the story examples of how these principles work were about him and how it worked for him. Well, how does skill-stacking work in general? Where are the studies that show it works for the general populace? And why is there a mixture of "we" and "you" in the instructional part of the series? If the book focused less on the author and more on how these skills could help the reader, I would have liked it more.

Two stars
This book came out January 29
ARC kindly provided by publisher and NetGalley

The first thing I noticed about Pat Flynn’s style of writing was that it was very casual. He would throw in a bit of humor here and there and that was what made this book easy to relate to. The idea behind generalism is not a new one but one that is rarely written about in a good self-help book. This is the whole premise behind //How To Be Better At Almost Everything//. As Pat Flynn describes it, this book is about “becoming good or great at many things and at least fairly competent at (almost) everything else, and then learning to combine abilities to form a competitive advantage while at the same time finding total and complete fulfillment in life.” He does a great job of explaining why this method works and gives solid examples of successful people of today and the past who have used this method to become the top performer in their game. What Pat said in this book really resonated with me and at times I thought he was actually talking directly to me. As a young child, my mom told me I wasn’t good at just one thing, that I was mediocre. As I grew up I realized this wasn’t a bad thing. I knew a lot about a lot and became better at the things I liked and as an adult, outsourced the things I didn’t really care about. This is what generalism is all about. Taking all of the different skills, all the life lessons, all the mistakes made, and putting them all together to make one big, happy life for yourself. As a personal trainer, I also connected with the fact that Pat is a fitness guru and many of his examples were fitness-related. I guess you could say he was speaking my language. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get ahead in their game and really figure out how to reach their goals without wasting anymore precious time. This book is not like other self-help books.

A lot of us would want to be known as someone who’s truly great at one thing. But because of some reason or another, most of us don’t really get to achieve that level of greatness. Author Pat Flynn, in his book “How to Be Better at Almost Everything,” shares his secrets to learning, how to combine interests, so we could be better than most people in any field.

As a generalist myself, I appreciate his insights. Having many interests, I know I can’t be “the best” at one thing, but I’d like to be good at many things. In this fast-paced, constantly changing, technology-centric world we live in, it pays to be a multi-skilled generalist.

Flynn’s thoughts on skill stacking, repetition and resistance are valuable in today’s world.

We all want to be better at what we do. It's the appeal that self-help books sell themselves with and the main offer of the book How To Be Better At (Almost) Everything: Learn Anything Quickly, Stack Your Skills, Dominate. The problem is, this book really needs the very thing is claims to offer, as it's not even close to on-track.

How To Be Better At (Almost) Everything

While we'd all like to be better at many of the things we do, the promise of How To Be Better At (Almost) Everything by Pat Flynn is so off the mark that it's not even worth the read. It's filled with advice that goes against what countless others have offered. While a majority shouldn't be trusted simply because they're a majority, the success and following those folks have found lends far more to their advice than any offered in this book.

Here are just some of the issues with the "advice" given throughout the book.

Brimming With Bad Advice

Despite the piles of research on the benefits of specialization, a key principal of the book is that it's better to be good at many things than great at one.

The author takes a narrow-minded view of specialization in believing that to specialize means you can only be great at one thing, rather than great at many things which add up to an even larger whole.

Stories are related in a way only high school kids tell them. "He said this. I said that. He told me this. I replied this." There's a reason people don't generally tell stories in this manner. They're hard to follow and sound silly.

Far Less Than Everything

While the title mentions "almost everything", the author talks about nearly nothing but working out and taekwondo. Only on rare occasion are any other examples mentioned. At one point "business" is given as an example, without specificity beyond that.

This book is all about Pat Flynn. You'll hear constant stories about him. It's like Tony Robins in a late-night motivational infomercial, without the fame, fortune, or successful track record. Unless you're already a member of his fan-club, you'll quickly get tired of hearing about him in less-than interesting stories.

Not Pushing Enough

The author argues that you should only try to be at very most, 80% good at something. The extra 20% does little to move the needle and shouldn't be invested in. But there's a big problem with that limit.

If we look at his countless workout-related examples, we see the issue. You can never improve if you only do 80%. Pushing your muscles to 80% when lifting will never increase your lifts with time. There's a reason that weight lifters push themselves near or to exhaustion when they lift. No athlete does just 80% to improve.

After going on about this 80/20 rule early on, the author himself talks about the need to push yourself to get better. 80% isn't pushing yourself.

Would you want to go through life knowing you only ever accomplished 80% of your potential? That'd be pretty sad.

Failing To Be Better

Improvement is an important part of life and there are countless strategies to grow our own abilities. Sadly, How To Be Better At (Almost) Anything fails to offer anything meaningful to advancing ourselves. It takes a short view of the opportunities available to us and dispenses bad advice. Look elsewhere for enlightenment.

The premise of this book is that to be better at most things you have to combine and stack skills,and you do so by using 5 principles.
1-Analyze what steps you need to achieve your goal
2-Become a short term specialist in each one of them
3-Stop improving one step when you are at 80% mastery,then just do maintenance on it while you focus on the next one
4-Integrate the steps by practicing them contextually
5-Repeat and increase resistance

I found it intriguing,specially the cut-off rule at 80% to avoid too much specialization,and believe the author has written a useful book that will help those interested in improving their general level of skill acquisition.

On the negative,the book is repetitive,could have been shortter and more specific and the author should have explained his credentials way deeper than he did.And for this,I detract one star.

Is the book worth reading and useful?Yes...4 Stars

Disclaimer: I'm still reading the book so this is not a finished review. But... first, I can breath a sigh of relief a a long-term generalist there is finally a book that understands ... ME! I grew up at a time when generalism was frowned upon in the working world, whereas now generalists are needed more than ever. As a customer services manager I must look at finance, make reports, deal with customer complaints (from a wide range of people) and I have done well at this because - I have a lot of general knowledge of how to do things.

This book breaks down why that is useful and how to use these 5 principles of generalism to stay head of the curve. No-doubt some people will hate this book as being a specialist is still a doctrinal necessity for certain professions such as doctor or lawyer.

Ironically, at this stage of my reading I am finding the information - rather general - and I hope as I read further there will be specific processes to improve my skill-sets. But, at this point - it's good to be understood!