3.5/5
Short, succinct, and sweet, the book highlights how certain skills are fundamental to any form of success. These 9 skills are divided across the chapters as:
1. Power of observation
2. Power of connecting the dots
3. Power of communication
4. Power of purpose
5. Power of dreams
6. Power of out of the box thinking
7. Power of perseverance
8. Power of deep diving
9. Power of prediction
Each chapter is pre-faced with a quote and a definition of the related terminology of what the author will be discussing. Tripathi then pulls examples of famous figures to solidify his point.
Though the book was well-written and jam packed with fun trivia, there wasn’t any skills discussed that wasn’t obviously needed for success. Tripathi explains why the selected skills are important, but how one can cultivate or develop these skills were lacking. Additionally, I felt that the cherry-picking of famous successful figures was deeply unrelatable for the targeted audience; there was a lack of empirical data to support the laymen or average folks’s success rates when applying aforementioned skills— giving a clear reporting bias to the author’s claim. Lastly, the heavy bias to all things related to India— from discussing the geopolitics, history, and culture— made the book a bit confusing at times. For example, the author uses the sport cricket for multiple of his examples, but he assumes that the audience knows the players, history, and these technical jargons related to the game.