Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life

by Howard Stevenson and Laura Nash

Book Overview

In Just Enough, top Harvard professors offer a revealing, research-based look at the true nature of professional success, helping people everywhere live more rewarding and satisfying lives. True professional and personal satisfaction seems more elusive every day, despite a proliferation of gurus and special methods that promise to make it easy. They conclude that many of the problems of success today can be traced back to unrealistic expectations and misconceptions about what success is and what constitutes it. The authors show where the happiest and most well-balanced among us are focusing their energy, and why, to help readers find more balance and satisfaction in their lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471714402
• ISBN13: 9780471714408
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful message for the modern business people

Nash and Stevenson suggest us a nice wisdom that all of us can apply in our lives. Especially, this book reminds us how to balance our lives between materialistic value and eternal legacies. As a current MBA student, I recommend this book to all other MBA students who want to balance their lives.

A realistic metaphor for enduring success

Even as we are constantly being pulled in several directions due to competing responsibilities, we all struggle to achieve balance in our lives. Some people seek quiet time to keep things in perspective- they read spiritual books, some meditate while others engage in an enduring hobby- there is a sense that we need to do something more than just our daily jobs in the best possible way or earning the highest possible bonus! This book acknowledges the challenges of everyday life- about conventional notions of success in terms of achievement and money and seeks to suggest a way- a lens to help us navigate through our struggles at different stages of our lives. The kaleidescope is a very realistic metaphor to look at different responsibilities we have at different times not as competing but in some way complementing each other to add to the richness of our experience. The authors contend that enduring success is all about keeping four levers in balance- happiness, achievement, significance and legacy. Too often, we concentrate only on the first two and find our success having a 'hollow' ring to it! After a long time, I have come across a book that is not overtly 'preachy' but addresses the challenges of everyday life in a pragmatic manner. Good work!

Grateful Reader

This book is a most thoughtful and thorough look at that elusive feeling called fulfillment. It helped me find peace with decisions that I have made in the past, and will be a resource for the decisions I make in the future. I wish I had read it as a younger man as I was struggling with being pulled in so many directions. I gave a copy to my daughter and son-in-law who just had their first baby hoping it will guide them parent my first grandchild. The information is presented in an analytical style that I enjoyed very much. It is the most helpful guide I know for self-reflection and I strongly recommend it to almost everyone I care about. Honorable Robert H. BohnMassachusetts Superior Court

Great book!

I read a very interesting book this weekend "Just Enough" by Howard Stevenson. I liked it so much that I ordered a copy for each member of my family, spouses included. I recommend it.Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien

A must read for every business person today!

Kudos to Howard Stevenson and Laura Nash for writing about such an important topic. This book challenges our conventional understandings of success, and most importantly it gives us a blue print for finding happiness and peace of mind. I like that the book explores both the business and personal aspects of creating enduring success. This is one of those books that you read over and over, and each time you do you get even more out of it.