A self-made Arizona businessman who has worked hard to improve and prosper in his own life sets out to share his hard-won life lessons in FINALLY!.
The author, Paul Skornik, doesn’t offer much detail about his business, beyond that it provided a living for his large family and financial peace of mind while he cared for his beloved late wife. Some readers might appreciate his straightforward attitude and find some genuine insights. Unfortunately, on the whole, the book falls short as self-help.
Among Skornik’s useful “truisms” is the idea that most people’s problems tend to repeat, so dealing with a single instance is “reactionary.” Instead, he advises drilling down to identify the underlying causes of your problems and trying to eliminate them. In an interesting chapter about childhood “uncorrected,” he takes the American educational system to task for training students to find “the one correct answer’ and thus never develop the resourcefulness and mental energy for true problem-solving.
Other useful takeaways include a structured method for dealing with communication problems and some career advice: The determinant of your income is how easily replaceable you or your business/service is, so work hard to be the best.
Unfortunately, perseverance is needed to find these nuggets because the writing lacks crispness and color, e.g.: “How can anyone use an example of correct logic to prove that some other blatantly incorrect logic is correct?” Or: “Only a very few people don’t need to change their thinking because those very few people live lives in which they’re entirely happy and feel nothing needs improvement.”
The text would benefit from a tight edit and some lively examples instead of many comments about public policy. Frequent remarks that taxpayers pay for the consequences of other people’s bad decisions and “selfish indulgences” make the book ultimately sound more soapbox than self-help.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
