20,000 Days and
Counting: The Crash Course for Mastering Life Right Now is a 2013 Christian
motivational book by Robert D. Smith.
Smith takes, from a Christian worldview, a memento mori,
live-each-day-as-if-it-were-your-last approach to living life with greater
purpose, which includes the pursuit of personal goals, the appreciation of
personal relationships, and the dedication of life to God. Smith also offers advice
on conquering rejection, taking a proactive approach to self-improvement, and
working through a lack of motivation.
This book is extremely short (it’s designed to be read in an
hour), and while Smith offers some planning exercises and steps the reader can
take to live life with more purpose, it nonetheless feels rather general. Some
of Smith’s suggestions are concrete and feasible (for example, his “ten things
you can do now”), but others, like, “Draft your life’s story, then live it,”
may strike the reader as too broad and sentimental to actually sit down and do.
What Smith has to say is generally quite good, even if it’s
nothing new; it’s just that he’s one of those super-intense,
jump-out-of-bed-and-go types that the rest of us can find off-putting – it’s
not so easy, after all, to get from here to there, or else we’d all be like
that. In other words, while it’s relatively easy for the reader to accept Smith’s
life principles and try to remember and implement them, it’s somewhat less
likely that the average reader will run down the field with Smith’s exercises.
In short, then, 20,000
Days and Counting is a helpful but general book; ultimately, how useful it
is to you is going to depend almost entirely on how much you’re willing to put
into it.
RECOMMENDED
* * *
* *
Disclosure of Material
Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com
book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review.
The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance
with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255:
“Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
