Based on my personal objectives for the year a friend gave me a copy of The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.  It is a great read!  It is relatively short, reads quickly and has enough entertainment value to keep you interested.

What I liked about it was the message.  It centers around the concept of compounding you are familiar with, the compound effect of money.  The fact that money invested over a long period of time compounds interest and builds into a significant sum.  The book challenges you to find those behaviors in life that produce the same impact on your life.  Whether that be fitness, education, leadership, or some other endeavor.

That brings me to the second thing I like about the book.  It recommends systems and provides tools to set up some of those systems.  You then can apply them to your life, your goals and execute the achievements.  Too many business books provide the answer, the path, the one way to succeed with a list of things you must do.  Sure, this book has steps to set up the systems, but the specific behaviors and specific goals are your own.  This book asks better questions than it provides answers, which I believe is much more valuable than just being fed answers.

This book was a great compliment to my objective of building and following strong routines.  That is basically what the book is about.  Setting up those systems of behavior which repeated many times over long periods of time generate staggering results.

I definitely recommend this one.