In August of this year, The Energy Project CEO Tony Schwartz posted a blog on the Harvard Business Review called "Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything."  The response was stunning, demonstrating that it struck a chord with readers around the world. The post rose to number one on HBR's Most Read list, and remains there today, almost five months later. It became the Harvard Business Review’s number one most read blog post of 2010.

Here were, very simply, the six keys he laid out:

1. Pursue what you love.
2. Do the hardest work first. 
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses.
5. Take regular renewal breaks.
6. Ritualize practice, because will and discipline are highly overrated.

Read the full post here

So why was this post HBR’s number one for 2010?

The idea that anyone can achieve excellence at anything both excites and terrifies us. It opens up a world of opportunity, as well as a possible slew of regrets. If we'd pushed harder, if we'd practiced that extra hour a day, could we have been like Albert Einstein or John Lennon or Michael Jordan? The answer is: very likely.

Even more challenging, is it still possible now, ten, twenty years after the "experts" say we should have started? If we all have the potential for greatness, then it is our own fault that we haven't achieved it, but it is also within the reach of each of us. This is both extremely exhilarating and tremendously daunting.

Analyzing the response to this blog, we realized that while the original title of our book, The Way We're Working Isn't Working, laid out a very real problem for workers around the world, it didn't articulate the true promise of the book: that by learning how to work the right way, you can achieve excellence in any area that interests you. Forget "playing to your strengths" or "focusing on your talent."

We have re-titled the book Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Live in paperback to accurately convey the outcome you can expect from reading it: a systematic approach to deliberately strengthening and renewing your four core capacities so you can ultimately achieve sustainable excellence at anything.

The paperback will be released on February 1. Pre-order it now!