I have decided to write this book to make it more helpful and faster acting for people living in more uncertain economic times. This book is for ambitious people who want to get ahead. If this is the way you think and feel, you are the person for whom this book is written. The ideas contained in the pages ahead will save you years of hard work in achieving the goals that are most important to you.After countless talks on various themes, if I was given only five minutes to speak to you and I could convey only one thought that would help you to be more successful, I would tell you this: "Write down your goals, make plans to achieve them, and work on your plans every single day.Your time and life are precious. The biggest waste of time and life is to spend years accomplishing something that you could have achieved in only a few months. By following the proven processes of goal setting and goal achieving laid out in this book, you will accomplish vastly more in a shorter period than you ever imagined before. The speed at which you move upward will amaze you and all the people around you.Follow the Leaders, Not the FollowersBy following these simple and easy-to-apply methods and techniques, you can move quickly to where you want to go in the months and years ahead. You can transform your experience from frustration to one of affluence and satisfaction. You can go far beyond your friends and family and achieve more in life than most other people you know.I have found, over and over, that a person of average intelligence with clear direction will run circles around a genius who is not sure what he or she really wants.This book contains the distilled essence of all that I have learned in the areas of success, achievement, and goal attainment. By following the steps explained in the pages ahead, you will move to the front of the line in life.This book will help you become a more successful businessperson, partner, coach, parent, colleague, student or friend. It will help you enjoy life more too.It's about what the research says successful people really do, not what they might tell you they do to be successful. Even if their personal insights were accurate, what they do may not work for you.This book gives us a much more objective and reliable picture of how humans succeed than an autobiography or a magazine article profiling one person.This book provides us with new insights and ideas we can use every waking moment. It confirms that some of what we've been told about such things as motivation, achieving goals and coping with stress checks out. But the book also shows that we've been fed myths and exaggerations about human behaviour.Where it's relevant, I've added some observations and experience of my own and my friends. Here's a necessary question before we start: What do we mean by successful people?Let's acknowledge that public recognition and wealth are narrow definitions of success.Many highly successful people aspire to neither, but become the most valued members of their organisations and communities.For others, their success may be largely confined to the family. They make inspirational parents, form close and enduring relationships with their partners and take pleasure in helping others succeed.