ConZentrate: Get Focused and Pay Attention--When Life Is Filled with Pressures, Distractions, and Multiple Priorities

by Sam Horn

If you ever cluttered, scattered, distracted, unfocused, disorganized, preoccupied, overwhelmed, out of control, out of your mind... you can change your life! ConZentrate shows you how to master the art of paying attention, in thirty-five clear, practical, simple ways. Whether it's how to focus on a tedious task when the office is buzzing around you, or how to stop procrastinating, or how to keep your home from being a place of overwhelming clutter-- or ever how to tackle the challenges of A.D.D.-- Sam Horn's user-friendly book will inspire you to learn how to conzentrate, and discover the key to peak performance.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology

368 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2000

About the author

Sam Horn is the founder and CEO of The Intrigue Agency, the Force For Good Project, and the Tongue Fu!® Training Institute. She helps people craft clear, compelling, actionable, additive initiatives, communications, books, pitches, and presentations that scale their impact for good.

Speaking: Three TEDx Talks. Corporate and association clients include Oracle, Accenture, Intel, YPO, Capital One, SXSW, US Embassy in London, Asian Leadership Conference, National Governors Association, and ASAE.

Coaching: Clients include Richard Branson’s New Now leaders, EO Board, TED Fellows, and hundreds of founders, presidents of NSA, ICF, ASAE, SHRM, and Fortune 500 executives. Sam was also the pitch coach for Springboard Enterprises, which has helped entrepreneurs generate $98 billion in funding/valuation.

Writing: Ten books, including POP!, Tongue Fu!®, Someday Is Not a Day in the Week, ConZentrate, What’s Holding You Back?, Talking on Eggshells, and Washington Post bestseller Got Your Attention?

Her books have been published in seventeen languages.

Event planning: Executive director/emcee of the Maui Writers Conference for seventeen years. “Best writers conference in the world.”—Writer’s Digest

LinkedIn Learning Instructor: What do Amazon, Walmart, and KPMG all have in common? They’ve all used Sam’s LinkedIn Learning course as part of their employee training for leadership, communication, customer service, team-building, sales, and professional development.

Force For Good Project Mission: The Force For Good Project was launched as a result of Sam Horn’s 2025 TED Town Hall talk. Its purpose is to support, showcase, and connect individuals who are acting in integrity, making a difference, and creating ripple effects of positive, proactive change.

Want to hire Sam Horn to speak for your event, interview her for your publication or podcast, or serve as your coach/consultant? We welcome the opportunity to work with you. Please reach out to us at Sam@SamHorn.com.

Reviews

[George · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't believe I wasted my T.I.M.E. reading this B.O.O.K.! Or rather, skimming after the first fifty pages. This author uses a number of increasingly disappointing and irritating techniques: first, she uses alternatingly irrelevant and generic quotes (many of which I'm sure you'll have heard before) to both introduce and support her points. Second, when she is advising you (for example) how to avoid distractions, the gist of her advice is "Don't get distracted. If there's a fly buzzing near your head, don't pay any attention. Tell yourself, 'I will not be distracted!'" The most irritating thing about this book, though, are the incessant A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.! One gets the feeling she started with the acronym (T.I.M.E., A.R.D.O.R., they go on and on), then invented her points to fit the mold. It gives the B.O.O.K. a very, VERY hokey/contrived quality. Your T.I.M.E. will be better spent ConZentrating on something E.L.S.E.! This is the kind of book that gives the "self-help" industry a bad reputation.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

ConZentrate offers techniques and skills useful in time management. Sam Horn combines a Zen meditation technique with pithy suggestions to help you reclaim your time.

ConZentrate is full of quotes and tons of acronyms. To be honest, the acronyms started to annoy me. Although it is from 2000, the book is still serviceable.

[James Edward Taylor · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Sam Horn but I couldn't finish this. The endless acronyms and clever buzzwords, probably meant as an aid to retaining the material, are, ironically, a distraction from it.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the quotes the author used to start each chapter. Some are very memorable.