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The Sixty-Second Motivator
Have you ever had trouble sticking to a diet? Regularly exercising? How about difficulty saving more money and spending less? These are exactly the kind of everyday problems that "The Sixty Second Motivator" is designed to tackle. Using a short story to demonstrate its research-tested principles, you will quickly discover the two secrets of building human motivation, and learn precisely how to apply them to your own particular problems. Written in simple language, "The Sixty Second Motivator" is a brief, easy-to-read book that rapidly gives you the tools you need to motivate yourself to do just about anything. And best of all, it's practical, it's based on research, and it works. Jim Johnson, P.T., is a physical therapist who has spent over fourteen years treating both inpatients and outpatients with a wide range of pain and mobility problems. He has written many books based completely on published research and controlled trials, including The Multifidus Back Pain Solution, Treat Your Own Knees, and The No-Beach, No Zone, No-Nonsense Weight Loss Plan: A Pocket Guide to What Works. His books have been translated into other languages and thousands of copies have been sold worldwide. Besides working full-time as a clinician in a large teaching hospital and writing books, Jim Johnson is a certified Clinical Instructor by the American Physical Therapy Association and enjoys teaching physical therapy students from all over the United States.
- GenresNonfiction
80 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 2006
2 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
About the author
Jim Johnson
30 books4 followersJim Johnson, P.T. is a physical therapist who has spent over 25 years treating both inpatients and outpatients with a wide range of pain and mobility problems. He has written many books based completely on published research and controlled trials. His books have been translated into other languages, and thousands of copies have been sold worldwide.
Besides working full-time as a clinician in a large teaching hospital and writing books, Jim is a certified Clinical Instructor by the American Physical Therapy Association and enjoys teaching physical therapy students from all over the United States.
Besides working full-time as a clinician in a large teaching hospital and writing books, Jim is a certified Clinical Instructor by the American Physical Therapy Association and enjoys teaching physical therapy students from all over the United States.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 2, 2012
The Sixty-Second Motivator (2006) is the first book I’ve come across since I’ve started reviewing books that I’ve had mixed thoughts about. Honestly, the book has a lot going for it, and I would probably give it to a friend to read, but I don't suggest you spend your hard earned money on it when there is better information available on the internet for FREE.
In a nutshell, the book is in the form of a short story about a young physical therapy student who wants to know how to motivate his patients to move around and stuff. He hears about this legendary therapist known as ‘the sixty-second motivator’, earned from his reputation in having the ability to motivate anyone to do anything in exactly one minute or less. Young student meets legendary therapist, and then the rest of the book follows the two as the therapist attempts to motivate old people to walk around, while the young whippersnapper marvels in his glory. Oh, and it’s a very quick read too, with about 10 or 20 pages of information spread out to about 80 thanks to it’s big text – a trick we all learned in primary school.
“Well, let’s just say at this point I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Oh boy,” said the patient. “I guess give me the bad news first.” (p. 53)
In light of the above quote from the book in question, I will begin this review by outlining my disappointments before I branch out into it’s strengths. Naturally we like to hear our news in this order, so I will comply. Funnily enough, the book’s first weakness could also be considered by some to be it’s strength – the book is too simple in it’s exploration of a very complex subject such as motivation. Rather than explain the underlying reasons why we become motivated to make a change, the book instead hammers two basic methods for motivating people, and never really explains why the motivation occurs in the first place. Firstly, you should know that the book’s definition of motivation is as follows:
"Motivation can be thought of as how ready a person is to change. Therefore: A highly motivated is very ready to change. While a poorly motivated person is not ready to change."
Pretty simple right? Well get used to it, as that’s about as tech as this book gets.
The book stresses that only two things are necessary in order to motivate someone to do something, they are:
Importance - increasing importance of changing a behaviour creates more motivation.
Confidence - increasing your confidence that you can change a behaviour creates more motivation.
Ok, fair enough. The next problem with the book is that it uses poor examples of how this can be used to motivate a person. Seeing as the author is a physical therapist, all of his examples pretty much revolve around old men and women who don’t want to do their exercises. It is difficult to apply these scenarios to more realistic situations where one would need to be motivated, and honestly, the book doesn’t offer the reader any motivation to try and modify the examples to fit their own. The next problem I have with this book is the editing, I know this won’t be a problem for many of you, so I won’t stress it, but I found a lot of grammatical errors and places where the flow of the writing was affected by poor choice of words; it was as though a child had written the book for a school project, and had never read it twice to make sure it was up to standard. Considering how short the book is, and the fact that it is asking people to pay money to read it, there is no excuse and it loses points in my book. If I was marking this book as a school assignment, I’d probably give it an F for editing.
Another problem I have with the book is it’s lack of research. The writer makes almost no effort to produce any research to back up his findings. There is one stage in the book where the protagonist looks up some psychological databases on the computer and finds a really crappy experiment where smokers are assigned to two groups, one group is told to quit smoking as it’s bad for their health (which they obviously already knew), while the other group is motivated by professionals to quit. They follow up a year later and find the smokers in the second group has a higher quit ratio than the first group. Well duh. I could log into a psychological database right now and dig up some research which is more interesting, more important, and less obvious in sixty seconds. Again this drives home the point for me that the author is lazy and hasn’t done his homework. The end of the book even includes a reference page which contains no more than 5 references… This is pretty weak, considering that in first year psychology we had to provide more references than that for even a short 500 word summary on a subject such as motivation.
The last problem I had was it’s focus on motivating others and it’s almost total lack of information on how to motivate yourself, which is the reason, I imagine, most people are buying this book. Not a big assumption to make considering
1 . It’s a self-help book.
2 . The cover states clearly: ‘How To Motivate Yourself To Do Anything’
3 . The cover boasts that it is ‘A Book That Will Change Your Life!’
The only effort the book makes at applying the lessons learnt to motivating yourself is a single page at the end of the book which provides a checklist of obvious questions to ask yourself, such as ‘what would it be like if you reached your goal?’. If you don’t already know how to ask yourself questions like that, then you don’t need a book on motivation, you need a new brain.
Finally, I arrive at the book’s strengths. Phew!
1. The book is short. So short in fact I read it in one sitting, half of which occurred on the toilet, the other half on a chair outside while I smoked a cigarette. No, I didn’t find myself motivated to quit after reading this book.
2. The book is written in a short story format, which makes it easy to read and a lot more engaging than your average self-help book.
3. The text on the page is nicely laid out, a good sized font that is well spaced – easy on the eyes.
4. The book is short, oh wait, I said that already.
If this book were a pamphlet that you could get for free at the doctor’s office, then I would have nothing but praise for it, but seeing as how it attempts to pass off as a well researched and clever book on motivation, that is also deserving of your money, I can’t justify it at all.
In a nutshell, the book is in the form of a short story about a young physical therapy student who wants to know how to motivate his patients to move around and stuff. He hears about this legendary therapist known as ‘the sixty-second motivator’, earned from his reputation in having the ability to motivate anyone to do anything in exactly one minute or less. Young student meets legendary therapist, and then the rest of the book follows the two as the therapist attempts to motivate old people to walk around, while the young whippersnapper marvels in his glory. Oh, and it’s a very quick read too, with about 10 or 20 pages of information spread out to about 80 thanks to it’s big text – a trick we all learned in primary school.
“Well, let’s just say at this point I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Oh boy,” said the patient. “I guess give me the bad news first.” (p. 53)
In light of the above quote from the book in question, I will begin this review by outlining my disappointments before I branch out into it’s strengths. Naturally we like to hear our news in this order, so I will comply. Funnily enough, the book’s first weakness could also be considered by some to be it’s strength – the book is too simple in it’s exploration of a very complex subject such as motivation. Rather than explain the underlying reasons why we become motivated to make a change, the book instead hammers two basic methods for motivating people, and never really explains why the motivation occurs in the first place. Firstly, you should know that the book’s definition of motivation is as follows:
"Motivation can be thought of as how ready a person is to change. Therefore: A highly motivated is very ready to change. While a poorly motivated person is not ready to change."
Pretty simple right? Well get used to it, as that’s about as tech as this book gets.
The book stresses that only two things are necessary in order to motivate someone to do something, they are:
Importance - increasing importance of changing a behaviour creates more motivation.
Confidence - increasing your confidence that you can change a behaviour creates more motivation.
Ok, fair enough. The next problem with the book is that it uses poor examples of how this can be used to motivate a person. Seeing as the author is a physical therapist, all of his examples pretty much revolve around old men and women who don’t want to do their exercises. It is difficult to apply these scenarios to more realistic situations where one would need to be motivated, and honestly, the book doesn’t offer the reader any motivation to try and modify the examples to fit their own. The next problem I have with this book is the editing, I know this won’t be a problem for many of you, so I won’t stress it, but I found a lot of grammatical errors and places where the flow of the writing was affected by poor choice of words; it was as though a child had written the book for a school project, and had never read it twice to make sure it was up to standard. Considering how short the book is, and the fact that it is asking people to pay money to read it, there is no excuse and it loses points in my book. If I was marking this book as a school assignment, I’d probably give it an F for editing.
Another problem I have with the book is it’s lack of research. The writer makes almost no effort to produce any research to back up his findings. There is one stage in the book where the protagonist looks up some psychological databases on the computer and finds a really crappy experiment where smokers are assigned to two groups, one group is told to quit smoking as it’s bad for their health (which they obviously already knew), while the other group is motivated by professionals to quit. They follow up a year later and find the smokers in the second group has a higher quit ratio than the first group. Well duh. I could log into a psychological database right now and dig up some research which is more interesting, more important, and less obvious in sixty seconds. Again this drives home the point for me that the author is lazy and hasn’t done his homework. The end of the book even includes a reference page which contains no more than 5 references… This is pretty weak, considering that in first year psychology we had to provide more references than that for even a short 500 word summary on a subject such as motivation.
The last problem I had was it’s focus on motivating others and it’s almost total lack of information on how to motivate yourself, which is the reason, I imagine, most people are buying this book. Not a big assumption to make considering
1 . It’s a self-help book.
2 . The cover states clearly: ‘How To Motivate Yourself To Do Anything’
3 . The cover boasts that it is ‘A Book That Will Change Your Life!’
The only effort the book makes at applying the lessons learnt to motivating yourself is a single page at the end of the book which provides a checklist of obvious questions to ask yourself, such as ‘what would it be like if you reached your goal?’. If you don’t already know how to ask yourself questions like that, then you don’t need a book on motivation, you need a new brain.
Finally, I arrive at the book’s strengths. Phew!
1. The book is short. So short in fact I read it in one sitting, half of which occurred on the toilet, the other half on a chair outside while I smoked a cigarette. No, I didn’t find myself motivated to quit after reading this book.
2. The book is written in a short story format, which makes it easy to read and a lot more engaging than your average self-help book.
3. The text on the page is nicely laid out, a good sized font that is well spaced – easy on the eyes.
4. The book is short, oh wait, I said that already.
If this book were a pamphlet that you could get for free at the doctor’s office, then I would have nothing but praise for it, but seeing as how it attempts to pass off as a well researched and clever book on motivation, that is also deserving of your money, I can’t justify it at all.
May 17, 2011
A very short, simple book, told in story form, about how to motivate oneself and others towards positive change. The central concept could easily be laid out in just a few sentences, and I felt a little iffy about the value of the story format. I think, though, that book was disarmingly simple - I am finding myself meditating on the central concepts quite a bit - and how to apply them to my own life.
August 17, 2025
I found this on a bookshelf at home so gave it a go, it’s a very short read but it’s to the point and in story-form. The main concept of the book is importance + confidence = motivation. I wouldn’t say it was groundbreaking but was still food for thought and was written in an engaging way.
August 13, 2016
Inspired by the bestselling book, “The One Minute Manager”, “The Sixty Second Motivator” claims to teach you how to motivate anyone (including yourself) in under sixty seconds. Honestly, I was doubtful at first. But, just like the young student used to illustrate each step of becoming a “sixty second motivator”, I was convinced by the time I finished the book.
This book really will teach you how to motivate yourself in under sixty seconds.
It uses a simple story to illustrate the lessons and highlights each step of the process in an easy to digest summary. It is easy to read—and the best part? It’s short. This book has no fluff or extraneous information but simple and direct information. I used it to jump start my diet and workout routine and have managed to lose twenty pounds and keep them off!
This book really will teach you how to motivate yourself in under sixty seconds.
It uses a simple story to illustrate the lessons and highlights each step of the process in an easy to digest summary. It is easy to read—and the best part? It’s short. This book has no fluff or extraneous information but simple and direct information. I used it to jump start my diet and workout routine and have managed to lose twenty pounds and keep them off!
March 19, 2009
Like any book in this genre this book will not actually help you unless your "motivated" to change your own behavior. It's simple, easy to read, and practical. It shows you the keys to changing your perspective on on how motivation actually works in yourself and others. I enjoyed it.
March 30, 2015
Had to read this for work, because I don't have enough to do for that job... anyway, this book was good, a quick read(less than 1 hour) and helpful. I will use the idea behind it, finding out what motivates people to change, to help my students do the dreadful - pick up a book and read!
May 16, 2015
As simple as this book is to read(1 hour at most) the message is just that simple. We are motivated by two things to change: the matter of importance it is and the confidence that you have that you can.
November 22, 2008
Great little book on motivation. I learned alot in a few pages and have been thinking about its motivational moral.
December 24, 2011
The information which was presented was very good, but his writing style was poor, and seemed to be written for Middle School readers rather than managers.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews