When: The Art of Perfect Timing

by Stuart Albert

An elegant and counterintuitive guide to achieving perfect timing

Timing is everything. Whether we are making strategic business decisions or the smallest personal choice, we must decide not only what to do, but when to do it. Act too early—or too late—and the results can be disastrous. Based on a 20-year investigation into more than 2,000 timing issues and errors, When presents a single and practical approach for dealing with timing in life and business. Good timing, Albert argues, is not just a matter of luck, intuition, or past experience—all of which may be unreliable—but a skill. He describes that skill and details the tools and methods needed to conduct a successful timing analysis.

The book is the first to offer an efficient and comprehensive way to think through any timing issue Filled with dozens of lively stories illustrating good and bad timing in all walks of life—business, warfare, medicine, sports, entertainment and the arts Written by Stuart Albert, one of the foremost timing experts in the world and developer of the first practical, research-based method for turning the skill of timing into a competitive advantage

Engaging and counterintuitive, When will show everyone, regardless of the work they do, or the life they live, that "it's all in the timing."

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Business

333 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Taylor Ellwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an intriguing book that explores how to apply timing to business and life experiences in order to better understand the flow of events and be able to plan for them and their pacing in time. The author shares six types of timing and provides examples of how these types of timing can be applied to understand the temporal aspects of a given activity. In addition, he nicely ties all of the types together and shows how a timing analysis can be done using each type of timing in conjunction with others. If there is one weakness in this book, its that while the author does provide examples of timing, he doesn't show readers how to use that knowledge practically beyond being able to do a timing analysis. However this book can teach you to appreciate time from an unusual perspective and that, in and of itself can be useful for looking at your life, business, and other practices from a different angle than you may have done before.

[Sean Goh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author introduces this book as the culmination of decades? of collection notes and observations on the subject, and it shows. The book reads like a collection of notes, with an excessive number of points competing for one's attention (Copeland's Constraint in action). Requires a mind map to properly make sense of all the characteristics and risks/opportunities that the author throws at the reader.

Still, adds a new lens to observe and analyse plans/events.

[Sony · Rating 1 out of 5]

A big disappointment. We start off by being given two real-life examples about timing, one being an accident that took place right before an Olympics competition and the other about the political crisis in Egypt after the death of a Tunisian peddler, Mohamed Bouaziza(December 2011). First off both instances represent tragedies. It felt that he wanted to pack a punch. Not necessary when he wants to sell this to timing for business and life management. Nothing was gained from "analyzing" the events.

Secondly, most of his points were nothing but common sense, and they were represented in very "specific" events or chain of events. In reality, you gain nothing from this. It feels tiring to get through, a lot of ideas without providing you any tools or advice on how to apply this to your own life.

Really not for me. I was expecting a science or at least a book based on statistics. I might just not be the right audience for it.

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book simultaneously over-analyzed every possible aspect of timing something and yet was so unspecific and general I didn't learn a darn thing I could apply to actual life.

[Charlene · Rating 2 out of 5]

A friend passed this on to me, thinking from the title that it was a science book. It's not; it's a business book by a "timing expert" in the business field. While most of what's here seems like common sense to me, I can see that spelling out the details could help business people who are stuck in a rut. Albert talks about the importance of looking at all the details and events which affect a task, in order to better manage your time make projects more successful.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overly academic and offers very little of value. The one thing that impressed me the most was the delete design model which I will adopt.