What do I think of Jack Hickey’s book on achievement? Let’s dive into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Jack Hickey contacted me asking me if I’d be available to read an EBook he’s written on achievement. Generally, I respond favorably to requests to read books unless I have really absolutely no interest whatsoever in the subject matter. I told him he could email me a copy of his manuscript and I would send it to my Kindle and when I got the chance, I would go through it for him.
I had the chance to do that recently to which, that brings me up to the first point I want to make about the book. This is a good short book. You will not take a lot of time to read it. The lessons found in there can be learned easily and each chapter in the book ends with some immediate suggestions that you can follow. There are also interesting sidebars along the way that contain great motivational quotes.
Those wanting to find a full Christian emphasis will not do so, and that is fine. The principles of success work regardless, though Hickey does say later in the book that he is a follower of Jesus Christ. This is the kind of message that too many Christians should have. Too few Christians have any sort of drive in them to do anything to change the world around them and just go along with what the surrounding culture has to say.
Along those lines, you will not find anything in here like you would in a Joel Osteen book. Hickey makes it clear that on the path to success, you do not take shortcuts. You will have to work. This is too often a dirty message to the world we have around us. We live in an age where people expect great skill to come upon them immediately. We do not think that we need to be reading books to educate us because, hey, we have Wikipedia and Google. What more do we need? Our culture has some of the greatest tools that we could have ever dreamed of for success, and instead we use them as tools of laziness.
While Hickey’s book is certainly helpful, if I had one aspect of it I would have liked changed, it has to do with those sidebars. It’s great to have the quotes of people throughout the years who have been successful and are motivational speakers in that regard as well, but often when I found a great quote, I would often be left thinking “I wonder where I can find that quote.” It’s a small little thing, but I hope that when the print version comes out that these quotes will have citations with them so that they can be looked up.
Still, that is my biggest criticism and that biggest one is really a small one. I think Hickey’s book is excellent and as a follower of Christ, I wish more of my fellow Christians had some sort of drive to succeed in them, and they sadly do not. We need to realize we were made for much more than what it is that we settle with and that we can do and be the light of the world as Christ calls us to be. It is not the fault that the means are not there. It is that the will to follow through with them is not there.
In Christ,
Nick Peters