Your Best Year Ever Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Your Best Year Ever gives powerful inspiration to change your life by helping you identify what you should improve on, how to get over the hurdles in your way, and the patterns and habits you need to set so that achieving your dreams is more possible than ever.

Read in: 4 minutes

Favorite quote from the author:

Your Best Year Ever Summary

A couple of days ago I asked people on Facebook how their goals from the beginning of the year were going. Most answered with gifs about things on fire, as I had expected. It’s sad that most of us struggle to stick with our ambitions. We could be so much more and have better lives if we could only figure out how to follow-through.

It stays hard though because we keep trying the same old things that don’t work. As it’s been said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

So what do you have to do to finally break through the cycle of failing at your goals?

That’s what Michael Hyatt is here to teach you in his book Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals. With his vast experience and historical knowledge, Hyatt will show you how achieving your dreams is not only possible but nearly inevitable if you do it the right way.

Here are 3 lessons from the book that we should take a closer look at for success:

  1. It’s good to work on multiple areas of your life at the same time as long as you choose them wisely because they build on each other.
  2. Find a happy medium between goals that stretch you and ones that aren’t too difficult.
  3. To make your chances of making your dreams happen skyrocket, team up with a partner or group to help you.

Are you looking forward to having Your Best Year Ever? Let’s get right to it and see how to make it happen!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Download PDF

Lesson 1: Choose what areas of life to work on wisely and your efforts will multiply across many different categories.

The best place to begin is to find out where you’d like to be a year from now. What does an outstanding year look like to you? To find out, simply journal about the answer to that question. Write freely and don’t edit or hold back.

You might find that there are a lot of things you’d like to accomplish in a lot of different categories. We all want to be fit, have a good family, be free of debt, and many other things. Well, Hyatt teaches you that it’s possible to have all of it! 

Just focus on ten aspects of life:

  • Spirituality
  • Marriage & Partnerships
  • Parenting
  • Friendships
  • Intellectual Life
  • Personal Finances
  • Work
  • Mental Health
  • Physical Health
  • Hobbies

First, rate how you’re doing in each of these categories from zero to ten. This will show you what you’re already good at and where you need to improve. You can use the strengths you see to help you get the weaknesses where you want them.

Now, recognize how each of these categories affects the others and you’ll see how you don’t need to be overwhelmed by them all. 

You’ll become more productive at work, for example, if things are good in your relationships and at home. And your opportunities of meeting your future spouse improve as you work on your friendships. Find the few things that will make the biggest impact on everything else and focus on those.

Lesson 2: Set your goals high but not so lofty that they discourage you.

I love talking with people about their goals. One thing I hear often is that they feel their goals are too much, that they’re unattainable. I always tell people that those kind of goals are good if you plan them correctly.

It’s a difficult balance to set our sights high while at the same time not being unreasonable with ourselves. You need to know your own current capabilities and plan within those. But also make sure that you’re working on things that require significant effort.

If you want to write a book, for example, you’re not going to be a Nobel Prize winner if it’s your first. Looking at such a lofty goal is a recipe for disaster because it can stop you from even beginning at all. This is known as the delusional zone

On the other hand, if you give yourself too long to finish your book, you’re more likely to give up when things get boring.

The sweet spot for your goals and plans is what Hyatt calls the discomfort zone. It’s that place where you’re just outside of your comfort zone enough that you’re going to grow, but not too far that the difficulty pushes you away. 

To find this perfect middle ground, ask yourself if the goal is attainable for where you’re at, but make sure it makes you a little uncomfortable.

Lesson 3: Get a team or partner if you want your chances of success to rise significantly.

Last year I was struggling to figure out a good pattern of productivity after beginning to work for myself. At the recommendation of a friend, I hired a coach to help me stay accountable. My rate of progress quickly improved like I hadn’t ever imagined possible.

It’s sad how often we sit there, struggling through by trying to figure things out on our own. Especially when there are loads of people who have been through what we’re doing and can show us the way! And they’re usually more than happy to help us, too.

Not only that, but there are also dozens of people right around us that are probably also working on the same things. All we need to do is find them.

If I told you that I wanted to get good at playing the piano, what would you tell me? You’d say I should get a piano teacher, right? 

It seems obvious in terms of learning music, but it’s a little harder to accept hiring a coach to help us with learning how to live well. Once we do, however, everything in our lives improves rapidly. 

They can see things that we need to improve and ways to do it that would have taken us years to figure out on our own!

Your Best Year Ever Review

Your Best Year Ever is one of my new favorite books. The advice it gives is simple, new, and highly actionable. I think this is going to be the one that helps you finally start sticking with your goals!

Who would I recommend the Your Best Year Ever summary to?

The 19-year-old who wants to become a better person but isn’t sure how, the 40-year-old who is tired of living the same old life and wants to finally change, and anyone that feels like they lose motivation quickly and has a hard time following through with their goals.

Last Updated on September 8, 2022

Rate this book!
This book has an average rating of 5 based on 1 votes.

Luke Rowley

With over 450 summaries that he contributed to Four Minute Books, first as a part-time writer, then as our full-time Managing Editor until late 2021, Luke is our second-most prolific writer. He's also a professional, licensed engineer, working in the solar industry. Next to his day job, he also runs Goal Engineering, a website dedicated to achieving your goals with a unique, 4-4-4 system. Luke is also a husband, father, 75 Hard finisher, and lover of the outdoors. He lives in Utah with his wife and 3 kids.