When a tragic mountain-climbing accident left business professor Denis Shackel stranded on Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand, he turned to the leadership principles he’d been teaching for years to survive the longest night of his life. Alone, with temperatures plunging to -30 degrees Celsius, Shackel managed to stay alive. He broke the night into five thousand five-second intervals and choose to deal with only one interval at a time -- a strategy based on the effective leaders’ practice of breaking big challenges into smaller, more manageable ones. These slides are attempt to summarize some key learning from the book. Happy Reading !

1. BOOK SUMMARY/ LEARNING POINTERS
FIVE SECONDS AT A TIME – DENIS SHACKEL
By Pooja Bhatia

2. About the Book
■ When a tragic mountain-climbing accident left
business professor Denis Shackel stranded on
Mount Ruapehu in New Zealand, he turned to
the leadership principles he’d been teaching for
years to survive the longest night of his life.
■ Alone, with temperatures plunging to -30 degrees
Celsius, Shackel managed to stay alive. He broke
the night into five thousand five-second intervals
and choose to deal with only one interval at a
time -- a strategy based on the effective leaders’
practice of breaking big challenges into smaller,
more manageable ones.
■ Five Seconds at a Time provides effective tools
and strategies to excel. With its compelling mix of
survival stories, leadership principles and
inspiring case studies, this book will inspire
readers to achieve the seemingly impossible.

3. The five seconds
at a time
technique
o Breathe and Pause to reflect on the goal,
how you feel and whether you are still
headed in the right directions.
o Prioritize what is important. Its important to
understand the difference between priority
and urgent task to be accomplished.
o Breakdown top priorities into manageable
intervals or tasks with specific timelines
assigned to each of them.
o Don’t forget to acknowledge the task
accomplished and reward yourself.

4. Setting your priorities
• Brainstorm the big rocks/ priority for the week
ahead. It could be related to your job,
volunteering, family, health or anything else.
• Organize those rocks into priority sequences.
Remember if you didn’t organize not everything
would have fitted into the jar in the sand, pebble
and rock story.
• Breakdown rocks into stones, thus creating a list
of task to be accomplished. Remember
timelines are very crucial.

5. The Five
Stepping
Stones
VISION: Mentally rrehearse each step and envision what
success looks like.
INTITUTION: Pause to listen inwardly, reflect and regroup.
POSITIVE THOUGHTS : Choose thoughts that have the
power to fuel your emotions into productive & impactful
actions.
FAITH AND ACTIONS: Step into action. This often helps
you step outside of your comfort zone and accept
something NEW.
CORRECTIONS : Realign for the future success.

6. The 5S
System
■ SORT: Write all things on your mind and sort
them into urgent, important and non-
important removing the unnecessary items.
■ SET PRIORITIES: So you know on what your
mind needs to concentrate first.
■ SHINE: your mind with positive though.
■ STANDARDIZE: by incorporating items into
one centralized spot like daybook or task list.
■ SUSTAIN: by repeating this practice at the
beginning of the day until this becomes a
HABIT.

7. Understanding
your Strength
■ Specify(Identify) your area of brilliance, what
you do effortlessly?
■ Record all activities in which you engage
within a given week. This clearly indicates the
time spent on your most precious gift.
Now calculate the % of time spent
on your top three area of Brilliance!
Did you get enough !!!!!!

8. Building Trusting
Relationship
■ Focus on what gets done rather than on how It
gets done.
■ Avoid using coercive power.
■ When things go wrong, focus on solving problem
rather than effort on punishment.
■ Skip the search for who is guilty, organize to make
sure things go right next time.
■ Support your followers and help them to come out
as winners.

9. Fear of change
■ Step back and assess the need to change.
■ Envision how the outcome of the change will make you a better person or
elevate you to be a better you.
■ Speak truthfully to yourself to give the change momentum or track support
the progress.
■ Have Faith. Take the leap.
■ Practice authenticity and integrity.
■ Ensure the change is deep routed to your habit. Continue to repeat reflect on
the new behavior or change.

10. ■ Identifying negative habits
■ Envision the benefits of forming new habits
■ Create competing responses.
■ Alter your environment
■ Repeat and Practice desired behaviors.
Some habits that can accomplish the impossible
Habit 1: Reflections
Habit 2: Vision
Habit 3: Intuition
Habit 4: Positive Though Choice
Habit 5: Faith & Action
Habit 6: Correction
Changing your Habit

11. Beautiful Quotes used in the Book
■ “A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao-Tzu
■ “God gives us gifts wrapped up as problems. The bigger the problem, the bigger
the gift” - Ralp Waldo Emerson.
■ “Faith is taking the 1st step when you don’t see the whole staircase” – Martin
Luther King Jr.
■ “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but an habit” –
Aristotle.

12. THANK YOU
Pooja Bhatia