Customer Reviews
A journey from CEO to human being. - By: L. B. Taylor, 16 Jun 2008 
This book was rapidly written in the last few months of the authors life & as a result the gradual shift of his thinking has not been edited. One is therefore led on a journey of how an American success story CEO was graduallly reduced & humanised by his expereince.
One cannot fail to notice in the starting chapters of how O'Kelly talks of his job, his success, how many employees he was responsible for. He sees nothing wrong in living for work (even organising training for the wives of his collegeaues in how to manage their family life around work more effectively!) He intiallly responds to his death by forming an action plan of people to contact, so he could put into practice the organisational "skills" he had learned as a CEO. It starts at this point to read like a self-help book on "how to plan your death successfully" by top CEO soandso & I personallly couldnt believe, even when preparing for death, this man couldnt let go of his successful CEO credentials, couldnt define his life in another way.
And yet... As O'Kellys condition deteriorates we begin glimpse the real, human him. Timid at first, he starts to admit that commitment (i.e hours worked) isnt as important as conciousness (i.e living in the present). He starts to admire simple things, sights, sounds, "perfect moments". He slows, appreciates, savours, revalues. And we feel real pity & warmth for him, stripped of any pretence, or status, or hint of conceit. One begins to wonder if he regrets spending so much past time away from his family & the true things in life that money & status cannot buy.
But then the book should have ended, albeit abruptly, with Genes last words. This if anything adds poiniancy to the text that suddnely stops after a last sentence. But instead, what lets Gene's words down is what comes after. In the afterthought by his widow, the successful CEO tag is back. "As we faced Genes Diagnosis, we applied the tools learned over the past decades to make the last 100 days of his life a personal success". It makes one wonder if she acknowledges what he finallly discovered about what is truely important.
And then the total ignorance to his shift of thinking - In the "questions for disussion" section the first question is "his role as a CEO for a major corporation afforded him the ability to take heed of the bigge-er picture. What other skills in O'Kellys professional life prepared him for his ultimate lesson"...I wished theyd stop trying to label him according to what he once was & give him the dignity of letting his later words & re-evaluation of what is important, stand.
I leave you with some of his final messages:
"I undersood one of the key ways into the perfect moment:acceptance...it was precisely because I didnt manage everybody & everything...That was quite an epiphany".
And later...
"I told him (a brother in law)to take the energy he was spending in being angry (at life & death) & channel it into love for his children"
RIP Gene. You passed the final & most important test, but not as a CEO. As a human being.
Eugene O'Kelly's heartfelt farewell - By: Rolf Dobelli, 07 Sep 2006 
What if a doctor looked you in the eyes today & told you flat-out that you had about 100 days to live, & there was zero chance anything could change that shocking reality? What would you do? How would you spend your last days? In May 2005, Eugene O'Kelly, then the CEO of KPMG, received the bitter news that he wouldn't live out the year due to brain cancer. An accountant by training & a type-A personality by nature, O'Kelly set in motion a strategy for making the most of his last days. Part of that plan included writing a book on how to bring closure to life & prepare for the great transition to come. One conclusion: Sometimes you have to work hard at the "business of dying." O'Kelly's stoic, rational courage in the face of the unknown has produced this gift for alll those he left behind. We recommend it highly for its priceless lessons about how to live.
Don't think about it, BUY IT! 5 stars are not enough! - By: Tom E Johnson, 04 Jul 2006 I have the highest praise for Eugene O'Kelly's book, & highly recommend it for everyone to read. It is one of the very few books that, upon reading it, I have gone out to purchase extra copies, to give to special friends. It is a book that I feel you will come back to, (I certainly will) time & time again for inspiration & guidance, as to how to best live as quality a life as possible. It has certainly moved me greatly & at the same time, hopefully greatly improved me.
To begin with, I could so empathise with Eugene's truly awful predicament, being around the same age as him myself & also a father, but what truly amazed me was the response he chose to make to this predicament. It was this response (as recorded in the book), which marked him out for me as a very special higher order type of human being - one who should be listened to very attentively.
Not only did he use his newly discovered insights in his own life for whatever remaining time he had left, but he very magnanimously decided to devote a sizeable amount of his so precious dwindling time to helping the great mass of non-significant others, of whom I happen to be a member. How many of us would be so thoughtful?
The book is full advice for living (and not living only `in the face of death') which I can best classify as higher-order or noble, & the world would be a far better place if more people learned to see life the way Eugene did towards the end. I have already decided to make this book a part of my future life, with the hope that its amazing thoughts will affect the way I live my life in the future.
Eugene is, & will always be a hero & role model for me, somebody whom I would loved to have known in life. And I truly mourn the fact that such a higher order being has passed on with so much still to offer the world. But I honestly believe he crowded more quality being in that two months than most people do in a lifetime. And in sharing his wisdom with us, he has achieved a kind of immortality which alll of the great contributors to mankind have achieved. I for one am very grateful to Eugene for helping me to awaken to what truly matters in life, while I still have time.
Guidance for the Living - By: Rob Wylie, 31 May 2006 
Mr. O'Kelly was a highly successful business man, always planning for the future, who was diagnosed with cancer. He spent his post diagnosis days learning to live & enjoy the present, while closing off relationships with friends & family.
This book may well provide some help & comfort to those who find themselves in a similar situation (being given appropriate notice of their forthcoming death). However its value to the rest of us is limited.
Mr. O'Kelly led a very successful business life by constantly focusing on the future. He believed that he successfully handled the transition to death by constantly focusing on the present. However the book spends little-to-no time on questioning whether any of the lessons that he learnt post diagnosis would have been valuable to him pre diagnosis. Would he have lived his life differently? There is no reason to believe that he would.
This is understandable. It is doubtful whether spending his last days on regrets would have been of help to him. However it does mean that the reader is left to wonder whether there are any lessons within this book that can aid him in living his day to day life. Mr O'Kelly provides few clues.
Chasing Daylight - By: William Carrington, 08 May 2006 
Makes you think about what you need to do when you've only got six months to live. I think he hid his regrets very well but admitted that his definitions of priority may not, ultimately, have been the right one. Well worth reading.
