Hill opens with the story of Edwin C. Barnes, who arrived at Thomas Edison's laboratory with nothing but an overwhelming desire to become Edison's business partner. Barnes persisted through years of menial work until Edison recognized his determination and gave him the opportunity he sought. Hill uses this story to introduce his central claim: a burning desire, held with absolute conviction, is the starting point of all achievement.

Hill argues that faith — defined not as religious conviction but as a sustained state of confident expectation — is the second principle of achievement. He presents auto-suggestion as the mechanism by which faith is developed, arguing that repeated affirmation of a desired outcome gradually transforms conscious wish into subconscious conviction.

Hill distinguishes between general knowledge and specialized knowledge, arguing that only specialized knowledge organized toward a definite purpose produces wealth. He then discusses two forms of imagination: synthetic imagination, which rearranges existing ideas into new combinations, and creative imagination, which receives hunches and inspirations from Infinite Intelligence. Together, these chapters argue that knowledge and imagination are the raw materials from which plans are built.

Three interconnected chapters present the practical mechanisms of achievement: organized planning translates desire into concrete action steps; decision eliminates procrastination and doubt; and persistence sustains effort through inevitable setbacks. Hill identifies lack of persistence as the most common cause of failure and provides detailed diagnostics for identifying and overcoming it.

The final philosophical chapters present Hill's most esoteric concepts: the Master Mind alliance (a group whose combined intelligence exceeds the sum of individual minds), sex transmutation (the channeling of sexual energy into creative achievement), and the subconscious mind as a bridge between individual consciousness and Infinite Intelligence. Hill argues that these principles operate at the boundary between psychology and metaphysics.