Do It Now - The Core Principles For Mastering Time Management - Brian Tracy | Motivation

If you do not have clear goals for your life, you are condemned forever to work for those who do. The first idea, the most important of all, the core of time management, the axle around which the wheel of life turns is goals. What are your goals? What is it that you want to be or to have or to do? What is it that you want to accomplish in the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years? The top 3% in every field have goals. The balance of the population have either very vague goals or no goals at all. So the question you have to ask yourself is, who am I, where am I going, what do I want to accomplish? And there are 3 major areas of goals that you have to think about. The first is your personal and your family goals. These are the reasons why you're alive. What do you want to accomplish for yourself and for your family? Write them down, define them clearly. The second set of goals that you have to ask is your business, your career, your financial, your material goals. What is it that you want to accomplish in the external world? Where do you want to make your contribution? The third type of goals you have to ask about are your self-development goals. And in my estimation, your ability and your willingness and your tenaciousness in developing yourself is the key to accomplishing everything else. So here's 3 questions that you can ask. The first question is, what would you do, what would you set as a goal for yourself? What would you want to be or have if you just won a million dollars in the lottery? What would you do if you just won a million dollars? If you had all the time and money, you're completely free to decide to do anything you wanted. If you won a million dollars, what would you do differently? Think about that, hold that in your mind. The second question is, what would you do if you just learned today that you only had 6 months to live? What if you only had 6 months to live? What would you stop doing? What would you do more of? Who would you spend time with? Now the answer to that question is very interesting because what it tells you is what you really value. What is really important to you? And what we have found is that self-esteem, satisfaction, happiness in life comes from getting your goals and your activities congruent with your values, with your priorities, with what you consider to be really important. Now here's the third question. The third question is, what one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could not fail, what one thing would you set as a goal for yourself? Because sometimes answering that question will tell you the one thing that you've been put on this earth to accomplish. One final point with regard to goals is that goals must be in writing. You must write them down, you must rewrite them, you must define them, you must redefine them. The top 1% of successful people in every area have very clear, specific, written goals. And most of them carry their goals around with them. So let's go from goals as the core of success to point number two, which is organized plans of action. In an interesting study or a variety of studies that have been done, they've come to the conclusion that organized plans of action are the key to all success. In fact, action without planning is the cause of every failure. Action without planning is the cause of underachievement. Action without planning is the cause of frustration, time wastage, anxiety, stress, and lack of success in life. So organized plans of action are critical. Now what is an organized plan of action? An organized plan of action is where you take your goal, you take your objective, and you write out every single step that you're going to have to follow in order to accomplish that objective. You write it out and you list all those plans of action, all of those different activities, and you organize them together into a plan that you can then implement on a day-to-day basis. You decide which has to be done first and which has to be done last, which is more important, which is less important. In fact, the ability to set goals and to create plans for their accomplishment is the master skill of success. If all you learned in life, all you learned in school, was the ability to be a continuous goal setter and a continuous planner, day and night, planning, organizing, planning, writing, thinking about what you're trying to accomplish, you'll accomplish more in a year or two years than most people accomplish in ten years or an entire lifetime. It has nothing whatever to do, by the way, with your intelligence. It hasn't anything to do with your education. You know, half of the best educated people in the country are working for people who didn't finish high school or didn't finish college. You see, in life, it's very simple. Either you are working toward the accomplishment of your goals or you're working toward the accomplishment of other people's goals. Very important. Overcoming procrastination is absolutely critical, but there's two kinds of procrastination. There's positive procrastination and negative procrastination. Positive procrastination is when you procrastinate on doing low priority tasks. It is when you procrastinate on doing things that do not contribute very much to your major goals. Negative procrastination is when you procrastinate on what is called your most important tasks. Now, there's an interesting point. It's that their tasks are either urgent, which means they have to be done now, or they are important, which means they don't have to be done now, but they have a very high impact on your future. We have a natural tendency to always do what is urgent rather than what is important. Important tasks are seldom urgent, and urgent tasks are seldom important. So you overcome procrastination with a very, very simple method. It was developed by W. Clement Stone when he was a young man. He built a fortune of $500 million, and this is one of the central principles of his life. It's simply this. Every morning when you get up, say over and over to yourself, do it now, do it now, do it now, I do it now, do it now. Whenever you have this tendency to procrastinate, program your subconscious mind with this automatic conditioned command, do it now, do it now, do it now. The key to overcoming procrastination is to develop a sense of urgency. Be the kind of person who gets things done quickly. Be the kind of person who launches fast on a task. One of the ways to launch fast on a task is to take the task and break it up. Take your task and break it up into small pieces and do one piece at a time. Say over and over to yourself, do it now, do it now, do it now. Do you know that less than 2% of the population have a sense of urgency, and that there's not an example of a successful person anywhere who does not have a sense of urgency? But if you just develop a sense of urgency when somebody gives you a task, that you get on it and do it fast, that alone will move you into the top ranks in a very short period of time. The magic word, the magic word in time management is no. Learn to say no to activities, tasks, responsibilities, and obligations that do not contribute to the most important goals that you have set for yourself. The word no is magic and the place and the time to use the word no is early and often. It's like the wastebasket. Wastebasket is your best friend when you're sorting the mail. Do you know the average person spends 8 months of their life sorting junk mail, reading through junk mail? Absolutely phenomenal, a recent study. It's incredible how much of your life is taken up by people who ask you to do things and you do it because of a sense of obligation. Let me tell you, as I said to you before, most people do not value their time, so they don't value yours. Now how do you deal with a person who you know, who you like, who you respect, who asks you to do something? Very simple. When they ask you to do something or work on a committee or take on a project, ask, especially if you have the, and it's not if you're boss, but especially if you have control, is say, let me think about it and get back to you. There's an old saying that delay is the cruelest form of denial. If they press you for a decision, say, I cannot make a decision now, I have to think about it. And after you've thought about it for 24 hours, call them back and say, I've thought about it, I simply don't have the time. But thank you very much for thinking about me and get on with the rest of your life. You know what Nancy Reagan says? Nancy Reagan says, just say no. Now in time management, the word no is one of the most powerful of all words. It'll save you hours, weeks, months of working on projects that contribute nothing to your goals. It's interesting that there is what is called in the world of work, a learning curve. A learning curve says this, it says when you do a job the first time, it takes you the most amount of time to do it because you're learning how. The second time it takes less, the third time it takes less, the fourth time it takes less. In fact, the learning curve theory says that you can decrease the amount of time by as much as 80% if you do the same job over and over again over a period of time. So batching your tasks is a major time management tool. What does it mean? It means that if you're going to make phone calls, make all your phone calls at once. Have your calls held, make them all at once. If you're going to do invoices, do all the invoices at once. If you're going to do correspondence, do all the correspondence at once. If you're going to read and catch up, read everything at once. It's been found that if you do this on a regular basis, you'll get so much more done by doing it and concentrating on batches of tasks than if you did not. So batch your tasks whenever you possibly can. Imagine what most people do is they do a little bit of telephone call, a little bit of correspondence, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and they have no learning curve at all. Each one takes the maximum amount of time. So batch your tasks, put groups of tasks together at once and do them at once. Delegate, delegate everything that you possibly can. Now, what does delegation mean? Delegation is very simple. What it means is this, is that whatever your hourly rate is, let us say your goal is to earn $50,000 a year. If you work eight hours a day, that's $25 an hour. You got that? So you're a $25 an hour person. Now, the only way you can make $25 an hour is if you do $25 or more work. And the only way you can do $25 an hour or more work is if you take anything that can be done by anybody who earns less than you per hour, 20, 15, 10, 5, and so on, and delegate, outsource, have somebody else do it. The most valuable resource in the world today is productive time. And do not waste your productive time dropping off laundry, getting your car washed, mowing your lawn, cleaning your house. Do not waste your productive time doing things that you can hire people to do for $5 or $10 an hour. Use your productive time on tasks that are more expensive of higher value. Delegate everything that you possibly can. In fact, its general conclusion is this, is that if you cannot delegate, if you cannot get other people to do things of lower priority for you, you cannot grow, you cannot develop, you cannot be successful. You may be successful running a shoeshine stand, but that's about the limit of it. Delegation requires one key word, clarity, clarity. The reason people don't delegate is because they've delegated and other people have dropped the ball. But the major reason why people don't fulfill the tasks that you've given to them is because of lack of clarity. So when you delegate, here are the keys. First of all, think through what you want done, write it down. Second of all, pick the right person to do it. Don't give a major task to an incapable person. Third of all, make it crystal clear what you want done and when you want it done. And fourth of all, check, review, inspect, keep on top of it to make sure it is done on time. Never assume that anything will be done on time. I read something years ago, a great sign, it said that assumption lies at the root of all foul-ups. Never assume that anybody or anything will be done on time unless you check on it yourself. Now here's a very simple system that you can use. It is the ABCDE method. A is the things that you must do, top priority. B is the things that you should do, second priority. C is the things that would be nice to do if you got all your A's and B's done. D stands for delegate, E stands for eliminate. So when you make a list, the first thing you do is you ABC all your list. A what you must do, B what you should do, C what would be nice to do and then delegate and eliminate the others. With goals, what you do is this, you make a list of all the things you'd like to accomplish in the next one to five years. And then you go down the list and write ABC. What you'd love to do, what you'd like to do, what's not that important. Then you take your A goals and you make A1, A2, A3. In other words, your most important, second most important, third most important. Then you take those A goals, you transfer them to another sheet and you make a list of all the things you're going to have to do to accomplish your goals. Then you ABC the list. And you say, what are the things I have to do? What are the things I should do? What are the things that would be nice to do to accomplish my goals? And then you put those into the goal list and then you structure and schedule what you're going to do and implement. This is called the six step method. Choose your goals, set priorities. Choose your activities, set priorities, schedule and implement. If you just do that on a day-to-day basis, that alone can make you a great, great success in life. It's interesting, there are many people who have goals, vague or clear. There are many people who do make plans. But the biggest single problem in human life is setting priorities. Determining what is relevant and what is irrelevant. Now, the difference between highly effective people, as Alfredo Pareto said, was that highly effective people work on the vital few versus the trivial many. The difference between the two is that ineffective people work on the trivial many. They work on things that are fun. They work on things that are easy. They work on little tasks, fun tasks, irrelevant tasks. But they keep putting off and delaying working on their major tasks. I'm convinced that if all you did was organize your life and only work on the most valuable use of your time, that alone would be enough to make you an effective, efficient person. That alone would be enough to increase your productivity, your performance, your profitability, your rewards by 10, 20, 30, 40, even 50%. So always before you begin, ask yourself, is this the most important thing I could be doing? Is this my top priority task? Does this give me the highest payoff? Is this the most valuable use of my time? Now, here is one simple test with regard to value. Ask yourself, in approaching any task, is what impact will the accomplishment of this task have on my future? The futurity of decisions is the key to measuring the value. Most people spend as much as 80% of their time dealing with the problems and difficulties of the past and only 20% dealing with the opportunities of the future. But successful people are always saying, what impact will this have on the future? Important tasks will always have an impact on the future. Unimportant tasks will only have an impact on the present and maybe even the past. So I say, what is the most valuable use of my time right now and what impact will this have on tomorrow, the next day and the future? It's one of the key ways to keep on track with regard to priorities. Now, if I could just summarize by saying two or three quick things. The essence of success in time management is goals. The key to goals is to write them down and to make organized plans for their accomplishment. The key to those organized plans is to set priorities and determine what is more important and what is less important and always concentrate on the most valuable use of your time. The key to concentrate on the most valuable use of your time is to stay at the task until it's finished. Persevere without distraction or diversion. Keep at it. Hammer, hammer, hammer until your most important tasks are finished. And finally, finally develop that sense of urgency. Do it fast. Do it now. Fast tempo is essential to success. Fast tempo goes hand in hand with energy, with happiness, with enthusiasm, with self-esteem. So make crystal clear what you want to do. Make crystal clear the steps and start working on those steps and do something every day to move you toward the most important goals of your life. And if you do that, you will be an excellent time manager, an excellent personal manager, an excellent life manager. You will have a great, great life.