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 one two three four five years the top three percent 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 three 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 three 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 want 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 six months to live what if you only had six 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 a 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 the 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 one percent 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 and most people accomplish in 10 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 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 is that their 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 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 dollars 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 two percent of the population have a sense of urgency and that there is 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 honored 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 you know the average person spends eight months of their life sorting junk mail reading through junk mail absolutely phenomenal 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 ask 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 is not of your boss but especially 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 thought about it for 24 hours call them back and say i 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 learning curve theory says that you can decrease the amount of time by as much as 80 percent 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 corresponds to all the correspondence at once if you go 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 task 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 dollars an hour you got that so you're 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 five or ten dollars 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 task 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 uh 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 it would be nice to do if you've 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 be what you should do see what it'd 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 love to do what you like to do what's not that important then you take your a goals and you make a one a two a three 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 you have to do what are the things i should do what are 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 set choose your goals set priorities choose your activities to 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 wilfredo paredo 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 mini 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 percent of their time dealing with the problems and difficulties of the past and only 20 percent dealing with the opportunities of the future but successful people are always saying what impact will this have on the future so 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 make 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 concentrating 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 [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Let's Become Successful

Views: 109,339

Keywords: brian tracy, brian tracy time management, brian tracy's motivational video, brian tracy the art of time management, brian tracy seminar

Id: l6XK7GP4nOw

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022