Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Set The Table

Plan Every Day in Advance

Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything

Consider the Consequences

Practice Creative Procrastination

Use the ABCDE Method Continually

Focus on Key Result Areas

Apply the Law of Three

Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin

Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time

Upgrade Your Key Skills

Identify Your Key Constraints

Put the Pressure on Yourself

Motivate Yourself into Action

Technology Is a Terrible Master

Technology Is a Wonderful Servant

Focus Your Attention

Slice and Dice the Task

Create Large Chunks of Time

Develop a Sense of Urgency

Single Handle Every Task

About The Author

Preface

“When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got into sales, knocking on doors, working on straight commission. I struggled from sale to sale until I began looking around me and asking, “Why is it that other people are doing better than I am?”

Coming from an unsuccessful background, I had developed deep feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. I had fallen into the mental trap of assuming that people who were doing better than me were actually better than me. What I learned was that this was not necessarily true. They were just doing things differently, and what they had learned to do, within reason, I could learn as well.

Throughout my career, I have discovered and rediscovered a simple truth. The ability to concentrate singlemindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book.

The key to success is action. These principles work to bring about fast, predictable improvements in performance and results. The faster you learn and apply them, the faster you will move ahead in your career— guaranteed!

Introduction

“Failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems in
organizations today.

One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career, and feeling terrific about yourself is to develop the habit of starting and finishing important jobs. When you do, this behavior will take on a power of its own and you’ll find it easier to complete important tasks than not to complete them.

Set The Table

There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it.

-NAPOLEON HILL

Here is a great rule for success: Think on paper.

Plan Every Day in Advance

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

-ALAN LAKEIN

“Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”

You can increase your productivity and output by 25 percent or more—about two hours a day—from the first day that you begin working consistently from a list.

One of the most important rules of personal effectiveness is the 10/90 Rule. This rule says that the first 10 percent of time that you spend planning and organizing your work before you begin will save you as much as 90 percent of the time in getting the job done once you get started. You only have to try this rule once to prove it to yourself.

Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything

We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

-JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Rule: Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.

Consider the Consequences

Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.

-ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Rule: Long-term thinking improves short-term decision-making.

Rule: There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do.

However much time you think a task will take, add on another 20 percent or more as insurance. Or make a game of getting the job done well in advance of the deadline. You will be amazed at how much more relaxed you are and how much better a job you do when you are on top of your most important tasks.

Practice Creative Procrastination

Make time for getting big tasks done every day. Plan your daily workload in advance. Single out the relatively few small jobs that absolutely must be done immediately in the morning. Then go directly to the big tasks and pursue them to completion.

-BOARDROOM REPORTS

Rule: You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities.

Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, was once asked his secret of success. He replied, “Simple. I just say No to everything that is not absolutely vital to me at the moment.”

Use the ABCDE Method Continually

The first law of success is concentration— to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

-WILLIAM MATHEWS

Focus on Key Result Areas

When every physical and mental resource is focused, one’s power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously.

-NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Apply the Law of Three

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

-THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Rule: It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.

Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin

No matter what the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime.

-JAMES T. MCCAY

Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time

Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time.

-SAMUEL SMILES

Many years ago, driving an old Land Rover, I crossed the heart of the Sahara Desert, the Tanezrouft, deep in modern-day Algeria. By that time, the desert had been abandoned by the French for years, and the original refueling stations were empty and shuttered.

The desert was 500 miles across, in a single stretch, without water, food, a blade of grass, or even a fly. It was totally flat, like a broad, yellow sand parking lot that stretched to the horizon in all directions.

“Leap—and the net will appear!”

Upgrade Your Key Skills

The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

-OG MANDINO

Rule: Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.

Identify Your Key Constraints

One of these factors, more than anything else, determines how quickly the company achieves its goals of growth and profitability. What is it?

Successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking the question, “What is it in me that is holding me back?”

Put the Pressure on Yourself

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

-THOMAS EDISON

By putting the pressure on yourself, you will accomplish more and better tasks faster than ever before. You will become a high-performance, high-achieving personality.

Motivate Yourself into Action

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and of creative action that man finds his supreme joys.

-ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Technology Is a Terrible Master

There is more to life than just increasing its speed.

-GANDHI

Technology Is a Wonderful Servant

“Technology is just a tool.”

– MELINDA GATES

Keep asking yourself, “What’s important here?”

Above all else, avoid the phrase: “I can’t.”

Focus Your Attention

All of life is the study of attention; where your attention goes, your life follows.

-Krishnamurti.

Resolve to check your email twice a day, at 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM, and then turn it off again each time.

Slice and Dice the Task

The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, in thought and act.

-ORISON SWETT MARDEN

One technique that you can use to cut a big task down to size is the “salami slice” method of getting work done.

You should try the salami slice or the Swiss cheese method on any task that seems overwhelming when you approach it for the first time. You will be amazed at how helpful each technique is in overcoming procrastination.

Create Large Chunks of Time

Make Every Minute Count

Develop a Sense of Urgency

Do not wait; the time will never be “just right.” Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

-NAPOLEON HILL

Highly productive people take the time to think, plan, and set priorities.

When you work on your most important tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called “flow.”

The faster you work and the more you get done, the higher will be your levels of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride.

Single Handle Every Task

And herein lies the secret of true power. Learn, by constant practice, how to husband your resources, and concentrate them, at any given moment, upon a given point.

-JAMES ALLEN

By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50 percent or more.

Starting a high-priority task and persisting with that task until it is 100 percent complete is the true test of your character, your willpower, and your resolve.

About The Author

Brian Tracy is one of the top business speakers in the world today. He has designed and presented seminars for more than 1000 large companies, and more than 10,000 small and medium sized enterprises in 75 countries on the subjects of Leadership, Management, Professional Selling, Business Model Reinvention, and Profit Improvement. He has addressed more than 5,000,000 people in more than 5,000 talks and presentations worldwide. He currently speaks to 250,000 people per year. His fast-moving, entertaining video-based training programs are taught in 38 countries.

Brian is a best-selling author. He has written more than 80 books that have been translated into 42 languages, including Kiss That Frog!, Find Your Balance Point, Goals!, Flight Plan, Maximum Achievement, No Excuses!, Advanced Selling Strategies, and How the Best Leaders Lead. He is happily married, with four children and five grandchildren. He is the president of Brian Tracy International and lives in Solana Beach, California. He can be reached at briantracy@briantracy.com

Copyright © 2017 Brian Tracy.

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Produced with permission from Berrett Koehler. Originally published in 2001.

Eat That Frog The Snapshots Edition

ISBN: (ebook) 978-1-63353-685-2

BISAC category code SEL035000 SELF-HELP / Self-Management / Time Management

Printed in the United States of America