Brian Tracy
Stop being disgusted and eat a frog!
Brian Tracy
This book sets out in a very accessible manner a number of practical techniques and rules that will help you: plan and organize work during the day; focus attention on the most significant tasks; avoid delays in business; achieve better results when performing tasks of any kind.
Using this technique will allow you to significantly increase your own productivity. You will be able to get more things done, experience less stress, feel more in control, and gain a positive outlook on everything that happens in your life. The book represents the quintessence of the best ideas and laws of rational use of time.
PREFACE
Thank you for choosing this book. I believe the ideas contained herein will help you as much as they have helped me and thousands of other people. Moreover, I hope that this book will radically change your life.
You will never have enough time to complete all your activities. You are literally overwhelmed with work and various responsibilities; a stack of magazines and a pile of books are waiting for you to find time to start looking at them, not to mention reading them carefully. It would seem that all you have to do is free yourself from other matters...
The problem, however, is precisely that you are unlikely to ever be completely free of “other” matters. In any case, you will hardly be able to “take control” of the tasks constantly falling on your head. As a result, you will never get far enough in your business to allow yourself to spend time on all the books, magazines that are of interest to you, and generally engage in idle pastimes that you openly or secretly dream of.
And stop hoping that over time you will be able to solve all your problems by simply increasing your own productivity: no matter how many different techniques you have to increase it, there will always be too many things to do in the time you have.
The only way to rationally manage your time and your life is to change your thinking, work style and approach to solving the endless stream of problems that befall you every day. Taking control of the tasks in front of you only means that you stop focusing on one thing and start spending more time on the things that really matter.
I have been studying the question of how to plan my time for more than thirty years. I have spent a lot of time studying the works of Peter Drucker, Alex Mackenzie, Alan Lakin, Stephen Covey and many, many others. I have read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on success and effectiveness in professional life. This book was the result of my search.
Whenever I came across an interesting idea, I tried to try it out in practice, be it in my work or personal life. If it turned out to work, I incorporated it into the theory that I taught to other people, speaking to mass audiences and conducting seminars.
Galileo once wrote: “You cannot teach a man anything that he does not already know; you can only bring what he knows to his consciousness.”
Depending on your level of knowledge and practical experience, many of the ideas presented in this book may seem familiar to you. This book is designed to lead you to a deeper understanding of them. By mastering the above methods and techniques, and by making their use a habit, you will change your life in the most positive way.
My own story
Let me tell you a little about myself and the origins of this book.
I began my working life without any special merits, other than the fact that I had an inquisitive mind. I did poorly at school and left without receiving a certificate. For several years he worked primarily as a laborer. The future did not promise me anything special.
As a young man, I enlisted on a wildcat cargo ship and set off to see the world. For eight years I traveled and earned my living by doing menial work, eventually visiting more than eighty countries on five continents.
And after I could no longer find my usual job as a laborer, I became a traveling salesman; began to go from house to house and to office, trying to sell goods and working entirely on commission. Each transaction cost me a lot of effort, and I began to look around and ask myself the question: “Why is it that other people do it better than me?”
In the process of learning and practicing best practices, I transformed my own life. I am still amazed at how simple and obvious the key to success turned out to be. Find out what successful people do and do the same until you achieve the results you want.
Simply put, some people succeed because they do certain things differently than everyone else and are able to make the right decisions in a given situation. Their distinctive feature is that they manage their time much better than a person who does not shine with success.
Having an unremarkable past behind me, I developed in myself, and subsequently suffered from it, a certain inferiority complex. I was caught up in the belief that people who were better at the same thing than I was were actually better than me. As I later discovered for myself, the latter does not necessarily follow from the former. Those I looked up to simply did their job differently than I did, and the knowledge they accumulated to work this way could, in principle, be acquired by me too.
This was a revelation for me. I was both amazed and delighted by this discovery. I still experience the same feelings to this day. I realized that I was able to change my own life and achieve almost any goal that I set for myself; To do this, it is enough just to find out how others act in a similar situation, and then apply the knowledge and experience adopted from them in their own activities until results are obtained that are similar to those that they sought.
After a year of working in sales, I became one of the best. I was then promoted to the management level of the company, eventually being appointed vice president, overseeing ninety-five employees in six countries. I was then twenty-five years old.
I subsequently worked for twenty-two different companies, founded and grew a number of businesses, and received a business degree from a major university. I learned French, German and Spanish, in addition to lecturing, working as an instructor, and providing consulting services to over 500 companies. Currently, more than 250 thousand people attend my lectures and seminars annually, with audiences often reaching 20 thousand people.
Over the course of my career, I have learned a simple truth. The ability to single-mindedly focus on your most important task, do it well and see it through to completion is the key to great success, real achievement, respect from others, high social status and happiness. And this idea runs like a red thread throughout the entire book.
This book was written to show you how you can move forward faster in your career. To this end, here are twenty-one powerful principles that I have discovered throughout my life on which I believe professional success should be based.
The methods, rules and strategies involved are practical, proven and their benefits are seen almost immediately after application. For the sake of brevity, I do not indulge in psychological arguments about the reasons for a person’s poor planning of his working time; this, in particular, is expressed in the fact that he puts off urgent matters for later. You will also not find here theoretical calculations or lengthy references to the results of scientific research. You will become familiar with specific actions that you can immediately use in your own practice to get better and faster results from your work.
Each principle outlined in this book is aimed at increasing the overall effectiveness of your work and getting more results, no matter what problems you apply it to. Much of what is proposed can be successfully applied in your personal life.
Each of the twenty-one principles, combining certain methods and rules for organizing work and time, represents a complete whole; they are all, however, equally important. One strategy may be effective in one situation, just as another may work better in another...
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Key ideas from Brian Tracy's book “Leave the Disgust, Eat the Frog! 21 effective principles of effective work."
1. Axiom: it is impossible to do everything.
Taking control of the tasks in front of you only means that you stop focusing on one thing and start spending more time on the things that really matter.
2. The frog is the largest and most important task that most strongly affects your life and career at the moment.
Your “frog” is the largest, most important task in relation to which you are most likely inclined to be slow and indecisive, unless you immediately decide to take the bull by the horns. It is also a task that has a key positive impact on your life and career at the moment.
The important thing to understand here is that to determine the role of a task in your career, you need to understand what your goal is. Having a clear idea of what the purpose of all body movements is is a prerequisite for moving somewhere. Otherwise, the motion will be Brownian. It would seem a simple truth, but for many this is the most difficult moment.
3. Decide what you need.
Tracy didn't reinvent the wheel here. In all pop books on achieving something, they write about the need not only to understand the final goal for yourself, but also to visualize it, imagine how good it will be when the goal is achieved and how great you are for achieving this through hard work.
The mental image of your ideal will have a powerful influence on your very behavior.
Part of visualizing a goal is writing it down on paper. The author emphasizes: “think on paper.”
4. How would you eat an elephant? Piece by piece.
We describe the pieces as a sequence of atomic actions (we make a plan). We plan our day ahead of time, and also draw up a general, monthly, and weekly to-do list. A list with greater detail should contain elementary tasks in a large project described in a more enlarged list (tasks solved during the day should bring us closer to the global goals listed in the master list).
5. The main thing is to distinguish the main from the secondary.
6. Prepare your workplace for the task.
If we want to eat a piece of an “elephant,” it wouldn’t be a bad idea to throw away everything that doesn’t belong to that particular individual from the desk and out of line of sight.
The neater and more attractive your workspace is, the easier it will be for you to get started and finish work.
7. Remove inhibitors.
In any project there are tasks that limit the speed of progress towards the goal (don’t forget that we know the goal, wrote it down and presented it). These tasks should be the first candidates to be eaten. As a rule, these are the most disgusting “frogs”, which became deterrents because some people disdained to eat them in a timely manner...
We spare no time in analyzing and identifying limiting factors. The GTD describes the so-called The natural model of project management is when analysis is done first, and then planning and implementation. In life, it often happens the other way around - first we do pleasant things, and then, when all the deadlines have passed, the bridges have been burned and there is nowhere to retreat, we take on the nastiest frogs, which we have hitherto put off “for later.” And they are the problem and the cause of negative consequences.
8. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Or “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” If you're hungover, let alone a frog, you can't eat anything... Watch your health.
9. Maintain mental hygiene.
Very capacious. Re-read this thesis again, thoughtfully.
Make sure you think and talk with others about the positive aspects of things rather than the negative ones.
10. One task at a time.
Don't interrupt, don't shift your attention. He took on the task, gritted his teeth, sent everyone, and completed it to the end. This is facilitated by segmentation (dividing a task into feasible indivisible pieces), order in the workplace (remove things not related to the current “frog” from view), and advance planning of the day.
One of the opinions is that the preliminary plan of the day should not be like a train schedule. It is enough to determine in advance the main work (from key categories) for the day and roughly distribute the remaining tasks, including routine, over time. Rigid planning leads to the fact that plans in our changing conditions are disrupted and, as a result, cease to be observed. And making a plan that is not followed can hardly be called a productive pastime.
11. Do it immediately! Do it now! Do it now!
Do it now!
INTRODUCTION
Today is a wonderful time to live in the world. Never before has a person had so many opportunities to achieve his goals than now. And probably never before has a person had such a stunning choice in his actions. It could be said that you have so many options for positive action before you that the ability to choose between them becomes a decisive factor in your success in life.
If you belong to the majority of modern people, you are in a situation where there is a lot to do and not enough time to do it. You spend a lot of energy trying to cope with the mass of tasks entrusted to you, but new tasks and responsibilities continue to roll in on you like a tide. For this reason, you are never able to complete your entire to-do list. And in the end you will never be able to “find” time for this. In relation to some of your tasks and responsibilities (and sometimes many of them), you will always be behind the planned schedule.
In view of all this, and perhaps more than ever before, the ability to select the most important task among all the tasks, then begin to solve it and complete it as quickly and efficiently as possible, this should be considered a key factor in your professional success than any other quality and skill that you could cultivate in yourself.
A man of average ability who acquires the habit of setting clear goals and bringing them to a successful conclusion in a short time will give a hundred points ahead to any genius who talks a lot and makes grandiose plans, but practically does little.
It has long been a common saying: “If you have to eat a live frog every morning, you can rest assured for the rest of the day that nothing worse will probably happen to you today.”
Your “frog” is the one big, most important task that you are most likely to be slow and indecisive about unless you decide to take the bull by the horns right away. This is also the task that has a key positive impact on your life and career at the moment.
Another saying goes like this: “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the nastiest one first.”
In other words, this means that if you have two important tasks, then start with the largest, most difficult and most important one. Train yourself to begin solving it immediately and then persevere until it is completed, only then allow yourself to move on to solving other problems.
Think of it as if you are taking an “exam.” Take everything as if someone has thrown you a challenge, the answer to which is a matter of honor. Resist the temptation to start with easier tasks. Keep reminding yourself that one of the most important decisions you make every day is deciding what to do immediately and what can be done later, if at all.
Finally, this observation: if you have to “eat” a live frog, you shouldn’t sit and look at it for a long time.
The path to achieving a high level of professionalism and productivity lies through acquiring a sustainable habit of solving the most important tasks first thing in the morning, without wasting time on other problems. You need to learn to “eat the frog” first, without engaging in preliminary, often idle, reasoning.
In the studies conducted, the purpose of which was to identify success factors and the objects of which were men and women who sought to increase their incomes and quickly move up the career ladder, such a property of nature as “betting on action” acted as the most noticeable and stable behavioral factor in all spheres of activity of the person under study. Success accompanies those who immediately begin to accomplish the most important things, who have cultivated perseverance and determination in working on them until the victorious end.
In our world, and especially in the business world, you are paid and promoted in exchange for specific, measurable performance results. You are paid to make a tangible contribution to the overall work, and this is especially true for the contribution that is actually expected of you.
“Ineffective execution” is one of the biggest problems faced by organizations in the modern world. Many people confuse activity with the process of achieving results. They talk for a long time, hold endless meetings, make beautiful plans, but ultimately do not ensure that the demands placed on their work and, in particular, its results are met.
Ninety-five percent of your success in life and work will depend on the habits you adopt. The habit of setting clear goals for yourself, avoiding procrastination and indecisiveness in business, and working hard to complete the most significant tasks requires cultivating both mental and physical skills. This habit can be acquired through practice and repetition until it becomes ingrained on a subconscious level and becomes an integral part of your behavior. Once a habit is formed, what constitutes its practical expression is nothing more than an automatic reaction, an action carried out with enviable ease.
Your mental and emotional world is structured in such a way that successful completion of a task is accompanied by an experience of satisfaction. Sometimes you experience true happiness. You feel like a winner.
Every time you complete a task of any size or importance, you feel a surge of energy, enthusiasm and rise in your own eyes. The more meaningful the task you complete, the more satisfaction and self-confidence you gain, and the more optimistic you are about the world around you.
The feeling of satisfaction that occurs after completing an important task is physiologically explained by the release of endorphins in your brain. They are the ones that give you that natural feeling of “high.” The release of endorphins that follows a successful task fills you with pride in your own creativity and gives you self-confidence.
Here lies one of the so-called secrets of success. It consists in the fact that you are able to develop a positive “habituation” to endorphins, or more precisely, to the feeling of mental clarity, self-confidence and personal competence that they cause. Once this “habituation” occurs, your life will almost spontaneously organize itself in such a way that it will become commonplace for you to begin and complete the most important undertakings and projects first. You will literally gain physiological “dependence”, in the most positive sense, of course, in relation to your own success and ability to work effectively.
One of the keys to living a great life, succeeding in your career, and being happy with yourself is to get into the habit of immediately taking on priority tasks and seeing them through to completion. Once this habit becomes second nature, it will gradually guide your actions, and you will discover that it is easier to complete important tasks than to abandon them halfway.
You probably know the story about the man who stopped in front of a busker on a New York street and asked how he could get to Carnegie Hall. The musician replied: “You need to practice, man, you need to practice endlessly.”
Exercise is the path to skill and skill. We are lucky in that our intelligence is like a muscle. He gets stronger and is capable of more through training. Through exercise, you are able to master any style of behavior and develop any skill that you consider necessary for yourself.
You need three qualities to develop the habit of goal-oriented problem solving. This requires good will, discipline and determination.
First, decide to develop the habit of finishing what you start. Second, exercise the discipline to practice the principles outlined below until you have mastered them. Finally, back up all your actions with determination and perseverance until the habit you form becomes an integral part of your nature.
There is a way to speed up the process of approaching the ideal - a highly productive person who knows how to work efficiently and productively. To do this, you need to constantly remember the advantages and benefits that you will gain by learning to be an active, quickly achieving results and purposeful person. Imagine yourself as the kind of person who is capable of quickly and successfully completing important tasks on an ongoing basis.
The mental image of your ideal will have a powerful influence on your very behavior. Constantly see yourself as the person you would like to become. The ideal self-image created in this way - a category belonging to your inner world, will surprisingly influence the external category - the style of your work and behavior. As Jim Cathcart, renowned lecturer, says, “Who you see yourself will be who you become.”
Each of you has an almost unlimited ability to master and develop new skills, habits, and abilities. In the process of training, repeated and persistent, aimed at overcoming your tendency to procrastinate when completing the tasks facing you, at acquiring the habit of solving them, on the contrary, quickly and with high quality, you will learn to achieve goals both in your life and in your career at high speed, after you step, figuratively speaking, on the gas pedal.
CHAPTER 1
Prepare the table
There is one quality that is required
to possess to win and that
certainty of goal, knowledge of what a person
wants and a burning desire to achieve this.
NAPOLEON HILL
Before you can choose your frog and start eating it, you need to decide what your aspirations are in each area of your life. Clarity of goals, objectives, etc. is a critical factor in human productivity. The primary reason why some people manage to achieve more, all other things being equal, is that they have complete clarity about their goals and objectives, from which they never shy away. The clearer the picture you have of where your aspirations lie and what you need to do in the process of achieving your goals, the easier it is for you to avoid procrastination and “eat the frog,” that is, to complete the important work you have started. .
An important reason for wasting time before starting the main tasks, otherwise called procrastination (due, by the way, to a large extent to a lack of motivation), is the lack of clarity, a clear idea about the content of the required work, the order of its implementation, as well as its purpose. You should do your best to avoid falling into such a psychological trap by striving to achieve complete clarity regarding your goals in everything you undertake.
The great rule, an important component of success:
"Think on paper"
Only three percent of adults have clear, written goals. These people achieve five, ten times more than their equals or even superiors in education and ability, who, however, never take the time to clearly put on paper what they ultimately strive for.
There is an effective method for setting and achieving goals that you can take on board and use for the rest of your life. It consists of seven consecutive simple steps. Implementing any of them can double or even triple your productivity. Many graduates of my training programs have significantly improved their financial affairs within one or two years, and others within one or two months, by adopting this easy-to-use method.
Step number one: decide what you need. Either do it yourself, or sit down with your boss and discuss your goals and objectives until you are completely clear about what is expected of you in your job and in what order your priorities are set. It is simply amazing how many people waste their time at work or work primarily on unimportant tasks, day after day, only because they did not discuss in detail with their boss the nature of the tasks and goals facing them.
Rule:
"One of the worst options
a waste of time is
excellent job done,
which no one needs"
Stephen Covey says, “Before you climb the ladder of success, make sure it is leaning against the wall of the building you want.”
Step number two: put your thoughts on paper. Think on paper. When you write down what your goal is, you crystallize it and make it tangible. You have created something that can be touched and visually perceived. On the other hand, a goal or task that has not received written expression can be considered only a good intention or a fragment of fantasy. She has no energy. Goals not formulated on paper lead to confusion, lack of clarity in vision, disorientation and numerous mistakes.
Step number three: set a time frame for achieving your goal. A goal for which there is no defined time frame has no urgency. It does not have a clearly defined beginning and end. Without a clear deadline and clearly defined responsibilities for execution, either dictated to you or accepted voluntarily, you will naturally tend to procrastinate and end up doing very little to achieve your goal.
Step number four: Make a list of everything you think you need to do to achieve your goal. As you come up with a new idea for achieving a goal, add to your list. Revise and expand it until you consider it completely complete. This list gives you a panoramic picture of your goals and objectives. It also sets the “track” along which their “pursuit” will be carried out. In addition, the likelihood that you will achieve exactly the goal that you set in advance and on time increases significantly.
Step number five: Convert your list into a plan. Arrange the items on the list according to their priority and arrange them in chronological order. Take a few minutes to decide which actions to take first and which ones you can leave for later. Decide which action should precede and which should follow. It would be even better to present your plan on a piece of paper in the form of an organigram, which shows the relationship between the various planned actions. Many of you will be amazed at how much easier it becomes to achieve a goal if the path to it is divided into small sections, each of which represents a separate small task.
Once you have your goals and action plan down on paper, you will be much more productive and efficient than someone who prefers to carry their plans in their head.
Step number six: immediately begin solving the tasks included in your plan. Do something. Do whatever you want. The most “average” plan, but executed carefully, is much better than the most brilliant plan, for the implementation of which little was done. For those who strive for success, the key to it is the active execution of what is planned.
Step number seven: Decide to do something every day that brings you closer to some major goal of yours. Make it part of your plans for every day ahead. Make it a habit to read a certain number of pages of material on your subject every day. Call a certain number of clients every day. Set aside some time each day for physical activity. Study every day a certain number of words of the foreign language you are studying. Don't miss a day!
Move forward relentlessly. Once you start moving, don't let yourself stop. Relentlessly making such demands on yourself can make you the most successful person of your generation.
Having goals clearly written down on paper has a wonderful effect on your thinking. They provide you with motivation to work and set you up for action. They also stimulate your creativity, release pent-up energy, and help you avoid procrastination.
The goals you formulate are the fuel in the forge of your success. The more significant and clear your goals, the greater satisfaction awaits you after their implementation. The more you think about your goals, the stronger your inner drive will be to achieve them.
Reflect on your goals and review them daily. Every morning, when you start work, take action on the most pressing task that you can accomplish as a contribution to achieving your current main goal.
LEAVE DISGUST, EAT A FROG!
Take a blank piece of paper right now and make a list of ten goals that you would like to achieve over the next twelve months. Formulate them as if a year has already passed and they have become a reality. Use the present tense, indicative mood, and speak in the first person to ensure that the goals you list are positively received by your subconscious.
For example, you could write: “I earn X dollars a year,” or “I weigh X kilograms,” or “I have such and such a car.”
Then re-read the list and select one goal that, if you achieved it, would have the most significant impact on your life. Now write it down on a separate sheet of paper, give it a deadline, make a plan to achieve it, start acting on that plan, and then do something every day that brings you closer to your goal. An exercise like this in itself can radically change your life!
CHAPTER 2
Plan your every day ahead of time
Through planning we move
the future into the present and thereby we have
opportunity to do something
regarding him already now.
ALAN LAKEN
You've probably heard this question: "How would you eat an elephant?" The answer, of course, is “piece by piece.”
How would you eat your biggest and nastiest “frog”? In the same manner: you would break it down into specific step-by-step actions and start from the very first.
Your intellect, your ability to think, plan and make decisions, is your main tool in preventing procrastination and increasing your own productivity. Your ability to define your goals, plan and take action determines the course of your life. The act of thinking and planning frees up your mental resources, unleashes your creativity, and increases your useful mental and physical energy.
The thought of Alex Mackenzie is consonant with this: “Unplanned action is the cause of all failures.”
Your ability to plan well and ahead of time is a measure of your overall competence. The better the plan you make, the easier it is for you to overcome your tendency to procrastinate, start moving forward, start your “frog”, and then continue to persistently achieve your goal.
One of the highest goals in any work is to achieve the highest possible return on the mental, emotional and physical energy expended. The advantage for you is that every minute spent on planning saves at least ten minutes in the practical implementation of ideas. It will only take you ten to twenty minutes to plan your day, but this small “sacrifice” will save at least two hours (100-120 minutes) of otherwise wasted time and wasted effort throughout the day.
You've probably heard of the so-called six P formula, which states: "Planning prevents right actions and prevents bad ones."
When you think about the benefits that planning can have in improving your productivity and performance, it's surprising why so few people practice it in their daily lives. But planning in itself is not anything complicated. All you need is paper and pen. The complex Palm Pilot computer program, like almost any organizer, uses the same principle: you make a list of everything you need to do in advance before you begin to achieve your goals.
Always work according to the list. When a new task comes up, put it on your list before you start doing it. You are able to increase your productivity and productivity by twenty-five percent or more from the day you start working strictly in accordance with the list of planned tasks.
Make your list the night before, at the end of the working day. Include in it everything that you did not manage to complete during the current day, as well as the things that you plan for the next day. By compiling such a list in this way, you can be sure that it will be assimilated by your subconscious throughout the night's sleep. The consequence of this is often that you wake up with grandiose ideas, which, as it turns out, can be successfully applied in your work, increasing the speed and quality of the tasks performed.
The more time you devote to compiling written lists of everything you plan to accomplish, the greater the success of all your endeavors will be.
You will need different lists according to their purpose. First, you need to make a master list, which should list everything that comes to your mind in connection with what you are planning for the future. Its purpose is to include every idea that comes to your mind about what you are planning, such as every new goal or task. You can sort the ideas included in the list later.
Secondly, you need a monthly list - it is compiled at the end of each month for the next month. This may include items you previously added to the master list.
Third, you will need a weekly checklist to help you plan your activities for the next week ahead of time. This list should be compiled during the current week.
Making yourself and strictly adhering to the requirement to systematically plan your time can serve you well. Many people have told me that the habit of devoting a couple of hours at the end of the week to planning for the next week has made a significant impact on their productivity and, in fact, has radically changed their lives. This technique will provide you with no less service.
Finally, you should move a number of items from your monthly and weekly plans into your daily plan. These are specific tasks that you plan to accomplish over the next day.
As you work through the day, cross items off your checklist as you complete them. What is valuable to you in this process is the visible picture of what has been achieved. This is how a feeling of success and movement forward is born. Seeing yourself consistently completing your planned tasks gives you the motivation and energy you need to get to the end of the list. At the same time, your self-esteem and self-respect increase. Your own progress, which you observe latently, ensures your movement forward and helps you avoid procrastination in business.
When taking on a project of any kind, start by making a list of every step you plan to take to complete the project from start to finish. Organize project tasks by priority and according to chronological sequence. Make an appropriate organigram, whether on a piece of paper or on a computer screen, giving yourself the opportunity to see both each task individually and all together. Then begin completing each task one by one, without taking on more than one at a time. You will be surprised at how much you can achieve by doing things this way.
Working with the help of your checklists, you will certainly feel a greater return on your own work. Your own life will become controlled by your will. Your progress will become naturally motivated. Your thoughts will become more focused and creative; At the same time, you will receive increasingly inspired ideas on how to speed up the pace of your work.
By using this method in your work, you will gain a wonderful feeling of steady progress, providing you with enough energy to use your entire work day effectively.
One of the most important rules in achieving high productivity is the 10/90 rule. According to this rule, the first 10 percent of time spent on advance planning and organization of work will save at least 90 percent of the time spent actually doing the work. You only need to apply this rule once to be convinced of its truth.
By planning ahead for each day, you'll find it easier to both get started and keep going. Things are going faster and smoother than before. You feel more confident, and the knowledge of your own competence gives you satisfaction. Over time, you come to the conclusion that nothing can stop you.
LEAVE DISGUST, EAT A FROG!
Starting today, start planning ahead every day, week and month of your life. Take a notepad or piece of paper and make a list of everything you need to do in the next twenty-four hours. Add to it as new ideas come to mind. Also make a list of all projects, large multi-tasking events, the implementation of which is of great importance for your future.
Sort your most important goals, projects and tasks by priority, and then place them in the desired chronological order, indicating what you plan to accomplish first, second, third, etc. Using the final goal as a starting point, form a chain of events leading to it in reverse order.
Think on paper! Always base your activities on the execution of a list of activities. You'll be amazed at how much more productive your work will be and how much easier it will be for you to eat your frog.
CHAPTER 3
Apply the 80/20 rule in everything
We always have enough time, use it
we got it right.
JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE
The 80/20 rule is one of the most successful concepts in time management and planning. It is also called the “Pareto principle,” after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who first formulated it in 1895. He noticed that people in society were divided into what he called the "influential minority" (whose share in terms of wealth and influence accounted for the "top" 20 percent of the population), the rest - the "trivial majority" (who accounted for the "bottom" "80 percent).
He later discovered that almost any field of activity in economics obeys the principle he derived. For example, his principle states that 20 percent of the work you do produces 80 percent of the results you get; 20 percent of your clients account for 80 percent of your contracts; 20 percent of your products and services provide you with 80 percent of your total revenue; 20 percent of the tasks you perform correspond to 80 percent of the value you produce, etc. This means that if you have a list of ten things that need to be done, then two of them will be equal (or more valuable) in the final benefit brought by the remaining eight , taken together.
Interesting fact, isn't it? Each of the mentioned tasks may require the same amount of time to complete. However, the contribution to the final total result from completing one or two of them will exceed, respectively, ten times or five times the relative contribution of each of the other tasks.
It often turns out that one item on a list of ten tasks that you have to complete is more important than all the other nine items taken together. The problem in question, without options, is a “frog” that must be eaten first.
Can you guess which tasks people are most indecisive about and mark time when completing them? The sad thing is that most people tend to procrastinate on the 10 to 20 percent of tasks that matter most, the “powerful minority.” On the contrary, they puzzle themselves primarily with the less significant 80 percent, the “trivial majority,” whose contribution to the final results is relatively small.
It is not uncommon to see people who seem to be busy working all day long, but the results of their activities are hardly visible or of little significance. The reason for this is almost always the fact that they are working on unimportant tasks and are hesitant to tackle one or two tasks that could significantly benefit both the company and their own career.
The most significant tasks are often the most difficult and complex. However, the payoff and reward for their effective implementation can be enormous. For this reason, you should firmly refuse to complete tasks contained in the minor eighty percent while you still have tasks in the top twenty undone.
PREFACE
Thank you for choosing this book. I believe the ideas contained herein will help you as much as they have helped me and thousands of other people. Moreover, I hope that this book will radically change your life.
You will never have enough time to complete all your activities. You are literally overwhelmed with work and various responsibilities; a stack of magazines and a pile of books are waiting for you to find time to start looking at them, not to mention reading them carefully. It would seem that all you have to do is free yourself from other matters...
The problem, however, is precisely that you are unlikely to ever be completely free of “other” matters. In any case, you will hardly be able to “take control” of the tasks constantly falling on your head. As a result, you will never get far enough in your business to allow yourself to spend time on all the books, magazines that are of interest to you, and generally engage in idle pastimes that you openly or secretly dream of.
And stop hoping that over time you will be able to solve all your problems by simply increasing your own productivity: no matter how many different techniques you have to increase it, there will always be too many things to do in the time you have.
The only way to rationally manage your time and your life is to change your thinking, work style and approach to solving the endless stream of problems that befall you every day. Taking control of the tasks in front of you only means that you stop focusing on one thing and start spending more time on the things that really matter.
I have been studying the question of how to plan my time for more than thirty years. I have spent a lot of time studying the works of Peter Drucker, Alex Mackenzie, Alan Lakin, Stephen Covey and many, many others. I have read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on success and effectiveness in professional life. This book was the result of my search.
Whenever I came across an interesting idea, I tried to try it out in practice, be it in my work or personal life. If it turned out to work, I incorporated it into the theory that I taught to other people, speaking to mass audiences and conducting seminars.
Galileo once wrote: “You cannot teach a man anything that he does not already know; you can only bring what he knows to his consciousness.”
Depending on your level of knowledge and practical experience, many of the ideas presented in this book may seem familiar to you. This book is designed to lead you to a deeper understanding of them. By mastering the above methods and techniques, and by making their use a habit, you will change your life in the most positive way.
Let me tell you a little about myself and the origins of this book.
I began my working life without any special merits, other than the fact that I had an inquisitive mind. I did poorly at school and left without receiving a certificate. For several years he worked primarily as a laborer. The future did not promise me anything special.
As a young man, I enlisted on a wildcat cargo ship and set off to see the world. For eight years I traveled and earned my living by doing menial work, eventually visiting more than eighty countries on five continents.
And after I could no longer find my usual job as a laborer, I became a traveling salesman; began to go from house to house and to office, trying to sell goods and working entirely on commission. Each transaction cost me a lot of effort, and I began to look around and ask myself the question: “Why is it that other people do it better than me?”
After that I did something that changed my life.
Brian Tracy
Stop being disgusted and eat a frog!
PREFACE
Thank you for choosing this book. I believe the ideas contained herein will help you as much as they have helped me and thousands of other people. Moreover, I hope that this book will radically change your life.
You will never have enough time to complete all your activities. You are literally overwhelmed with work and various responsibilities; a stack of magazines and a pile of books are waiting for you to find time to start looking at them, not to mention reading them carefully. It would seem that all you have to do is free yourself from other matters...
The problem, however, is precisely that you are unlikely to ever be completely free of “other” matters. In any case, you will hardly be able to “take control” of the tasks constantly falling on your head. As a result, you will never get far enough in your business to allow yourself to spend time on all the books, magazines that are of interest to you, and generally engage in idle pastimes that you openly or secretly dream of.
And stop hoping that over time you will be able to solve all your problems by simply increasing your own productivity: no matter how many different techniques you have to increase it, there will always be too many things to do in the time you have.
The only way to rationally manage your time and your life is to change your thinking, work style and approach to solving the endless stream of problems that befall you every day. Taking control of the tasks in front of you only means that you stop focusing on one thing and start spending more time on the things that really matter.
I have been studying the question of how to plan my time for more than thirty years. I have spent a lot of time studying the works of Peter Drucker, Alex Mackenzie, Alan Lakin, Stephen Covey and many, many others. I have read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on success and effectiveness in professional life. This book was the result of my search.
Whenever I came across an interesting idea, I tried to try it out in practice, be it in my work or personal life. If it turned out to work, I incorporated it into the theory that I taught to other people, speaking to mass audiences and conducting seminars.
Galileo once wrote: “You cannot teach a man anything that he does not already know; you can only bring what he knows to his consciousness.”
Depending on your level of knowledge and practical experience, many of the ideas presented in this book may seem familiar to you. This book is designed to lead you to a deeper understanding of them. By mastering the above methods and techniques, and by making their use a habit, you will change your life in the most positive way.
My own story
Let me tell you a little about myself and the origins of this book.
I began my working life without any special merits, other than the fact that I had an inquisitive mind. I did poorly at school and left without receiving a certificate. For several years he worked primarily as a laborer. The future did not promise me anything special.
As a young man, I enlisted on a wildcat cargo ship and set off to see the world. For eight years I traveled and earned my living by doing menial work, eventually visiting more than eighty countries on five continents.
And after I could no longer find my usual job as a laborer, I became a traveling salesman; began to go from house to house and to office, trying to sell goods and working entirely on commission. Each transaction cost me a lot of effort, and I began to look around and ask myself the question: “Why is it that other people do it better than me?”
In the process of learning and practicing best practices, I transformed my own life. I am still amazed at how simple and obvious the key to success turned out to be. Find out what successful people do and do the same until you achieve the results you want.
Simply put, some people succeed because they do certain things differently than everyone else and are able to make the right decisions in a given situation. Their distinctive feature is that they manage their time much better than a person who does not shine with success.
Having an unremarkable past behind me, I developed in myself, and subsequently suffered from it, a certain inferiority complex. I was caught up in the belief that people who were better at the same thing than I was were actually better than me. As I later discovered for myself, the latter does not necessarily follow from the former. Those I looked up to simply did their job differently than I did, and the knowledge they accumulated to work this way could, in principle, be acquired by me too.
This was a revelation for me. I was both amazed and delighted by this discovery. I still experience the same feelings to this day. I realized that I was able to change my own life and achieve almost any goal that I set for myself; To do this, it is enough just to find out how others act in a similar situation, and then apply the knowledge and experience adopted from them in their own activities until results are obtained that are similar to those that they sought.
After a year of working in sales, I became one of the best. I was then promoted to the management level of the company, eventually being appointed vice president, overseeing ninety-five employees in six countries. I was then twenty-five years old.
I subsequently worked for twenty-two different companies, founded and grew a number of businesses, and received a business degree from a major university. I learned French, German and Spanish, in addition to lecturing, working as an instructor, and providing consulting services to over 500 companies. Currently, more than 250 thousand people attend my lectures and seminars annually, with audiences often reaching 20 thousand people.
