Effective Time Management and Productivity for Success

Focusing on three main tasks and completing them is the key to productivity and success in life, according to the speaker's time management philosophy.

### Brian Tracy's Ultimate Guide to Time Management and Productivity
* 🕰 Whenever you find yourself getting out of sync with regard to balance, and especially when you feel that you don't have the time, is when you most need to **stop and think**.
* 💭 Reflect on what you would do if you only had six months to live, and if **spending time with important people in your life is a priority**, start doing so now.
* 💼 Imagine being financially independent and having to work at something for ten years - what career would you choose? Start researching and working towards that field.
* 🔑 According to the Law of Three, there are only **three activities that account for 90% of the value you contribute** in your life.
* 🔥 "Do **fewer things** in your daily life, but do **more important things** and do them **more of the time**."
* 🎯 The starting point of productivity is to **make a list of everything you do**, identify the **most important task with potential consequences**, and work on it until **completion**.
* 💪 The four D's - **desire, decision, discipline, and determination** - are essential to excel in time management.
* 📈 "Task completion is the key to success. It is not tasks that you work on, but it's only the **tasks that you complete**."

the Greek said that moderation in all things is the key to a happy life. Moderation now sometimes people say well, I don't have time for my family. I don't have time to exercise. I don't have time for this and time for that. Whenever you find yourself getting out of sync with regard to balance, and especially when you feel that you don't have the time, is when you most need to stop and think. So here's the question to ask: What would I do if I only had 6 months to live? If you find yourself working too hard or not spending time in your relationship, not spending time with the people you care about and who care about you, ask yourself: What would I do if I only had 6 months to live? And if what you would do is spend more time with the important people in your life, the time to start spending that time is now. So what would you do if you had six months to live? You know it's an old joke, the doctors say they've never met a businessman on his

deathbed, who said, Boy, I wish I'd spent more time at the office. The fact of the matter is, balance and moderation in all things increase your productivity, increase your efficiency, and remember, the only reason you're working is so that you can enjoy the great things of life, which are your people, your relationships, the things that make you happy, and so on. Imagine that you are financially independent, that you have $20 million in the bank, and simultaneously you only have 10 years to live. You're going to enjoy superb health, but you have all the money that you need, and you have to work at something. You cannot be a layabout. So, therefore, if you could work at anything and you had all the money you needed, and you didn't want to waste any time, what career would you choose? If you could wave a magic wand and have all the talent and skill that you need to be successful in any field, what field would you choose for yourself? And then what you do is you just start to do some research on that.

field working it part-time, working it for free, reading books and courses, talking to people who are in it. I have spoken to literally thousands of people over the years who did that and eventually changed out of their current job, sometimes within their same company, sometimes out of their current job where they weren't very satisfied, into a new job that they loved, and they became a star at that new job, and you can do the same. Everybody can do this. I'm going to give you a law that is my favorite law of time management, and it's called The Law of Three. This law alone will enable you to be one of the most productive and successful people in your world. The Law of Three is based on my 30 years of study into time management, and what it basically says is that if you make a list of everything that you have to do in a week or a month, you'll come up with 20 or 30 (some people write down 40 or 50) tasks or activities. But if you look at this list, you'll find there are only

three activities that you engage in in your life that account for 90% of the value that you contribute in your life wherever you are in life there's only night three things that account for for 90% of your happiness only three things this law of three works everywhere and it works for everyone it works if you're a doctor an investment banker A salesperson a business owner or a student whatever there is always three so what you do is you make a list of everything you do and then you ask three questions question number one is if I could only do one thing on this list all day long which one activity would have the greatest positive impact on my life or you could say I could only do one activity all day long which one activity would help me to double my income faster than anything else and that answer is usually pretty obvious so you put a circle around there and then you ask it again if I could only do two things all day long what would be the second most valuable thing that I could do you uh you go through

your list and you'll come up with number two. And then you ask the question the third time if I would only do three things all day long. What would be number three? And you circle it. Now I put every one of my students through this exercise and they're all astonished because in a few minutes they see clearly that these are the three most important things that they do in achieving their goals of health, wealth, and happiness. And so the rule is this: do fewer things in your daily life, but do more important things and do them more of the time. And then get better, improve in each one of those areas in your life. There's three things that you do that are more important than everything else, and these will change over time, but you must be clear about those three things. And if you start working on only those three things, you will double your productivity, performance, and output very quickly. If you can concentrate on the three most important things you do well, there's four requirements for you to make these techniques work for you. We call these the four D's. The first D is

desire. It's when you must have a burning desire to be effective at time management. The second D is decision. You must make a decision that you are going to become an expert in this subject. You are going to take this course. You're going to use these materials. You're going to practice them over and over again because what we have found is in the absence of a decision, nothing ever happens. You need a clear, unequivocal, do-or-die, burn-the-bridges decision that this is a subject that you are going to master. The third D is discipline. You must discipline yourself to practice and repeat over and over again good time management techniques. In fact, we say that time management is self-discipline in action, and the ability to discipline yourself more than anything else is going to determine your success in life. And the fourth DED to become excellent in time management is determination. You must have the ability to persist. You must have the determination to keep on keeping at it, on and at it long enough until you become very, very good in this field.

I promise you, this the payoff is tremendous, because you see, time management is really life management. Everything that you do to improve the quality of your time management will improve and enhance every part of your life. You can even say it this way: the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your time management. The quality of your life will be determined by the way you use your time, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, because your time is your life. In every single study of high-performing men and women, we find that intense result orientation goes hand in hand with big payoffs in life. You see, it's not how much time you put in or the activities that you engage in, or how sincere or how intelligent or competent or capable or anything else. It's only what you produce, the results that you get from the time that you put in, that counts in determining your rewards. Not only your psychic rewards, how good you feel about yourself, but your financial rewards. You're always paid in direct

proportion to the quality and the quantity of the results that you produce. We call this the law of sowing and reaping, the law of cause and effect. The cause of everything that happens to you is your ability to get results and the easier reward. If you want to increase the quality and quantity of your rewards, you have to think all the time about increasing the quality and quantity of your results. Now the second point is this: most people are very unproductive. Most people cannot do a full day's work if their life depended upon it. In fact, every study that I've ever seen suggests that the average person works at only 50% of capacity. In fact, in most work environments, about 30% of all the work time is spent in socializing, gossiping, wasting time talking, chit-chatting, hanging around the water fountain, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and so on. What does it mean to you? It means that the average person is working at 50% or less of capacity. There are tremendous opportunities for you if you'll do some.

of the things that we talk about to rapidly move ahead of other people. The starting point of getting things done is the quality of neatness. The quality of neatness means that you start with a clean desk and you end with a clean desk. You start with a clean briefcase and you end with a clean briefcase. You take the time to make sure that your entire working environment looks neat, professional, productive, and effective. Remember this: it's not just what you do, but it's the perception of other people of what you do that counts. I read a story by a self-made millionaire who said that he built five successful companies, and one of their critical rules was that every single person kept a clean desk. Now, the fourth key in getting things done is the importance of focus. Focus which leads to Clarity, and we talk about this over and over again. Focus means that you're absolutely clear about what you're trying to accomplish. Focus means that you're absolutely clear about your key result areas and why you're on the payroll. We say that fuzzy Focus leads to

fuzzy results. Clear focus leads to clear results, and this means that you take the time to think. You take the time to think through: Why am I on the payroll? What have I been hired to accomplish? What are my key result areas? What are my core functions? What are the 20% of the things that I do that account for 80% of my results, and so on. So, the starting point in getting things done is focus, focus, and clarity. I call this the it's like adjusting the camera all the time, so you keep your focus very, very clear. Well, the next key principle is concentration. Concentration is what you do once you've decided on the most important idea to achieve your most important goal. Then you have to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing until it's complete. If Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world and the third richest man, were at a dinner party at Bill Gates' homeland last year, and there were about a hundred guests standing around at the reception, drinking wine and so on, these three men

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates' father are good friends. They were standing and talking when one of the other guests came up and said, Excuse me, gentlemen. You three are the most important people in the world. What would you say is the most important key to success today? They stopped talking, and they all turned and said, Focus. Focus is the most important quality for success today. We're so surrounded by so many distractions of so many kinds that the ability to focus is more important for success than any other quality. Now, I developed a philosophy when I was young and broke, and the philosophy was that if rich successful people tell you to do something, you should do it. If they tell you that this is a key to their success, then you should at least practice it for a while to see if it applies to you. What I have learned and what I learned coaching my clients, my business owners, is I taught them how to focus. I taught them how to select specific goals and activities in each area of their

life and how to focus like a laser beam on one goal at a time. If you can do that, you can conquer the world. Now, concentration is, in reality, where all the work and time management leads us to. It is the ability to concentrate 100% on one thing, setting priorities - the most important thing - and to stay with that single task until it's finished. Concentration means moving forward in a straight line toward the goals and objectives that you've clearly identified. It means concentrating without diversion or distraction. Focus and concentration, I believe, in 25 years of research, are the reasons for success and happiness in life. The reasons for a lack of success and unhappiness are a lack of focus, a lack of concentration. I have found the most important time management or personal productivity principle of all, and it is to make a list of everything you do in the morning before you start work, and then select the one item on that list that's more important than any others in terms of potential consequences, and then start on that one task and work on it 100% of

the time until it's complete. Now, if you can do that, you can double and triple your productivity, become one of the highest-paid and most respected people in your world. Select your most important task, start on it immediately, work on it 100% to the time until it's complete. Because here's what I discovered in 30 years of studying and writing books on time management: Task completion is the key to success. It is not tasks that you work on, but it's only the tasks that you complete. If you're a student, it's completing your assignments and your reports. If you're a salesperson, it's completing the sales. If you're a business person, it's completing different transactions. Everything in life is completing tasks. Now, here's a wonderful payoff: When you complete an important task, it gives you an increased sense of self-esteem and personal power. Your self-confidence goes up, you get more energy and more ideas, you feel happy about yourself. Whenever you complete a task, your brain gives you a rush of endorphins, and endorphins make you happy.

more alert and more creative. They strengthen your immune system so that you're never sick. So you'll find that what successful people do is they're always starting and completing tasks, and especially they start and complete them on time. Now what does this require? It requires our old friend and enemy, self-discipline. Now what we know about task completion is that not only is it the key to the future, not only is it the key to getting more and greater and better opportunities, but important task completion, doing something that's important to you and carrying it through and finishing it 100% at the end, is a source of energy, enthusiasm, and high self-esteem. Men and women who are working consistently on getting important things done and staying with it to the complete are more positive, they're more optimistic, they're more self-confident, they're full of confidence, they have more belief and self-assurance in themselves, and they get more opportunities to complete more tasks. And here's the flip side: completing low-priority tasks leads to stress. If you work and you get a lot of

little things done but they're not moving you toward the accomplishment of things that are really important to you. What happens is you just feel crummy. As a result, we find that the average Brit, average German, average French person works about 600 hours a year. An average executive or business owner works about 2,000 hours a year. So what you do is you take your annual income and you divide it by 2,000. So let's say you're earning $100,000 a year divided by 2,000. That means that you're earning $50 an hour. This is your hourly rate. Over time, you can include all your benefits and pensions and so on. But whatever this is, let's say your hourly income is $50 an hour. That means by Ricardo's law, the law of comparative advantage as formulated by David Ricardo, you don't do anything that pays less than $50 an hour. You only do things that pay you $50 an hour or more, or that people would pay you 50, I'm sorry, 50 Quid an hour or more to do.

everything else you delegate. If there's something that someone else can do for $10 an hour, you hire somebody to do that. $20 an hour, $30 an hour, you keep hiring people who can do tasks at a lower hourly rate than yourself. Now, here's the Great Discovery, and this can be life-changing. I call it the law of three. The law of three says that no matter how many things you do, how many tasks you do in a week or a month (and it's usually 20 or 30), three of those tasks account for 90% of your value, only three. You make a list of all of your tasks, and I do this with my business owners, and I have them go through this, and they're astonished. They double their income within 30 days because I ask them the three magic questions. Magic question number one: If you could only do one thing on this list, one task on this list all day long, which one task would have the greatest positive impact on your career? Which one task? Well, it'll usually

pop. It'll jump out at you, so you put a circle around it. Then you say, If you could only do two things all day long, which would be number two? And you put a circle around that. If you could only do three things all day long, which would be number three? Put a circle around that. And suddenly, it's almost like all these other tasks fade, again like in a camera shot in a movie. You fade, and those three tasks are sitting there, like those three magic tabs. And you realize, Oh my God, those are the big three. Everything else is secondary. Everything else can be done by someone else, or done later, or not done at all. And then you focus on the three. So here's the rule for doubling your income, and doubling it again, and I'll repeat it again: Do fewer things, but do more important things, and do them more often, and get better at them. Repeat: Do fewer things (the big three), do more important things, do more of them, spend more of your day working on those three tasks, and then get better at those tasks.

so you can get more done faster at a higher level of quality. If you will practice the law of three, you'll transform your life. If you combine that with the eat the Frog and work on your most important task, the one that can contribute the most value, and you can do that until it becomes a habit, just automatic. You get up in the morning and you just start working on your most important task and you say no. I don't do that. I don't do little tasks. Those are not my job. People say what about this, what about that. I said excuse me. I'm management. My labor. I do management tasks. I do my big three. Labor does all this other thing. So you, person who's watching this right now, is your management on labor. Think of yourself as management and do your three tasks. If you can do that until it becomes a habit, you're going to conquer the world. All, all of us over the course of Our Lives want to develop character and character has been defined several ways. One definition I like is that

character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed. So, taking this course, by the way, you'll make a lot of decisions and commitments and resolutions. The true measure of character is whether or not you have the capacity to follow through. Character, in effect, is self-discipline in action. Character is self-discipline in action. You can tell how much character you have by how willing you are to discipline yourself to make the sacrifices that are necessary in the short term to have a great life in the long [Music] term.

STOP WASTING YOUR TIME | The Most Powerful Life Advice Of Successful People 2023

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Motivation Radio

Moderation in all things is crucial for balance and happiness, especially when it comes to time management and priorities.

Asking yourself what you would do if you had six months to live can help realign your focus on what truly matters, such as spending time with loved ones.

The Law of Three, which states that there are typically only three activities that account for 90% of your value and happiness, is a powerful tool for prioritizing and increasing productivity.

Prioritizing for Success: The Power of Doing Three Things

Prioritize the three most important tasks for achieving goals of health, wealth, and happiness to double productivity.

The key to excellent time management lies in the "three most important things" that will change over time.

To excel in time management, one must have the four D's: desire, decision, discipline, and determination, to improve the quality of life through effective time management.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping: A Guide to Increasing Productivity

The key to increasing rewards is to improve the quality and quantity of results produced.

Studies show that the average person works at only 50% of their capacity, with a significant amount of time wasted on non-work activities.

Maintaining neatness and having a clear focus are crucial in getting things done and increasing productivity.

The Importance of Focus and Task Completion for Success

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates' father believe that the key to success today is focus, due to the abundance of distractions.

They emphasize the importance of concentrating 100% on one task at a time.

Task completion is highlighted as the ultimate key to success, as it leads to increased self-esteem, personal power, and happiness.

The Power of Task Completion and Priority Management

Completing important tasks boosts energy, enthusiasm, and self-esteem, leading to a more positive and confident mindset.

Focusing on high-priority tasks is crucial, as the law of three states that only a few tasks contribute significantly to one's value.

Additionally, it is financially beneficial to delegate tasks that pay less than your hourly rate, according to Ricardo's law of comparative advantage.

Prioritize your tasks by identifying the top three most important ones and focus on them.

By practicing the "law of three," you can transform your life and double your income.

Character is demonstrated through the self-discipline of following through on resolutions, which is essential for long-term success.