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When you learn and apply these methods and techniques over and over until they become habits, you will alter the course of your life in a very positive way.
The ability to concentrate single-mindedly 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.
It has been said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.
Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.
“Failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems in organizations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.
This habit of starting and completing important tasks has an immediate and continuous payoff. You are designed mentally and emotionally in such a way that task completion gives you a positive feeling. It makes you happy. It makes you feel like a winner.
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.
Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary.
The Three Ds of New Habit Formation You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration, which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination.
Your mental picture of yourself has a powerful effect on your behavior. Visualize yourself as the person you in–tend to be in the future. Your self-image, the way you see yourself on the inside, largely determines your performance on the outside. All improvements in your outer life begin with improvements on the inside, in your mental pictures.
Clarity is perhaps the most important concept in personal productivity.
There is a powerful formula for setting and achieving goals that you can use for the rest of your life. It consists of seven simple steps. Any one of these steps can double and triple your productivity if you are not currently using
Step one: Decide exactly what you want. Either decide for yourself or sit down with your boss and discuss your goals and objectives until you are crystal clear about what is expected of you and in what order of priority. It is amazing how many people are working away, day after day, on low-value tasks
One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.
Step two: Write it down.
a goal or objective that is not in writing is merely a wish or a fantasy. It has no energy behind it.
Step three: Set a deadline on your goal; set subdeadlines if necessary. A goal or decision without a deadline has no urgency. It has no real beginning or end. Without a definite deadline accompanied by the assignment or acceptance of specific responsibilities for completion, you will naturally procrastinate and get very little done.
Step five: Organize the list into a plan. Organize your list by priority and sequence.
Even better, lay out your plan visually in the form of a series of boxes and circles on a sheet of paper, with lines and arrows showing the relationship of each task to every other task.
You’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to achieve your goal when you break it down into individual tasks.
Step seven: Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal.
Clear written goals have a wonderful effect on your thinking. They motivate you and galvanize you into action. They stimulate your creativity, release your energy, and help you overcome procrastination as much as any other factor.
Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now. ALAN LAKEIN
Your mind, your ability to think, plan, and decide, is your most powerful tool for overcoming procrastination and increasing your productivity.
Alec Mackenzie wrote, “Taking action without thinking things through is a prime source of problems.”
Your ability to make good plans before you act is a measure of your overall competence.
the Six-P Formula. It says, “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”
Second, you should have a monthly list that you make at the end of the month for the month ahead.
When you plan each day in advance, you will find it much easier to get going and to keep going. The work will go faster and smoother
Eventually, you will become unstoppable.
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80 percent while you still have tasks in the top 20 percent left to be done.
Rule: Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.
The fact is, the time required to complete an important job is often the same as the time required to do an unimportant job.
Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is. As a result, they accomplish vastly more
The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something.
consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important a task really is to you
This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how you determine what y...
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“long time perspective” is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America. A long time perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections, or virtually any other single factor
Your attitude toward time, your “time horizon,” has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices.
Rule: Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.
Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten, and twenty years out into the future. They analyze their choices and behaviors in the present to make sure that what they are doing today is consistent with the long-term future that they desire.
something that is important has long-term potential consequences. Something that is unimportant has few or no long-term potential consequences.
Rule: Future intent influences and often determines present actions.
The clearer you are about your future intentions, the greater influence that clarity will have on what you do in the moment.
Think about the Long Term Successful people are those who are willing to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the short term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term.
For example, coming into work earlier, reading regularly in your field, taking courses to improve your skills, and focusing on high-value tasks in your work will all combine to have an enormous positive impact on your future. On the other hand, coming into work at the last moment, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and socializing with your coworkers may seem fun and enjoyable in the short term but inevitably leads to lack of promotion, underachievement, and frustration in the long term.
Thinking continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions, and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine your true priorities in your work and personal life.
you cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest
When you’re running out of time and know that the consequences of not completing a key task or project can be really serious, you always seem to find the time to get it done, often at the very last minute. You start early, you stay late, and you drive yourself to complete the job rather than face the unpleasantness that would follow if you didn’t complete it within the time limit.
