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people avoid jobs and activities in those areas where they have performed poorly in the past.
the better you become in a particular skill area, the more motivated you will be to perform that function, the less you will procrastinate, and the more determined you will be to get the job finished.
“What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?”
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. THEODORE ROOSEVELT
fully 90 percent of the value that you contribute to your company is contained in those three tasks, whatever they are. Everything else you do is either a support task or a complementary task that could probably be delegated, downsized, outsourced, or eliminated.”
the most important word in the world of work is contribution. Your rewards, both financial and emotional, will always be in direct proportion to your results, to the value of your contribution. If you want to increase your rewards, you must focus on increasing the value of what you do. You must dedicate yourself to contributing more results to your company. And three key tasks always contribute the most.
thirty seconds, write down your three most important goals in life right now.”
when people have only thirty seconds to write their three most important goals, their answers are as accurate as if they had thirty minutes or three hours.
80 percent or more of cases, people have three goals in common: first, a financial and career goal; second, a family or personal relationship goal; and third, a health or fitness goal. And this is as it should be. These are the three most important areas of life. If you give yourself a grade on a scale of one to ten in each of these three areas, you can immediately identify where you are doing well in life and where you need some improvement.
What are your three most important business or career goals right now? 2. What are your three most important family or relationship goals right now? 3. What are your three most important financial goals right now? 4. What are your three most important health goals right now? 5. What are your three most important personal and professional development goals right now? 6. What are your three most important social and community goals right now? 7. What are your three biggest problems or concerns in life right now?
85 percent of your happiness in life will come from happy relationships with other people,
Rule: It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.
work all the time you work.
time that you waste at work often has to be taken away from your family.
By not working effectively and efficiently during your workday, you create unnecessary stress and deprive the members of your family of the very best person you can possibly be.
never lose sight of the fact that the reason for working efficiently is so that you can enjoy a higher quality of life at home with your family.
“How do I achieve balance between my work and my home life?” I ask them in return, “How often does a tightrope walker balance when on the high wire?” After a few seconds of thinking, they almost always say, “All the time.” I say, “That is the same situation with balance between work and home life. You have to do it all the time. You never reach a point where you have attained it perfectly. You have to work at it.”
Never lose sight of the real reasons why you work as hard as you do and why you are so determined to accomplish the very most with the time that you invest. The more time you spend face-to-face with the people you love, the happier you will be.
1. Determine the three most important tasks that you do in your work. Ask yourself, “If I could do only one thing all day long, which one task would contribute the greatest value to my career?” Do this exercise two more times. Once you have identified your “big three,” concentrate on them single-mindedly all day long. 2. Identify your three most important goals in each area of your life. Organize them by priority. Make plans for their accomplishment, and work on your plans every single day. You will be amazed at what you achieve in the months and years ahead.
No matter what the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime. JAMES T. MCCAY
take the time to create a work area where they enjoy spending time.
how many books never get written, how many degrees never get completed, how many life-changing tasks never get started because people fail to take the first step of preparing everything in advance.
“Get it 80 percent right and then correct it later.”
Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. Don’t expect perfection the first time or even the first few times. Be prepared to fail over and over before you get it right.
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
You miss 100% of shots you dont take
1. Take a good look at your desk or office, both at home and at work. Ask yourself, “What kind of a person works in an environment like this?” The cleaner and neater your work environment, the more positive, productive, and confident you will feel. 2. Resolve today to clean up your desk and office completely so that you feel effective, efficient, and ready to get going each time you sit down to work.
“by the yard it’s hard; but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch!”
Lao-tzu wrote, “A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.”
Select any goal, task, or project in your life on which you have been procrastinating and make a list of all the steps you will need to take to eventually complete the task. 2. Then take just one step immediately. Sometimes all you need to do to get started is to sit down and complete one item on the list. And then do one more, and so on. You will be amazed at what you eventually accomplish.
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
Continually upgrade your skills in your key result areas.
“Anytime you stop striving to get better, you’re bound to get worse.”
Rule: Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.
Everything is learnable.
read in your field for at least one hour every day.
take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help you. Attend the conventions and business meetings of your profession or occupation. Go to the sessions and workshops. Sit up front and take notes.
listen to audio programs in your car. The average car owner sits behind the wheel 500 to 1,000 hours each year while driving from place to place. Turn driving time into learning time.
The more you learn and know, the more confident and motivated you feel. The better you become, the more capable you will be of doing even more in your field.
Identify the key skills that can help you the most to achieve better and faster results. Determine the core competencies that you will need to have in the future to lead your field. Whatever they are, set a goal, make a plan, and begin developing and increasing your ability in those areas. Decide to be the very best at what you do! 2. Develop a personal plan to prepare yourself to do your most important tasks in an excellent fashion. Focus on those areas where you have special talents and that you most enjoy. This is the key to unlocking your personal potential.
Between where you are today and any goal or objective that you want to accomplish, there is one major constraint that must be overcome before you can achieve that major goal. Your job is to identify it clearly.
What is holding you back? What sets the speed at which you achieve your goals? What determines how fast you move from where you are to where you want to go? What stops you or holds you back from eating the frogs that can really make a difference? Why aren’t you at your goal already?
Whatever you have to do, there is always a limiting factor that determines how quickly and well you get it done. Your job is to study the task and identify the limiting factor or constraint within it. You must then focus all of your energies on alleviating that single choke point.
constraint may be a person whose help or decision you need, a resource that you require, a weakness in some part of the organization, or something else.
Every business has a limiting factor or choke point that determines how quickly and well the company achieves this purpose. It may be the marketing, the level of sales, or the sales force itself. It may be the costs of operation or the methods of production. It may be the level of cash flow or costs. The success of the company may be determined by the competition, the customers, or the current marketplace. One of these factors, more than anything else, determines how quickly the company achieves its goals of growth and profitability. What is it?
accurate identification of the limiting factor in any process and the focus on that factor can usually bring about more progress in a shorter period than any other single activity.
