Third, you can ask, “What are my real goals?” How do these goals affect my personal life? Why am I doing what I am doing? It is absolutely essential that you be clear about the real purpose behind your goals if you want to remain motivated and energized in your pursuit of them.
Fourth, and perhaps the most important, is for you to ask, “What is my aim in life?” What is my aim in my work? What is my aim with my family?
What do I want to accomplish as the result of being alive?
Perhaps the most important question of all is, “What do I really want to do
with my life?”
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These are questions that you should ask yourself over and over again to keep yourself on track.
Develop Absolute Clarity
The starting point of time management is for you to achieve absolute clarity with regard to your goals, in every area of your life, and at every level of your business. Like a photographer, you must continually focus the lens of your time and activities on exactly the most important things that you are trying to accomplish, and the reasons that you want to accomplish them.
All time management skills require a clear, unambiguous agreement about goals and objectives. Decide exactly what it is that you are trying to achieve, and focus single-mindedly on your most important goals and activities. This is the first step toward excellent time management.
“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)
Action Exercises:
1. Clarity is essential! Make a list of 10 goals for the coming year in every area of your business and personal life. Write in the present tense, as if you have already achieved the goal?
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2. Review your list and ask, “What one goal, if I achieved it, would have the most positive impact on my life, right now?” Write this goal at the top of a new page.
3. Set a specific deadline for the achievement of this goal. Set sub-deadlines if necessary.
4. Make a list of everything you can think of to do to achieve this goal.
As you think of new activities, add them to the list. Keep doing this until your list is complete.
5. Organize your list into a plan. Decide what is most important. Decide what must be done first, before something else can be done.
6. Determine the obstacles you will have to overcome, the additional knowledge and skill you will require, and the people whose help you will need. Be specific.
7. Take action on your most important goal, and resolve to do something every day that moves you one step closer to achieving it. Never give up!
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Chapter Three
Getting Yourself Organized
“Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark.”
(Orison Swett Marden)
The difference between average people and highly effective people is that highly effective people are much better organized when they work than others. Excellent personal and professional organization is a hallmark of highly effective and well-paid people.
Fortunately, organizing is a skill, and all skills are learnable. You can learn to be an extremely well organized, efficient and effective person. When you do, you will produce vastly more in the same period of time than the people around you.
One of Murphy’s Laws is that, “Before you can do anything, you have to do something else first.”
The one thing that you have to do first, before you can do any productive work, is to get yourself organized completely. The core function of good time management is planning and organizing yourself, and your work, for maximum productivity. It is only possible to get the best out of yourself when you have brought together everything you need before you begin 69
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work. You must then determine a place for everything and make sure that everything is in its place.
Plan Everything In Advance
The top 3% of high achievers are all persistent, continuous planners. They are forever writing and rewriting their lists of goals and activities. They think on paper and are continually analyzing and reevaluating their plans.
I used to wonder why it was that so many successful people seemed to spend so much of their time planning. Over time, I learned that the more time you spend planning, the better and more foolproof your plans become. By continually reworking your plans for achieving your goals, your goals become increasingly believable and achievable.
As you think and plan each step, your confidence in your ability to accomplish those goals increases. When you break down even the biggest goal into its individual parts, and then organize those parts into a step by step series of specific actions, the task seems much more manageable and under your control. The more you plan, the more you program your goal deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind, where it takes on a motivational power of its own.
Get a 1000% Return on Investment
The payoff from good planning is enormous. It is estimated that each minute spent in planning saves 10 minutes in execution. To put it another way, your 70
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investment in planning pays you a 1000% return on the time and energy you invest.
In life, all that we really have to sell is our time. The more productive our time usage, all things being equal, the more we will eventually be paid. Your job is to invest your time where you can get the highest ROE or “Return on Life.” Where else can you get a 1000% return on your investment?
Sometimes people say that they are too busy to sit and plan. The fact is that even if you force yourself to plan out everything in detail, you will find it hard to spend more than a few minutes per day in the planning process. The only way that you will ever create the time you need is by planning your activities carefully in advance. Remember, you save 10 minutes for every minute that you spend planning before you begin.
The Reason for Most Failure
Peter Drucker said, “Action without planning is the reason for every failure.” If you look back over the major mistakes you’ve made in your life, they will almost all have one factor in common. It was that you rushed into the decision or situation without giving it enough thought. You either did not get enough information, or you did not take the time to weigh and balance the pros and cons before acting. In every case, the failure to plan carefully can be very expensive.
At the same time, you will also find that almost every one of the most successful accomplishments of your life, from planning a business start-up 71
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or a business project, all the way through to planning a vacation, was accompanied by a good plan, worked out thoroughly in advance.
The more time you took to think through what you had to do, and the likely consequences of your actions, the more efficient you were, and the more satisfying was the end result.
The fact is that the better and more complete your plans are before you begin, the greater will be your likelihood of your success once you start.
There is an old saying, “Success is tons of discipline.” One of the best exercises of self-discipline is for you to take the time to think through and plan out everything you do before you begin.
Four Ideas for Personal Organization
Here are four ideas you can use to help yourself in getting organized: 1. Neatness Is a Key Habit
Remember that neatness is a key habit for personal productivity. You can dramatically increase your productivity and output simply by cleaning up and organizing your workspace. You’ve heard it said, “Order is heaven’s first law.” Order is earth’s first law as well. You need a sense of order to feel relaxed and in control of your environment and your life. You actually get a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction each time you put some part of your life or work in order.
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When you clean up your desk or office you feel more on top of your work.
When you clean out your car you feel more in charge of your personal life.
When you organize your purse or briefcase, or even your home and your closets, you feel like a more effective human being. Your self-esteem goes up. Your self-confidence and self-respect increases. You feel more powerful as a person. You generate more energy and feel an increased determination to get on with the job.
2. Stand Back and Evaluate Yourself
Here is a good exercise for you: Stand back from your desk or work area and ask, “What kind of person works at that desk?”