5 Key Questions for Setting Priorities

A key part of personal time management is for you to take the time to look into the future. Project forward five years and think about where you want to be. Create a mental picture of your ideal future- your best future- and then think about the steps that you would have to take, starting today, to make it a reality. Remember, it doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that really matters is where you are going.

Think about the things you would like to achieve, so that your future focus is on your goals rather than focusing on the past. Focus on opportunities rather than problems. Think about solutions and what specific actions you could take, rather than things that have gone wrong and who is to blame. Keep asking, “Where do we go from here?” As John Maynard Keynes said, “We must give a lot of thought to the future, because that is where we are going to spend the rest of our lives.”

In many companies, 80 percent of the time of senior people is spent on the problems of yesterday rather than on the opportunities of tomorrow. Keep thinking of ways that you can change the things that you are doing today, so that your future focus is consistent with what you desire.

Project forward 5 years:

Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, the strategic planners who wrote the book, Competing for the Future, encourage decision makers to project forward several years when they do strategic planning. They encourage executives to imagine that their company is the top company in the industry some years in the future. They then identify the products, services, markets, and especially skills, talents, and abilities that they will need to be industry leaders five years from now. Finally, they encourage business leaders to begin immediately to develop the core skills and competencies they will need to be market leaders in the future. You should do the same.

Focus on the first 20 percent:

In setting priorities, remember that the first 20 percent of any task usually accounts for 80 percent of the value of that task. Once you begin working on that task, the first 20 percent of the time that you spend planning and organizing the resources necessary to achieve the task usually accounts for 80 percent of your success. In setting priorities, always focus on the fist 20 percent of the task. Get on with it and get it done. The next 80 percent will tend to flow smoothly once the first 20 percent is complete.

If you are in sales, getting the initial appointment where you meet face-to-face with the decision maker is the first 20 percent of the transaction. But it accounts for 80 percent of the value in the sales process. The presentation, the closing of the sale, the follow-up, the delivery of the product or service, and so on, represent the second 80 percent that only account for 20 percent of the value.

Forget about the small things…

While setting priorities, never give in to the temptation to clear up small things first. Don’t start at the bottom of your list and work up to the important tasks at the top. Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down in low-priority activities. Don’t major in minors. As Goethe said, “The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”

The natural tendency of human nature is to follow the Law of Least Resistance. In time management and personal work, this means that we have a natural tendency to start on small tasks, thinking that as soon as we get warmed up, we will launch into our big tasks and increase productivity.

Here is what I have found. When you start in on little tasks, they begin to multiply, like rabbits in the springtime. When you begin clearing up your small tasks, you seem to attract more and more small tasks to work on which, in the end, does not increase productivity. The longer and harder you work, the more small tasks seem to arise. By the end of the day, you will be exhausted, and you won’t have accomplished anything of value. Start with your most important work first.

Here are 5 key questions for setting priorities:

These are questions you can ask yourself regularly to ensure that you are working on your top priorities and getting the very most done that is possible for you.

1. Why am I on the payroll? Ask yourself if what you are doing right now is the most important thing that you have been hired to do. If your boss were sitting across from you watching you, what would you be doing differently from what you are doing at this moment?

Here is an exercise. Make a list of everything you think you have been hired to do and take it to your boss. Ask your boss to organize this work list by priority. Have your boss tell you what is most important and what is least important. From that moment onward, work single-mindedly on those tasks that your boss considers to be more important.

2. What are my highest value activities? Remember, there are only three things that you do that account for most of the value of your work. Which of your activities contribute the greatest value to your company? If you are not sure, ask the people around you. Everyone knows the most important things that other people should be doing.

3. What are my key result areas? What are the specific results that you have to get in order to do your job in an excellent fashion? Of all those key result areas, which are most important?

4. What can I, and only I, do that if done well will make a real difference? What is the one thing, hour by hour, that only you can do and, if you do it well, will make a significant contribution to your business? This is something that no one else can do for you. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done. Doing this task, doing it well, and doing it promptly can have a major impact on your career.

5. What is the most valuable use of my time, right now? This is the key question in time management. Every time planning and management skill is oriented around helping you determine the correct answer to this question at every moment of the day. What is the most valuable use of your time right now?

My Mentor,
Brian Tracy

Plan Properly

All great achievements have been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail

-Elbert Hubbard

Failing to plan is the single reason why many people and businesses fail in this life. Benjamin Franklin succinctly put it, ‘failing to plan is planning to fail.’ The truth about planning is that, it is the most difficult part of succeeding in any endeavour which is why only great achievers dare to go the extra mile to plan.

The importance of planning can never be over- emphasized in any dealing. Planning helps you to put in proper perspective your major definite purpose. Once you have identified what your purpose in this life is, planning takes it up from there and gives it a beginning, a middle and an end position with clear and specific deadlines. It does not mean that at every point in time things must workout exactly according to the plan but suffice to say that it would not have happened at all after all without the plan.

How very easily you see people set out to execute a project without any form of planning. They simply think about the project, fantasize about their success without taking into consideration the tiny little bits of information that could be fatal to ignore. The fact is, more time and attention should be given to planning than to execution because planning naturally takes execution into serious consideration. This is what great achievers do. They go the extra mile; take the pain of going over and over every detail in the blue print to ensure they are in order before setting out.

Planning for the great achievers may take almost forever only for the execution to be undertaken in a few minutes, hours or days. Ask the ace athlete. They put in hours, days, months and even years of training only to run a 100m race in under 9 seconds. I have come to realize that the amount of time you spend to plan for an event saves you twice as much time during execution. It frees up time for you to be able to engage other activities.

Planning is a skill that you can learn as with every other skill. Planning if learned will make you an effective and influential person in your society; due to your exemplary orderliness. It normally raises self- confidence, boost morale and gives courage. Haven’t you noticed that you go into any activity you plan or prepare for with the conviction that you are going to succeed? On the other hand, lack of preparation, which comes as a result of lack of planning, puts pressure on you and makes you feel uncomfortable. It creates doubt about your ability to succeed at the task you set out to accomplish, and as such because your thought has a direct bearing on your result; you fail at that which you set out to accomplish.

It is not that people do not plan at all but rather many people unfortunately spend more time planning for activities that will be of the least or no benefit at all to them. You may very easily see people planning with all seriousness and zest for a party or other social activities but will give very little or no attention to planning for how they want their lives’ path to be charted. Such social activities are most of the time given many months of planning and preparation with every tiny little detail taken into consideration. Nothing is normally left out. Many times such people even spend outrageous amounts of money on unnecessary acquisitions to aid their planning for such occasions. Ask such people to sit and tell you what they want their lives to be like or the plans they have for their lives for just ten minutes and you’ll be surprised. They won’t be able to say anything reasonable. They normally cannot put their money into especially information materials like books and tapes that can go along way in shaping their lives.

Success, it has been repeatedly said by most successful people, does not come by accident but through a life spent executing a well prepared plan. It is so very true that you can achieve anything you want in life if you will just commit it to careful planning. Every great success by all of the world’s great achievers was actually as a result of committing their dreams and visions to proper planning.

You can not however start your planning until you know where you are heading to, and of course, before then, where you are coming from. This is the first major step that most people miss out on. When this happens, you will find out that every other step in between will be wrong. You will often hear people say they had to stop and re- trace their steps. What they are trying to say here is that had to go back to the very beginning and start the planning they never did or got wrong from the start. Even the Holy Bible in the book of Jeremiah talks about a return to the beginning when in Jeremiah 6: 16 it said, “… stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths …’ These ancient paths were that which pleased God and so most definitely the right paths to step on.

Often you will find people try to match other people in the area of acquisition of property. They buy certain things just because they see their neighbour has acquired it without the knowledge of the planning that person had put in place first before buying that property. Successful people plan their every expenditure whereas under- achiever fall prey to what Brian Tracy refer to as Parkinson’s Law which says that expenses rise to meet income. Financially successful people violate Parkinson’s Law by always planning their expenditure most time by delayed purchasing. This is financial planning of the highest quality.

No success story was ever written without a planning embedded in it. Nothing in fact was ever achieved without a plan. Even failure is borne out of a plan – a plan not to succeed. Planning brings about stability. That is, no undue one- sided pressure. It enhances focus, brings about preparedness, makes coordination very easy and above all gives self- confidence. People that plan have a good sense of direction and are highly goal oriented.

Planning can be adapted in many instances and circumstances and the lack of it will almost always bring a result that is undesirable. Great achievers always have their own plan. People with a plan always attract those who don’t have plans of their own. Many people do not live according to any plan of theirs and so at every point in time in their live, they are working with someone else’s plan.

What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and you future was presented to you? Would you be happy with what you will see if you are told that it was as a result of your plans presently? Most people still do not know the importance of planning. Let me make it very clear here: whenever you plan, you take your own future, bring it into your present, shape it and send it back to the future to wait for you. When you do not plan, you care less about you very own future. Now based on all that you are doing today, would you enjoy the future you are preparing? The core of the message here is: to achieve great things, do not embark on any project from now on without a plan.

Excerpt from my book, Go The Extra Mile: That's where great achievers are found!

Accessing Your Inner Guidance

We know that the body has a natural bias toward health and energy. It’s designed to last for 100 years with proper care and maintenance. When something goes wrong with any part of our body, we experience it in the form of pain or discomfort of some kind.

We know that when our body is not functioning smoothly and painlessly, something is wrong, and we take action to correct it. We go to a doctor; we take pills; we undergo physical therapy, massage or chiropractic. We know that if we ignore pain or discomfort for any period of time, it could lead to something more serious.

Every disease or ailment, whether it be cancer, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure or something else, has a series of warning signs. In every case, when we experience an abnormality, we tend to move quickly to do something to get back to normal. Our physical feelings tell us when we’re well, and they also tell us when we’re unwell, and we tend to obey them if we want to live a long, healthy life.

In the same sense, nature also gives us a way to tell what’s right for us and what’s wrong for us in life. Just as nature gives us physical pain to guide us to doing or not doing things in the physical realm, nature gives us emotional pain to guide us toward doing or not doing things in the emotional or mental realm. The wonderful thing is that you’re constructed so that if you simply listen carefully to yourself-to your mind, your body and your emotions-and follow the guidance you’re given, you can dramatically enhance the quality of your life.

Just as the natural physical state is health and vitality, the natural emotional state is peace and happiness. Whenever you experience a deviation from peace and happiness, it’s an indication that something is amiss. Something is wrong with what you’re thinking, doing or saying. You’re an incredibly complex organism, and your feelings of ease and unease, happiness and unhappiness, can be triggered by a myriad of factors. But the bottom line is that your feeling of inner happiness is the best indicator you could ever have to tell you what you should be doing more of and what you should be doing less of.

Unhappiness is to your life as pain is to your body. It’s sent as a messenger to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong for you.

There are many reasons why people don’t listen more closely to their feelings and, especially, why many people are reluctant to use their own happiness as the standard by which to judge the events in their lives. I’ve studied this subject for many years, and I think that there are three major myths about happiness that each of us believes to some degree.

Myth #1

The first myth about happiness is that it is not legitimate or correct for you to put your happiness ahead of everyone else’s. Throughout my life, I’ve met people who have said that it is more important to make other people happy than it is to make yourself happy. Of course, that is nonsense.

Human beings are happiness-driven organisms. Everything we do in life is oriented toward maintaining and increasing our level of happiness. We are psychologically constructed so that it’s impossible for us to be any other way without making ourselves mentally and emotionally ill. The fact is that you can’t give away to anyone else what you don’t have for yourself. Just as you can’t give money to the poor if you don’t have any, you can’t make someone else happy if you yourself are miserable.

The very best way to assure the happiness of others is to be happy yourself and then to share your happiness with them. Suffering and self-sacrifice merely depress and discourage other people. If you want to make others happy, start by living the kind of life and doing the kind of things that make you happy.

Myth #2

The second myth, which is closely tied to the first myth, is the admonition that we’re here to serve others rather than ourselves. Many poems and essays repeat that theme. They say that we’ve justified our life on this earth if we’ve made some other person happy on the way through. But as I’ve said before, making others happy goes hand in hand with making ourselves happy. It’s through service to others that we achieve a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Only when we lose ourselves in doing something that we feel benefits someone other than ourselves do we experience transcendence, do we feel ourselves rising above the tedium of day-to-day activity. To paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson, everybody makes his living by serving someone. And the key is to serve with joy and happiness.

Myth #3

The third myth about happiness is that someone else’s definition of happiness is valid for you. Often, we feel a little uneasy if we’re not happy doing something that someone else thinks should make us happy. Many people allow their parents to influence their choices of career and find themselves miserable as a result. They want to please their parents, they want to make them happy, but they’re unable to experience any joy doing what they’re doing.

Happiness in life is like a smorgasbord. If 100 people went to a smorgasbord and each put food on his plate in the quantity and mix that each felt would be most pleasing to him, every plate would be different. Even a husband and wife would go up to the smorgasbord and come back with plates that looked completely different. Happiness is the same way. It’s composed of a great variety of ingredients, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Each person requires a particular combination of those ingredients to feel the very best about himself or herself.

And your mix is changing continually. If you went to the same smorgasbord every day for a year, you probably would come back with a different plateful of food each time. Each day-sometimes each hour-only you can tell what it takes to make you happy. Therefore, the only way to judge whether a job, a relationship, an investment, or any decision, is right for you is to get in touch with your feelings and listen to your heart.

The Path of Least Resistance

In the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, there’s a scene where someone asks Cyrano why he, as an incredible individualist, should refuse to compromise his ideals or principles for anyone. He replies with these classic words: “I long ago made the decision that in every area of life, I will choose the path of least resistance in this, that I will please at least myself in all things.” That is one of the great lines in literature. To have the courage to please at least yourself in all things. Do what feels right for you, at the very minimum, and if it makes others happy as well, that’s terrific. If it doesn’t, you’ll know that you have done the very best you could under the circumstances.

You’re true to yourself only when you follow your inner light, when you listen to what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “still, small voice within.” You’re being the very best person you can be only when you have the courage and the fortitude to allow your definition of happiness, whatever it may be, to be the guiding light of every part of your life. Whenever you feel stressed, anxious, worried or uneasy about any part of your life, it’s nature’s way of telling you that something is wrong. It’s a message that there’s something that you need to address or deal with. There’s something that you need to do more or less of. There’s something that you need to get into or out of. Very often, you’ll suffer from what has been called “divine discontent.” You’ll feel fidgety and uneasy for a reason or reasons that are unclear to you. You’ll be dissatisfied with the status quo. Sometimes, you’ll be unable to sleep. Sometimes, you’ll be angry or irritable. Very often, you’ll get upset with things that have nothing to do with the real issue. You’ll have a deep inner sense that something isn’t as it should be, and you’ll often feel like a fish on a hook, wriggling and squirming emotionally to get free.

And that is a good thing. Divine discontent always comes before a positive life change. If you were perfectly satisfied, you would never take any action to improve or change your circumstances. Only when you’re dissatisfied for some reason do you have the inner motivation to engage in the outer behaviors that lead you onward and upward.

Stay Tuned! My next blog post “Accessing Your Inner Guidance–Part Two” will be posted next week.

By My Mentor

Brian Tracy