THE DISCIPLINE OF TIME MANAGEMENT

Rule: “Every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in  execution.” The more you plan, the better you use your time, and the more you accomplish.
a. Begin by making a list of everything that you have to do. The best time to  write your daily list is the night before so that your subconscious can work  on it while you sleep.
b. Organize the list by priority before starting work.
c. Practice the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of your results come from 20%  of your activities. What are they?
d. Use the ABCDE method to set priorities. This is based on considering the consequences of doing or not doing a particular task.

A = Must do – serious consequences for non-completion   

B = Should do – mild consequences for non-completion   

C = Nice to do – no consequences for non-completion   

D = Delegate – everything possible   

E = Eliminate – everything you can to free up more time

e. Organize your list by A-1, A-2, A-3, and so on.
f.  Start on your A-1 task first thing in the morning.
g. Discipline yourself to concentrate single-mindedly on your A-1 task until it is 100% complete.
h. The discipline of good time management spreads to all your other disciplines.  It has immediate payoff in improved results, and long term payoff in terms of  the quality of your life work.

THE DISCIPLINE OF DAILY GOAL-SETTING

Focus and concentration are the essential qualities for success.
a. Start by asking, “What do I really want to do with my life?” Ask this question over and over again until you get a clear answer.
b. Imagine that you had ten million dollars cash, but only ten years to live. What would you immediately do differently in your life?
c. Imagine that you have no limitations. That you could wave a magic wand and have all the time and money, all the education and experience, all the contacts you needed to achieve any goal. What would you do then?
d. Buy a spiral notebook and write in it every day. Begin by writing out ten goals in the present, positive and personal tense. Begin each goal with the word “I” followed by an action verb.
For example, you could write, “I earn $xx,xxx by December 31, 2007.”
e. Every day before you start off, rewrite your top ten goals in the present tense, as though you had already achieved them and you were reporting on this success to someone else. Rewrite your goals without looking back to the previous page. Rewrite them from memory. Watch how they grow, develop and change over time as you rewrite them each day. Many people have said that the discipline of daily goal setting has transformed their life and far faster than they had even imagined.

THE DISCIPLINE OF CLEAR THINKING

Thomas Edison once said, “Thinking is the hardest discipline of all.”
It has been said that there are three types of people. There are those who think  (The small minority); there are those that think they think, then there are those  who would rather die than think.
a. Take time to think though the critical issues and problems in your life. Put aside long, unbroken chunks of time, thirty, sixty and then ninety minutes.
Peter Drucker said that, “Fast people decisions are usually wrong people decisions.” In addition, fast decisions with regard to your family, career,  money or any other major issue are usually wrong decisions.
b. Sit quietly for 30-60 minutes to think. Practice solitude on a regular basis.  “Go into the silence.”
c. Whenever you practice solitude for more than thirty minutes, you activate your super conscious mind and trigger your intuition. You get it right from the “still, small, silent voice within.”
d. To think better, take a pad of paper and write down every detail of the problem situation you are facing. Sometimes, the right thing to do immerge as you write down the details.
e.  Aristotle once said that wisdom (The ability to make good decisions) is a combination of experience plus reflection. The more time that you take to think about your experiences, the more vital lessons you will gain from them.

f.  Go for a walk or exercise for 30-60 minutes. Very often when you are  exercising, you will get insights or ideas that help you to think better and  make better decisions.

g. Talk your situation over with someone else who you like and trust, and who is  not emotionally involved. Very often, a different perspective can totally change your viewpoint.
h.  Always ask, “What are my assumptions?” What is it that you are assuming to be true about the situation? Fast people decisions are usually  wrong people decisions.
i.  What if your assumptions were wrong? What if you were preceded on the basis  of false information?
Always be open to the possibility that you could be completely wrong in your current course of action. Be open to doing something completely different.

SUCCESS IS PREDICTABLE

Success is not an accident. Sadly, failure is not an accident either. You succeed when you do what other successful people do, over and over, until these behaviours become a habit. Likewise, you fail if you don’t do what successful people do. In either case, nature is neutral. Nature does not take sides. Nature doesn’t care. What happens to you is simply a matter of law—the law of cause and effect. You can look at yourself as a machine with a default mechanism. Your default mechanism is the almost irresistible attraction of the expediency factor and the path of least resistance that I described in the Introduction. In the absence of self-discipline, your default mechanism goes off automatically. This is the main cause of underachievement and the failure to realize your true potential. When you are not working deliberately, consciously, and continuously to do, be, and have those things that constitute success for you, your default mechanism is at work. You end up doing those fun, easy, and low-value things in the short term that lead to frustration, financial worries, and failure in the long term.