Goals, Priorities, Action
Notes on "Do It Now - The Core Principles For Mastering Time Management" by Brian Tracy"
Great video from Brian Tracy on goals and time management.
Here are my notes:
Setting Goals
“Either you are working toward the accomplishment of your goals or you are working toward the accomplishment of other peoples goals”
Three categories of goals
Personal/Family
Business/Career/Financial
Self Development
Questions to help identify and refine those goals:
What would you do if you were financially free? If you could choose how you spend your time?
What would you do if you had 6 months to live? What would you stop doing?
What would you dare to dream (and do) if you know you could not fail?
Goals must be in writing. Review them regularly. Refine them. Carry them with you.
Taking Action
Creating an organized plan of action based on your goals is simple: Take a goal a write every step to achieving it. List out the steps. Organize each step to create a plan.
Urgency is the fuel for for success: “Do it now. Do it now. Do it now.”
The magic word of time management is NO.
“Most people don not value their time so they don’t value yours.“
Batch tasks. Avoid context switching and benefit from the learning curve of repeated action.
Delegate. Anything lower value or lower priority.
To delegate well you need CLARITY:
What needs to be done? Write it down.
Who should do it? Match time and capability.
Make expectations clear. What needs to be done and when.
Inspect. Check in along the way.
ABCDE prioritization method:
A: What you must do.
B: What you should do.
C: What would be nice to do.
D: Delegate
E: Eliminate.
Applying ABCDE to goals:
List everything you want to accomplish. Apply ABC to it.
Take the A goals and rank in order. Take the top 3 (A1, A2, A3).
Make a list of everything you need to do to accomplish the top 3.
Apply ABC to the list of tasks.
Organize and implement.
Follows a 6-step process:
Choose goals
Set Priorities
Choose Activities
Set Priorities
Schedule
Implement.
Setting priorities is about determining what is relevant versus irrelevant. Relevance is based on value.
Test for value: What impact will this have on my future? The greater the impact, the greater the value.