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There are seven disciplines you must develop if you want to achieve all that is possible for you. You can learn these disciplines through practice and repetition until they become automatic.
- Daily goal setting: Every morning, take three to five minutes to write out your top ten goals in the present tense. Get a spiral notebook for this purpose. By writing out your ten goals at the beginning of each day, you will program them deep into your subconscious mind. This daily goal writing will activate your mental powers. It will stimulate your mind and make you more alert. Throughout the day, you will see opportunities and possibilities to move more rapidly toward your goals.
- Daily planning and organizing: Take a few minutes, preferably the night before, to plan out every activity of the coming day. Always work from a list. Always think on paper. This is one of the most powerful and important disciplines of all for high performance.
- Daily priority setting: The essence of all time management, personal management, and life management is contained in your ability to set the proper priorities on the use of your time. Select the most valuable and important task you could possibly do and start work immediately on that task. This is essential for high performance.
- Daily concentration on your highest-value activities: Your ability to work single-mindedly on your most important task will contribute as much to your success as any other discipline you can develop.
- Daily exercise and proper nutrition: Your health is more important than anything else. By disciplining yourself to exercise regularly and to eat carefully, you will promote the highest possible levels of health and fitness throughout your life.
- Daily learning and growth: Your mind is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.
- Daily time for the important people in your life: Relationships are everything. Be sure that in climbing the ladder of success, you do not find it leaning against the wrong building. Build time for your relationships into every day, no matter how busy you get.
These seven disciplines will ensure that you perform at the highest level and get the greatest satisfaction and results from everything you do.
The 1,000 Percent Formula
There is a simple, practical, proven self-development formula that you can use to double your income in the years ahead. It’s a formula Brian Tracy developed early in his career, which proved effective, and he has passed it on to thousands of people. The only complaint he has ever received on this formula is that it is too conservative.
Most people who practice this formula each day report extraordinary improvements in their lives. These changes take place quickly, often within a couple of days. Try it and see for yourself. This 1,000 percent formula is based on the law of incremental improvement. This law says that “by the yard it’s hard, but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch.”
No matter how excited or determined you are, change and progress take place slowly. It takes you your entire life to become the person you are. It takes a period of hard work and determination to become someone different. We do not usually make significant and lasting changes in quantum leaps. All permanent change is progressive, over a long period of time. This type of change takes patience and discipline. It is only this type of change that is truly worthwhile and enduring.
Here is a question for you: Is it possible for you to increase your overall productivity, performance, and output by 0.1 percent in the next 24 hours?
In other words, could you become one-thousandth (0.1 percent) more productive over the next twenty-four hours if you really wanted to? The truth is that you could probably become 0.1 percent more productive right now, in a couple of minutes, just by working on a single high-value task.
By setting goals and priorities and by focusing on higher-value activities, anyone can increase his or her overall productivity and performance by 1/1,000 over the next twenty-four hours. Many people could double or triple their overall productivity in the next twenty-four hours if they really wanted to.
If you continually learn, study, and upgrade your skills, clarify and reclarify your goals, set better and clearer priorities, and focus on progressively more valuable tasks, you can increase your overall productivity performance and output by 0.1 percent each day, day after day, indefinitely.
Every effort you make to be more productive in one area tends to improve your performance in every other area at the same time. The more you practice, you will get better and better results, in less time. If you become 0.1 percent more productive each day, five days per week, at the end of a week you will be 0.5 percent more productive. At the end of four weeks, you will be 2 percent more productive (4 × 0.5 = 2). At the end of fifty-two weeks, you will be 26 percent more productive than you were at the beginning of the year (13 × 2 = 26).
This is where the compounding effect of new knowledge and skill begins to work. Every improvement in any part of your work affects other parts of your work at the same time. As you become better at managing your time, you will become more productive with your customers and clients. As you become more productive with your customers and clients, you will become more competent and effective in other parts of your business. Each improvement leads to other improvements.
By becoming 26 percent more productive over the course of a year and continuing to improve by 0.1 percent per day, five days a week, you will double your overall productivity, performance, and output in 2.7 years. If you continue learning, growing, and becoming more effective and efficient, an improvement of 26 percent per year, compounded over ten years, will result in an increase of 1,004 percent in your overall productivity.
Because we live in a merit-based society, as you increase your ability to contribute value, the amount you earn will increase as well. If you improve your overall performance by 1,004 percent, your income eventually will rise to match the value of your contribution.
Many students have come back to me after four, five, or six years and told me that they were able to increase their incomes by 1,000 percent in just a few years by practicing this formula. In every case, they were astonished at how quickly they had moved to the top of their fields by the simple act of making small, incremental improvements each day.
Here are the seven steps in the 1,000 percent formula that will help you become 0.1 percent better daily, 0.5 percent better each week, 2 percent better each month, and 26 percent better each year.
- Arise two hours before your first appointment and read for one hour in your field. This is called the Golden Hour, and it sets the tone for the rest of the day. Leave the television off, and put the newspaper aside. Invest the first sixty minutes in yourself and in your mind. This first hour is the rudder of your day.
- Rewrite and review your major goals each day before you start off. Take a few minutes to write out your goals in a spiral notebook, in the present tense, as though you had already achieved them. This programs your subconscious mind to be alert to opportunities to achieve your goals all day long.
- Plan every day in advance. Make a list of everything you have to do the night before, before you end your work day or before you go to bed. This enables your subconscious mind to work on your list while you sleep. Often, when you awake, you will have ideas and insights that will enable you to achieve your daily goals faster and more effectively.
- Always concentrate on the most valuable use of your time. Select the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your work life, and begin on that task first thing in the morning.
- Listen to educational audio programs in your car. Turn your car into a mobile classroom, a university on wheels. This activity is so powerful that it alone can give you your 1,000 percent increase in the years ahead.
- Ask two questions after every experience. These questions enable you to learn and grow more rapidly from everything that happens to you: What did I do right? and What would I do differently?”
According to the law of concentration, whatever you dwell upon grows in your experience. Whatever you pay attention to, increases in your life. Whatever you focus on, you tend to do better. When you analyze each experience by asking, “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?” you program yourself to perform even better in each subsequent experience. These questions enable you to extract the maximum number of lessons out of each thing you do. They enable you to learn at an accelerated rate.
The best news of all is that when you are concentrating on what you did right and what you would do differently, your mind becomes positive, productive, and creative. You become more motivated and more eager to try new things. You become even more likely to apply the insights you derived from your previous experiences.
- The seventh and final ingredient on the 1,000 percent formula is for you to treat everyone you meet like a million-dollar customer. Treat the people you work with the same way you would treat a valuable customer of your firm. Treat each prospect or customer as if that person had already purchased $1 million of your company’s product or service and was thinking of doing it again. Also, treat the people at home as though they were the most valuable people in the world to you, because they are.
Way Ahead
You are your most precious resource. Your earning ability is your most valuable asset. Invest every day in improving yourself as a person and increasing your ability to earn even more. Most people who are earning $250,000 today started off earning $25,000 or less.
Decide today to develop yourself to the point where you can achieve every financial and personal goal you ever set and become everything you are capable of becoming. (Excerpt is from “Focal Point” by Brian Tracy).
