By: Brian Tracy

The most common form of stress that we experience is the feeling of being overwhelmed with far too much to do and having too little time to do it in. In fact, “time poverty” is the biggest single problem facing most managers in America today. We simply do not have enough time to fulfill all our responsibilities. Because of budget limitations, staff cutbacks, downsizing, and competitive pressures, individual managers are forced to take on more and more work, all of which appears to be indispensable to the smooth functioning of our company or department.

Become an Expert
The solution to this problem of work overload is for you to become an expert on time management. There is probably no other skill that you can learn that will give you a “bigger bang for the buck” than to become extremely knowledgeable and experienced in using time management practices.

Be Open to New Ideas
The most foolish manager of all is either the manager who feels that he has no time to learn about time management or, even worse, the manager who, while being overwhelmed with work, feels that he already knows all that he needs to know about the subject.

Never Stop Learning
The fact is that you can study time management and take time management courses for your entire business life and you will still never learn everything you need to know to get the most out of yourself while doing your job in the most efficient way.

The Keys to Time Management
The two indispensable keys to time management are:1) the ability to set priorities; and 2) the ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time. Since there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done, you must be continually setting priorities on your activities. Perhaps the very best question that you can memorize and repeat, over and over, is, “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?”

The Best Question of All
This question, “what is the most valuable use of my time right now?” will do more to keep you on track, hour by hour, than any other single question in the list of time management strategies.

The natural tendency for all of us is to major in minors and to give in to the temptation to clear up small things first. After all, small things are easier and they are often more fun than the big, important things that represent the most valuable use of your time.

Start With Your Top Tasks
However, the self-discipline of organizing your work and focusing on your highest value tasks is the starting point of getting your time under control and lowering your stress levels.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to get your time under control.

First, make a decision today to become an expert on time management. Read the books, listen to the audio programs, and take a time management course. Then, practice, practice, practice every day until you master time management skills.

Second, set clear priorities on your work each day, before you begin. Then, discipline yourself to start on your most important task and stay at that until it is complete. This will relieve much of your stress immediately.

__________

RELATED CONTENT

• The Busy Man
• Practice the A-B-C Method of Time Management
• Success – Select Quotes
• Make Today Count: The Secret of Your Success Is Determined by Your Daily Agenda

The most important quality for success in entrepreneurship and in life is the quality of optimism. Optimists have an unrealistic expectation of success. As a result, they are willing to try far more things without becoming discouraged. In addition, because of their unrealistically positive attitude, they are willing to persist much longer than the average person. Optimism is a wonderful quality as long as you have it under control.

Temper Your Optimism
In order to be successful in business, and in any activity where your money is involved, you must temper your optimism with negativism. You must be enthusiastic about the possible upside of the investment but you must be skeptical, critical, suspicious and demanding about all the different ways that your money can be lost.

Listen to Negative Viewpoints
Seek out and listen carefully to people who are negative toward your idea. Look for negative thinkers, because their viewpoints can be invaluable and save you a fortune in time and money. I have a friend who is a lawyer. And he recommends and gives advice to many people on investments. And what he does is this. When someone comes and they want to make an investment that he’s unsure about, he says, all right, I want you to come to my office and I want you to sit behind my desk. And then I’m going to come in and I’m going to present this investment to you and I want you to critique this investment as if you were me.

Help Others to Evaluate Honestly
And he says that when his clients begin critiquing the investments they’re thinking about going into, when they begin becoming negative thinkers about the investments, he says they are astonished at how bad the investments really are. He said he has saved his clients millions of dollars by forcing them to be negative thinkers about their own ideas, simply by switching roles and sitting in front of the desk while they sit behind the desk.

Keep Your Mind Open
But don’t be overly influenced by negative thinkers. Just take their viewpoints into consideration. There’s a famous story of Mary Hudson, who started off with 200 dollars in the middle of the Depression and leased a gas station that two men had gone broke running at two different occasions. And from that she built a company called Hudson Oil, which is now the biggest independent distributor of gas and oil in the United States. From a 200 dollar investment, even though everybody told her she would fail. So remember, listen to negative thinkers, but don’t necessarily accept their advice.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to get these ideas into action.

First, view your idea as if you were an outside consultant. Ask, “What are all of the possible risks or flaws in this cause of action?”

Second, seek out the opinions of others. Listen without responding or defending. Thank them for their input. They may save you a lot of money.

By: Brian Tracy

The major mental obstacle to financial success is that some people believe that they don’t really deserve to be rich.

The Biggest Demotivator of All
They have been raised with a steady drumbeat of destructive criticism, as I was, that has led them to conclude, at an unconscious level, that they don’t really deserve to be successful and happy. The worst effect of negative experiences in childhood, which are all too common, is that when people actually do succeed as the result of hard work, they feel guilty. These guilt feelings then cause them to do things to get rid of the money, to throw it away. They spend it or invest it foolishly. They lend it, lose it or give it away. They engage in self-sabotage, in the form of overeating, excessive drinking, drug usage, marital infidelity and often dramatic personality changes. To change your results with money, you have to change your attitude toward it.

Treat Money With Care and Attention
The fact is that money is very much like a lover. It must be courted and coaxed and flattered and treated with care and attention. It gravitates toward people who respect it and value it and are capable of doing worthwhile things with it. It flows through the fingers and flees from people who do not understand it, or who do not take proper care of it.

Become Skilled With Money
Sometimes people say that they are not very good with money. But being good with money is a skill that anyone can learn through practice. Usually, saying that one is not very good with money is merely an excuse or a rationalization for the fact that the person is not very successful or disciplined with money. The person has not learned how to acquire it or to hold on to it.

Be A No-Limit Thinker
The starting point of accumulating money is for you to believe that you have an unlimited capacity to obtain all the money that you will ever need. Look upon yourself as a financial success just waiting for a place to happen. And see yourself as deserving all you can honestly acquire.

Open Any Door
Money is good. Money gives you choices and enables you to live your life the way you want to live it. Money opens doors for you that would have been closed in its absence. But just like anything, an obsession can be hurtful. If a person becomes so preoccupied with money that he loses sight of the fact that money is merely a tool that is to be used to acquire happiness, then money becomes a harmful thing.

Money is Neutral
The Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” It doesn’t say, “money is the root of all evil.” It says, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” It is the preoccupation with money, to the exclusion of the really important things in life that is the problem, not the money itself. Money is essential to our lives in society. It is also neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is only the way that it is acquired and the uses to which it is put that determines whether it is helpful or hurtful.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, recognize and accept that virtually everyone who has money today at one time was broke and probably broke for a long time. Then they learned the skills of accumulating money and they are now financially independent. Whatever they have done, you can probably do as well.

Second, become a student of money from this day forward. Study it, learn about it and apply the lessons you discover toward your own financial life until you begin to attract more and more money in your direction.

__________