Focal Point

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

One of my favorite productivity gurus is Brian Tracy.  He talks in a straight forward, simple and practical way.  His book entitled “Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals” contains many big ideas (at least 13) and I’ll just point out here the notable ones.  I recommend reading his book to have a complete dose of his wisdom.

Everything is Hard before it is Easy

That’s the nature of virtues or good habits they require effort at first such as the virtue of discipline, punctuality, loyalty, honesty, but once you get used practicing them you reap its rewards for the rest of your life.  “Virtue is its own reward”, as the saying goes.  The author says, “Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with; bad habits (laziness, dishonesty, greed, addictions, etc.) are easy to develop but hard to live with. The habits you have and the habits that have you will determine almost everything you achieve or fail to achieve.”  You cannot be successful in life without virtues.  The same thing goes with our spiritual life.  If you have faith in God but don’t practice the virtues St. James calls it a dead faith.  “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without good deeds (virtues) is dead.”  (James 2:26)

Finishing Tasks

Brian Tracy is a big advocate on finishing tasks.  He also calls it being single-minded with the task at hand.  Here’s his words of wisdom on not letting go of a task until it’s done: “Once you have thought through your work and decided on your most valuable task, you must discipline yourself to start it immediately and stay with it until it is complete. When you concentrate single-mindedly on a single task, without diversion or distraction, you get it done far faster than if you start and stop and then come back to the task and pick it up again. You can reduce the amount of time you spend on a major task by as much as 80 percent simply by refusing to do anything else until that task is complete.”  80 percent productivity or efficiency is a lot!  That’s how much time and effort you save if you focus in finishing one task at a time.

Time Management is Life Management

He authored this famous line, “Time management is equal to life management.”  Time management is all about how you manage your life around your priorities such as God, family, friends, work, rest, etc.  If you allot enough time to each one of them because they are all important, then you would not squander your time on useless things.  You make sure you have time for God, family, socialize with friends, working (or studying if you are a student) enough hours and do some overtime work once in a while without becoming a workaholic, and have some time for rest and relaxation to replenish one’s energy.

What Do You Think Most of the Time?

Whatever occupies your mind is what is going to happen.  The author says, “Over the years, thousands of successful people have been asked, ‘What do you think about most of the time?’ Their answers tend to be the same worldwide. Successful people think about what they want and how to get it most of the time. As a result of this mental focus, they accomplish much more than the average person, even though they may have started with no particular advantages.

Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, tend to think and talk about what they don’t want most of the time. They think and talk about who they are mad at and who is to blame for their problems most of the time. They don’t understand why their lives don’t improve even though they have been working as long as others. They slip into the habit of thinking and talking even more about their problems and who is to blame, thereby making the situation worse.”

Planning Counts

“Every minute you spend in planning will save you as many as ten minutes in execution.” (Brian Tracy) This is aligned to what Abraham Lincoln said that if he had 6 hours to chop down a tree, he will spend 4 of them sharpening his ax.  Often times we rush around with our tasks (like a chicken with its head cut off) without planning first.  It would then result to spending more time than needed and even producing a job that is sloppy.