FOCAL POINT – BRIAN TRACY

Chapter One

Unlock Your Full Potential

“Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.” [CKK1]

(Orison Swett Marden)

You can dramatically improve the overall quality of your life far faster than you might think possible. All that is really required is the desire to change, the decision to take action, the discipline to practice the new behaviors you have decided upon and the determination to persist until you get the results you want.

Here is a story that illustrates this point. An insurance executive enrolled in my Advanced Coaching and Mentoring Program and came for the first of the quarterly full day coaching sessions that we provide for our clients each year.

When he began the program, he was working six to seven days per week, ten to twelve hours per day and had not taken a vacation in more than four years. He was earning more than $100,000 per year but he was unfit, overweight, highly stressed and not at all satisfied with his life. He felt overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. He was hoping that, at a minimum, this program would give him some new time management techniques that he could use to increase his productivity and get his life under control.

From the first day, he learned and applied the Focal Point Process. Step-by-step, he analyzed each part of his work and personal life. He identified those areas where he was getting the best results and earning the most money. At the same time, he identified those areas that consumed an enormous amount of time but which contributed very little to his real goals. He made a list of everything that he was doing and then he applied the "Zero Based Thinking" question to each activity: "Knowing what I now know, if I was not now doing this, would I start it up again today?"

He realized almost immediately that there were an enormous number of activities he was caught up in, and responsibilities that he had taken on over the years, that were contributing very little to his life and to his real goals. He then set new goals for his work, his family, his health, his financial situation and for his life in general. He compared everything he was doing against his goals. He decided to do more of some things, less of other things, and to either start doing certain things or stop other activities altogether.

This executive had a wonderful quality possessed by all truly effective men and women. He was able to stand back, analyze his life, make specific decisions and then follow through on those decisions. The result was that, within three months, he had cut his workweek from seven days to five days. He had refocused his efforts on the top 20% of his clients and organized his activities to acquire more clients in that same category. [CKK2] At the same time, he began reducing and cutting back on the amount of time he was spending with the 80% of his clients who contributed only 20% of his revenues. This freed up his time considerably and enabled him to spend more of his time with those clients who provided most of his income.

With his worklife simplified and streamlined, he refocused on his family. [CKK3] He began spending more time with his wife and children. First, they arranged to go away for a weekend vacation, something they had not done for years. A few weeks later, they took an entire week away from work and school. Within six months, he was taking one week off per month with his family.

Meanwhile, because of his increased focus on his most valuable clients, within one year, his income increased by more than 300%. He was exercising regularly and had lost twenty-two pounds. By doing fewer things of higher value and discontinuing activities of lower value, he dramatically improved the quality of his life in every area in just a few months.

This story is not unique. I have heard it thousands of times, all over the country and all over the world. As soon as people begin to apply these principles in their daily lives, the results they get are often miraculous. Even they are amazed at the incredible differences that take place, and how quickly their lives change for the better. And what they have done, you can do as well.

Double Your Income, Double Your Time Off

By applying the Focal Point System to your life, [CKK4] you can double your income and double your time off. Many people achieve these twin goals in as little as thirty days.

Most people, when they hear this "Double Double" claim are both suspicious and skeptical. They do not believe that it is possible to double their income and double their time off simultaneously. Most people are trapped in an old paradigm where they believe that the only way that they can increase their incomes is by either increasing the amount of work they do or by increasing the number of hours that they work, or both. In fact, many people actually feel guilty if they are not working almost to the point of exhaustion most of the time. However, this is an old way of thinking that leads inevitably to a physical, emotional and spiritual dead end.

The world has changed dramatically and we must change with it. In less than two generations, we have moved from the Industrial Age through the Service Age and into the Information Age. In the Information Age, knowledge has become the primary resource and the most valuable factor of production. We have moved from the Age of Manpower to the Age of Mindpower. In this new age, you are no longer rewarded for the hours you put in but for what you put into those hours.

Peter Drucker calls this the "Age of the Knowledge Worker." As a knowledge worker, the way you think and get results today is totally different from the way it might have been in the past. Today, you are paid for accomplishments, not activities. You are paid for outcomes rather than for inputs, or the number of hours you work. Your rewards are determined by the quality and quantity of results that you achieve in your area of responsibility. This change in the paradigm of work opens up unlimited opportunities for the creative minority who recognize it and capitalize on it.

Double Your Value, Double Your Income

Would you like to double your income? Of course you would! The only question is: “How can you do it?” Here is a simple way, virtually guaranteed to work.

First, you identify the things you do that contribute the greatest value to yourself and your company. The 80/20 Rule tells you that 20% of your tasks contribute 80% or more of the value of all the things you do. What are the top 20% of your activities that account, or can account, for 80% or more of the value of your work?

Whatever your answer, from now on, resolve to spend more of your time doing more of those tasks that contribute the greatest value and which enable you to achieve the most important results possible for you.

Second, identify those activities in the bottom 80%, those lower value, time consuming tasks that contribute very little to your results. Resolve to downsize, delegate and eliminate as many of them as possible, as quickly as you possibly can.

In no time at all, by disciplining yourself to practice this simple approach, your results and rewards will increase. By persisting in this way of working, you will become more and more productive. You will accomplish more and more. Your productivity, your performance, your output, and eventually your pay, will increase, and eventually double.

You will begin to complete more tasks of higher value. You will make a more valuable contribution. You will be respected and esteemed more highly by those people who can most help you in your career. You will be paid more because the value of your work will be greater than that of others who spend most of their time on lower value activities. Because you will be getting twice as much done in the same amount of time, you can then increase, or even double your time off, with no loss of productivity. Your whole life will change for the better.

You Are Responsible

Implementing this simple formula is largely a matter of personal choice. It is very much up to you. No one else can make this decision for you, and nobody can make this decision other than you.

Perhaps the most important personal choice you can make is to accept complete responsibility for everything you are and everything you will ever be. This is the great turning point in life. The acceptance of personal responsibility is what separates the superior person from the average person. Personal responsibility is the pre-eminent trait of leadership and the wellspring of high performance in every person, in every situation.

The acceptance of complete responsibility for your life means that you refuse to make excuses or to blame others for anything in your life that you’re not happy about. You refuse, from this moment forward, to criticize others for any reason. You refuse to complain about your situation, or about what has happened in the past. You eliminate all your “if only’s” and “what if’s” and focus instead on what you really want and where you are going.

This decision of yours, to accept complete responsibility for yourself, your life and your results, with no excuses, is absolutely essential if you truly want to double your income and double your time off. From now on, no matter what happens, say to yourself, "I am responsible."

If you are not happy with any part of your life, say, “I am responsible” and get busy changing it. If something goes wrong, accept responsibility and begin looking for a solution. If you are not happy with your current income, accept responsibility and begin doing those things that are necessary for you to increase it. If you are not happy with the amount of time you are spending with your family, accept responsibility for that as well and begin doing something about it.

When you accept responsibility, you feel personally powerful. The acceptance of responsibility gives you a tremendous sense of control over yourself and your life. The more responsibility you accept, the more confidence and energy you have. The more responsibility you accept, the more capable and competent you feel.

The acceptance of responsibility is the foundation of high self-esteem, self-respect and personal pride. The acceptance of personal responsibility lies at the core of the personality of every outstanding man or woman.

On the other hand, when you make excuses, blame other people, complain or criticize, you give your power away. You weaken yourself and your resolve. You turn over control of your emotions to the people and situations you are blaming or complaining about.

You do not escape responsibility by attempting to pass it off onto other people. You are still responsible. But you give up a sense of control over your life. You begin to feel like a victim and see yourself as a victim. You become passive and resigned rather than powerful and proactive. Instead of feeling on top of your world, you feel as if your world was on top of you. This way of thinking leads you up a blind alley, from which there is no escape. It is a dead end road on which you should refuse to travel.

See Yourself as Self Employed

When you accept complete responsibility for your life, you begin to view yourself as self-employed, no matter who signs your paycheck. You see yourself as the president of your own personal service corporation. You see yourself as an entrepreneur heading up a company with one employee - yourself. You see yourself as responsible for selling one product - your personal services, into a competitive marketplace. You see yourself as completely responsible for every element of your work, for production, quality control, training and development, communications, strategy, productivity improvement and finances. You refuse to make excuses. Instead, you make progress.

Your personal company, or any company, can increase its bottom line profits in one or more of three ways. First, the company can increase its sales and revenues, holding costs constant. Second, the company can decrease its costs, holding sales and revenues constant. Or third, the company can do something else altogether where one or both of the first two are possible. As the president of your own company, these are your three options as well.

The Focal Point Process requires that you identify the few things that you can do that are more valuable and important than all the others. You then discipline yourself to focus all of your energy and attention on those specific tasks. You just say “No!" to any activity or demand on your time that is not consistent with the most valuable work you can possibly be doing at that moment. You are responsible.

Whatever You Concentrate On, Grows in Your Life

Life is the study of attention. Where your attention goes, your heart goes also. Your ability to direct your attention away from activities of lower value to activities of higher value is central to everything you accomplish in life.

In 1928, at the Hawthorne Electric Plant of General Electric, a group of time and motion experts conducted a series of experiments aimed at increasing the productivity of workers based on varying the working conditions and the environment in the plant.

The researchers selected a group of women who worked on a production line assembling motors. They explained to the women that they were going to be experimenting to find the very best combination of working conditions to assure the highest level of productivity with the smallest number of mistakes. These women had been chosen to be the subjects of the experiment.

They then began their experiments by raising the light levels in the production area. Within a couple of days, production went up and defects went down. The researchers were delighted with these results.

They then lowered the lighting levels to test the differences. But to their surprise, production levels went up once again. They experimented with other working conditions. They raised and lowered the noise levels. They raised and lowered the room temperature. They altered the seating arrangements and the work order of the employees. But in every case, levels of productivity went up. The researchers were completely baffled by these results.

Finally, they sat down with a focus group of the workers and explained to them what they had found. They asked them, "Why do you think it is that production levels have gone up, no matter what variables we changed in the working conditions?"

The answer they got back was surprising. The participants told the researchers that they had never before been singled out and treated as anything other than simple factory workers. When they were chosen to be subjects of this experiment, their levels of self-esteem and self-respect had gone up. They felt better about themselves. They felt more important. As a result, they did their work even better than they had ever done it before. Each change in the working conditions reminded them that they had been specially selected for this study. They worked harder and better. And their productivity increased.

This breakthrough at the Hawthorne Electric Plant triggered the management revolution that has totally changed the world of work as we know it today. It was the discovery of the psychological factors of production that led to the breakthrough work of management researchers such as Maslow, McGregor, Herzberg, Drucker, and many others. Today, thousands of the very best minds in the world are committed to improving the psychological factors that contribute the very most to higher levels of productivity and output in every work situation.

Improvement Is Automatic

What psychologists and others have discovered is that the very act of observing a behavior tends to change that behavior for the better. This is one of the greatest breakthroughs in the understanding of personal performance. Within this critical discovery is contained the key to your dramatically improving the quality of any area of your life.

Sometimes I ask my seminar audiences this question, "Imagine that there are several researchers from the local university in this room. Imagine also that these researchers will be observing you and writing a report later on how well you personally took notes during this seminar. Would that have any effect on your note taking ability?"

Everyone smiles and agrees that, yes, if they knew that they were being carefully observed and evaluated on their note taking ability, they would pay much more attention to the way they took notes. They would be much more aware and they would do it far better than if no one was watching.

This point is simple yet profound and important. When you observe yourself engaging in any activity, you become more conscious and aware of that activity, and you do it better. When you pay attention to any element of your behavior, you will tend to perform far better in that area than you would if you were not paying attention, or if you had not thought about it at all.

The power of the Focal Point Process is that you learn how to identify the most vital actions and behaviors in each area, the ones that can bring you the greatest rewards and results in the shortest period of time. When you then consciously focus on these areas, you will perform better and better. This process of continuous improvement will happen naturally and easily by the very fact that you have put an "X" on the important behavior in advance.

The Law of Increasing Returns

There is a "Law of Increasing Returns" that applies to your use of the Focal Point Process. This law says that the more you focus on doing those few things that represent the most valuable use of your time, the better you become at those activities and the less time it takes you to accomplish each one. Your returns on effort and energy increase the more of them you do. This is another key to doubling your income and doubling your time off.

The Efficiency Curve

This phenomenon is often referred to as the "Efficiency Curve." This curve explains why some people earn several times as much as other people in the same field. It also explains why some companies produce far more of a product or service, at a consistently high level of quality, and at a lower price than others. They can then pass their lower production costs onto their customers, sell for less and undercut their competitors, thereby increasing their market share and their profits. This efficiency curve is the key to your success, as well.

This curve looks like a ski slope moving from the left to the right. When you begin work on a new job or activity, you usually have to invest a good deal of time and effort to accomplish any results at all. This is the learning phase. But if you persist, you will eventually get better and better at that particular task. As you get better, you begin moving forward and downward along this curve, taking less and less time to get the same quality and quantity of results. Eventually, you will reach the point where you can produce in one hour what a new person might take several hours to produce. Meanwhile, the quality of your work will still be equal to or greater than the less experienced person who is spending many more hours to do the same job.

Your Habits Determine Your Destiny

Fully 95% of everything you do is determined by your habits. From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to sleep at night, your habits largely control and dictate the words you say, the things you do and the ways you react and respond. Successful, happy people have good habits that are life enhancing. Unsuccessful, unhappy people, unfortunately, have habits that hurt them and hold them back.

Fortunately, all habits are both learned and learnable. You can learn any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary, if you are willing to work at it long enough and hard enough.

A habit can be defined as an automatic or conditioned response to stimuli. A habit, good or bad, is something that you do naturally and easily, without thought or effort. Once developed, a habit takes on a momentum of its own, controlling your behavior and your responses to the events in your world. Once formed, a habit does not go away. It can only be replaced by a newer, better habit. “We form our habits and then our habits form us.”

The German philosopher Goethe once wrote, “Everything is hard before it is easy.” You may need to exert tremendous discipline to develop new habits of thought and behavior. But once you have them firmly locked in, they enable you to accomplish vastly more, with less effort, than ever before.

Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with. The habits you have, and the habits that have you, will determine almost everything that you achieve or fail to achieve.

Your job is to form good habits and make them your masters. Simultaneously, you must diligently work to eliminate your bad habits and free yourself from the negative consequences that accompany them. Later, we will talk about how you can identify the habits that can help you the most, and how you can most rapidly develop them.

The Grand Slam Formula

The Grand Slam Formula in the Focal Point Process is made up of four parts: Simplification, Leverage, Acceleration and Multiplication. The Grand Slam Formula is another key to your doubling your income and doubling your time off.

The first letter in SLAM, “S,” stands for Simplification. To get better control of your time, to double your income and dramatically increase the quality of your family life, you must learn to simplify everything you do. You must be continually reducing and eliminating activities that take up too much time and contribute very little to the goals you really want to achieve.

The way you simplify your time and your life is by stopping doing as many things of low value as possible. This will free up more time to do the few things that really make a difference. To simplify your life, zero based thinking is one of the most powerful strategies you can learn and apply on a regular basis.

Here’s how it works. Ask yourself, “Is there anything that I am doing right now that, knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t get into again, if I was starting over today?”

Is there any relationship, personal or business, that you wouldn’t get into again today, if you had it to do over? Is there any product, service, process or expenditure of time or money in your work or business that, knowing what you now know, you wouldn’t get into again today, if you had it to do over?

If your answer is “yes,” then your next question is, “How do I get out of this situation, and how fast?”

If you find yourself doing something that you would not start up again today, knowing what you now know, this activity becomes a prime candidate for either downsizing or eliminating. Discontinuing just one major activity, or separating yourself from one person who no longer belongs in your life, can dramatically simplify your life, sometimes overnight.

Continually ask yourself if there is anything that you should do more of, do less of, start doing or stop doing altogether? These are questions that you should ask and answer every day. They are important keys to simplification.

The second letter in the Grand Slam Formula is “L,” which stands for Leverage. You use leverage to get the very most out of yourself. You leverage your strengths and abilities to achieve vastly more than you could on your own. Archimedes, the Greek philosopher once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the world.” This principle applies to you as well.

There are seven forms of leverage that you can develop. These forms of leverage are often available to you for the asking.

Other People’s Knowledge

The first form of leverage is other people’s knowledge. One key piece of knowledge applied to your situation can make an extraordinary difference in your results. It can save you an enormous amount of money and many hours, even weeks or months of hard work. For this reason, successful people are like radar screens, constantly sweeping the horizons of their lives, seeking continually, in books, magazines, tapes, articles and conferences, for ideas and insights they can use to help them to achieve their goals faster.

Other People’s Energy

The second form of leverage is other people’s energy. Highly effective people are always looking for ways to delegate and outsource lower value activities so that they have more time to do the few things that give them the highest payoff. How can you use the energies of other people to help you to be more effective and productive?

Other People’s Money

The third form of leverage is other people’s money. Your ability to borrow and to tap into the financial resources of other people can enable you to accomplish extraordinary things that would not be possible if you had to pay for them out of your own resources. You should continually be looking for opportunities to borrow and invest money and achieve returns well in excess of the cost of that money.

Other People’s Successes

The fourth form of leverage is other people’s successes. You can dramatically improve the quality of your results by studying the successes enjoyed by other people and other companies. Successful people have usually paid a high price, in money and emotion, difficulties and disappointment, to achieve a particular goal. By studying their successes, and learning from their experiences, you can often save yourself an enormous amount of time and trouble.

Other People’s Failures

The fifth form of leverage is other people’s failures. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Man can either buy his wisdom or borrow it. By buying it, he pays full price in personal time and treasure. But by borrowing it, he capitalizes on the lessons learned from the failures of others.”

Many of the greatest successes of history came about as the result of carefully studying the failures of other people in the same or similar fields and then learning from them. What or who has failed in your field that you can learn from?

Other People’s Ideas

A sixth form of leverage is other people’s ideas. One good idea is all you need to start a fortune. The more you read, learn, discuss and experiment, the more likely it is that you will come across an idea that, combined with your own abilities and resources, will make you a great success in your field.

Other People’s Contacts

The seventh form of leverage is other people’s contacts or other people’s credibility. Each person you know knows many other people, many of whom can be helpful to you. Who do you know who could open doors for you or introduce you to the right people? Who do you know who can help you to achieve your goals faster? One introduction to one key person can change the entire direction of your life.

Accelerate Your Results

The third letter in the Grand Slam Formula is “A,” which stands for Accelerate. Today in our society, there is an incredible “need for speed.” Everyone is impatient. Everyone wants everything yesterday, even if he didn’t know he wanted it until today. Anyone who can act quickly to satisfy the needs of other people can move rapidly to the front of the line. Always be looking for ways to do things faster for the key people and customers in your life.

Multiply Your Results

The fourth letter in SLAM is “M” which stands for Multiplication. The primary way you multiply yourself is by organizing and working with other people who have skills and abilities that are complementary to your own. A good manager becomes a multiplication sign in that he or she coordinates the work of different people so that the outcome of the team is far greater than to the total outcome of the individuals working alone. The effective manager creates a high performance climate that elicits extraordinary performance from ordinary people. Your ability to assemble a team of excellent people and then to help your team accomplish important tasks is central to your long-term success. It is the key to multiplying yourself and your abilities.

Double Your Time Off

Doubling your time off requires the power of decision more than any other single quality or attribute. Your ability to decide to book off the time, and then to stick to your decision, is the key to your doubling your time off and spending more time with your family and in your personal relationships.

Many people are convinced that they have so much to do that they have no real choice about whether or not they can take time off. They often feel that they have to sacrifice their family lives for their work. But this is seldom true.

In most cases, as much as 80% of a person’s time at work is spent in activities that contribute very little to the work that the person is being paid to do. According to experts, fully 50% of working time today is wasted. It is consumed in idle socializing with coworkers, personal telephone calls and personal business. It is eaten up by arriving late and leaving early, and by taking extended coffee breaks and lunchtimes.

There is a rule that says, “Hard time drives out soft time.” What this rule means is that, if a person wastes time at work by socializing or engaging in low value activities, the work itself does not go away. The work remains. It still has to be done. As it is delayed and left undone, it begins to build up like an avalanche overhang. The undone work begins to crowd out non-work activities. This “hard time” of essential work eventually drives out the “soft time” of family activities and personal recreation.

There is the story of the little girl who goes to her mother and asks, “Mommy, why is it that daddy brings home a briefcase full of work every night and works all evening and never spends any time with the family?”

Mommy replies sympathetically, “Honey, you have to understand. Daddy can’t get all his work done at the office during the day. That’s why he has to bring it home and work on it in the evening.”

The little girl looks up at her mommy and says, “Well, why don’t they just put him in a slower class?”

Most people who are not taking sufficient time for their families and their personal activities have gotten into the bad habit of working inefficiently and ineffectively during the work day. They get less and less done in more and more time. They socialize with their coworkers and they work on low value tasks. Meanwhile, the critical jobs upon which their success and promotion depends build up, causing them enormous stress and giving them the feeling of being harried and overworked.

The advantage that highly productive people have over the average person is that they have learned how to think and act better and more effectively than others do. And whatever anyone else has done, or is doing, you can do as well, with practice.

Six Steps To Doubling Your Income and Doubling Your Time Off

The key to doubling your income and doubling your time off is simple. First, identify those few tasks that contribute the greatest value to your work. Think your work through carefully, in advance. Discuss it with your boss and your coworkers. Identify your key tasks with absolute clarity so that you know without the shadow of a doubt what it is that you can do that makes the greatest contribution.

Second, identify all those routine tasks and activities that consume so much time but which contribute little or nothing to your long-term goals at work. Begin today to delegate those tasks to others, one at a time. Eliminate them altogether wherever possible. Outsource anything that can be done by any other person or company. Reduce the amount of time that you spend in low value, time consuming activities. Be adamant about discontinuing tasks and activities that are of little importance.

Third, use the Grand Slam Formula to dramatically increase your output and your results. Simplify, Leverage, Accelerate and Multiply your talents and abilities through others.

Fourth, decide today to take at least one full day each week off work during which you spend time exclusively with your family and on your personal pursuits. During this time off, you absolutely refuse to do anything associated with work. You do not read, make telephone calls, catch up on your correspondence, work on your computer, or anything else. You let your brain completely recharge and rejuvenate by turning your attention to something totally separate and apart from the work you do during the week.

Fifth, once you are comfortable taking one day off each week, expand your time off to two days, a full weekend, every week. Begin to schedule a three-day vacation away with your spouse every three months, and eventually, every two months. Begin to schedule two to four weeks of vacation with your family every year. Reorganize your life so that time off and time with your family becomes a major priority.

The more you get your time and your life under control, the more you will get done and the more enjoyable your work will be. The more you get done, the more free time you will have. The more free time you have, the better rested you will be. The better rested you are, the more alert and productive you will be when you are working, thereby getting even more done.

Sixth, start today to pay closer attention to the things you do. Be more conscious and aware of yourself and your actions. Think about your tasks carefully before you begin. Identify your most important tasks and concentrate on them single-mindedly. The very act of continually thinking through your activities before you begin will develop within you new habits of thought and action that will lead to ever greater levels of productivity and performance. You will be amazed at the improvements that take place in every part of your life, and they will take place far faster than you can imagine.

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