The Law of Posteriorities

By: Brian Tracy

You can only gain control of your life to the degree to which you stop doing things that are no longer as valuable or as important to you as other things you could be doing.

Your Dance Card Is Full
You already have too much to do and too little time in which to do it. The average person today is working at about 110% of capacity, or more. Your dance card is full. You do not have any spare time.

Change Your Priorities
As your life changes, your priorities change as well. Certain things that were important at one stage of your life or career are no longer as important as you move to another stage of your life or to another level of responsibility.

You must continually ask yourself, "What activities in my life can I cut back on, delegate, or discontinue to free up more time for my most important activities?"

Decide What to Discontinue
To start anything new, you must stop doing something old. We say that "getting in means getting out."

Analyze your time carefully and have the courage to stop doing things that are no longer as important to you as other things could be.

Starting up means stopping off. Getting in requires getting out. You cannot take on something new without deliberately deciding to discontinue something else. What is it going to be?

Action Exercises
Here is how you can apply this law immediately:

First, analyze your work and make a list of the items that consume most of your time. Which of these activities could you discontinue or delegate to free up more time for higher value work?

Second, compare your daily activities against your annual income. Would you pay someone else your equivalent salary to do the things that you are doing? If you wouldn't, stop doing those things immediately and pass them onto someone who can do them almost as well as you can.