Eat That Frog! Part 7 of 9: Law of Three
October 23, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Tracy helps you prioritize your life by focusing on your strengths and your contributions to your work life. He asks what 3 things do you do that make the most contribution to your work and then to drill that down further what single thing do you do that makes the most contribution. For me, I know the top three things that I do for my business are 1. Continue to refine and develop plastic surgery techniques, 2. Focus on expanding Internet marketing, 3. Leadership of staff and building. I therefore focus on my core strengths and delegate most of everything else out. Find out what your strengths are and what you can do to focus your work life on them. Oftentimes we can determine what 3 things we do the best in seconds…
The next Law of Three is to have you find your three life goals. You should be able to define those goals and write them down in less than 30 seconds. Tracy argues that individuals who are given several hours to think of an answer tend to score the same as those who wrote their answers down in seconds. That is due to the fact that our subconscious mind drives us to what we really want and peels away all the layers that cover the truth of what we really want. Most individuals define their three goals based on professional, personal, and health. Interestingly, those are the three types of goals that I set out for myself for my EO forum group in which I have monthly action steps for a larger goal that occupies my 2009 calendar year.
What are your three work strengths? What are your three life goals?
Eat That Frog! Part 6 of 9: Priorities and Procrastination
October 22, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
As the previous blogs have set forth, we only have a limited amount of time in our day and in our lives to do the things that really matter. Per force, we will have to procrastinate on some matters, but that involves procrastinating on the things that are unimportant compared with procrastinating as we typically do on the things that truly matter. Tracy calls this creative procrastination in which we eliminate, postpone, delegate, or simply say no to the things that we should not engage in.
He outlines a method that we can use as we “think on paper” called the ABCDE method of power priority. It is as follows:
A- The most important things that you must do belong in this category. After putting these items in this box, subdivide them into A-1, A-2, A-3, etc. based on the most to the least important of the very important things you need to do.
B- Things that you should do but are not as important as A tasks. These B tasks are still important but they do not hold a candle to the A tasks. Your job is to figure out what is an A and what is a B and ensure that you complete the A task before starting the B task.
C- Things that are nice to do like have coffee with your friend, etc., that would not have serious future consequences but that you enjoy doing. C tasks naturally should follow the completion of A and B tasks.
D- The mnemonic is Delegate. These are things that you do every day but if you are in a position of authority can in turn delegate to someone else so that you can focus in your strength zone on the A tasks.
E- Again, a good mnemonic is Eliminate. These are things that you are doing that you really should remove from your life because they are non-productive and interfere with your life’s goals. An example given was a person was playing 3 to 4 rounds of golf every week to the point that his family and work life were entirely suffering. He did not have to eliminate golf but he had to seriously control the amount of time he was spending that led to a disastrous personal and professional life.
Eat That Frog! Part 5 of 9: Future Orientation
October 21, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University found that the difference between successful and unsuccessful people fell on one simple predictor: ”long-term perspective”. More than race, gender, family background, intelligence, etc., how an individual viewed a given day or a given task defined how successful that person would be in society. Those who were focused on where they would be in 5, 10, 15, and 20 years would be the ones who would be successful. Those who were just focused on present day activities would not. Denis Waitley, the motivational speaker, says, “Losers try to escape their fears and drudgery with activities that are tension-relieving. Winners are motivated by their desires toward activities that are goal-achieving.”
We must focus on what priority tasks we can accomplish that will permit future success for us. The simple question that we can ask is “What consequence will the task that I am working on hold for me in the future?” If the answer is none, then perhaps we must reconsider how important it is for us to be working on it. Tracy talks about the “Law of Forced Efficiency”, which says that there is only a limited time that we have to accomplish anything. We can’t eat every tadpole so we must focus on what we can accomplish that has priority value based on “future orientation” (what impact that action would have for us in the future) and “priority focus” (what value that action would have so that we can prioritize it appropriately).
He says that those who say that they work well with deadlines are not actually telling themselves the truth. Studies have shown that people who work under pressure to deliver with a deadline are only procrastinators. It is always much better to plan forward than to be a victim of external constraints like deadlines.
Tracy says that we should ask three important questions for maximum productivity:
1. What are my highest value activities?
2. What can I and only I do that if done well will make a real difference?
3. What is the most valuable use of time right now?
By focusing on “future orientation”,we can help prioritize our biggest frogs and accomplish only what we need to accomplish and delegate or ignore the rest.
Eat That Frog! Part 4 of 9: The Pareto Principle
October 20, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
All of you have heard of the 80/20 rule. Who came up with it? The answer is the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1895 who saw that society was controlled by what he called “the vital few”, i.e., the top 20%. Similarly, many things in life if we focus on the top 20%, we can accomplish much more than if we stayed in the 80% of the non-important stuff. As Tracy says, “20% of your activities will accomplish 80% of your results, 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your business, 20% of your products or services will account for 80% of your profits, 20% of your tasks will account for 80% of the value of what you do, and so on.”
The idea is that on our top ten list of things, the #1 “frog” can often be substantially more important to accomplish than the other 9 all added together. But what do we work on instead? The other 9 first. We want to do the small things first to get them out of the way so that we can then concentrate on the big thing. However, we oftentimes have no energy or time to focus on what really matters, which is our top 20%. We need to focus entirely on that important core by first defining what that core is. If we think our 20% is actually our 80% or vice versa then we are in trouble. Remember as Stephen Covey says before we climb the ladder of success we better know if the ladder is leaning against the right building.
We need to focus our energies to accomplish the top 20% so that we can accomplish so much more. It also fills us with a sense of completion and joy when we do. When we accomplish small tasks we do not feel the same sense of satisfaction. We therefore do not get the endorphin rush that reinforces the good habit of eating that frog. What is your frog today and are you going to eat it first?
Mindfulness Mondays 21: Connectedness
October 19, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
We oftentimes go about the day looking at each other as distinct individuals. We get lost in our own desires, ambitions, thoughts, ideas and give short shrift to those of someone else. We see them as separate from us. We are like little ants running around doing our own thing. But like ants, we are all connected in unison when we need to accomplish a task on a project, etc.
This week, instead of feeling your uniqueness and separation from those around you, feel your being part of a collective whole of humanity. Feel one with nature; feel one with your co-workers; feel one with your loved ones; feel one with strangers you encounter. Start to see them as an extension of yourself. When you see that, you will be in a happier state.
When I see a patient in pain or feeling sad about a past event, I feel compassion for them and connected on a wonderful level. Conversely, when someone comes in to share with me a great joy they just experienced in their life, a wedding, birthday, etc., I also sense that joy. I always encourage my patients to bring in photos from an event so that I can feel their joy and see it on their face in the photo. However, I already feel it in their voice and the joy with which they share their experience with me.
Remember that we are all connected. Celebrate, enjoy, feel, and be a part of that connectedness every time you see the face of someone in front of you rather than seeing them as separate from you for this week and, of course, hopefully from this point forward in your life.