Daily Motivations - HOW TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR TIME

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

            9 Inspirational Quotes On Taking Control Of Your Life 1. “Don’t let someone else control what you do in life. It’s your decisions, your outcomes, your life.” Anonymous 2. “No one has power over you unless you give it to them, you are in control of your life and your choices decide your own fate.” Anonymous 3. “Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over, instead of craving control over what you don’t.” Anonymous 4. “No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.” Barbara de Angelis 5. “Be yourself, take control of your life.” Emma Bunton 6. “Don’t allow others to control the direction of your life.” Anonymous 7. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. we ourselves must walk the path.” Buddha 8. “It’s your life. Don’t let others tell you how to live it.” Anonymous 9. “Sometimes you have to do what’s best for you and your life, not what’s best for everyone else.” Anonymous Instagram - @daily_motivationsorg     Facebook- @daily_motivationsorg Interested in sponsoring this show reach out to us via [e-mail] Speakers: Brian Tracy Grab your Ultimate Female Body Fitness Guide Ebook  copy now at an exclusive 50% off discount  https://selar.co/42zb40?currency=USD Kindly Support Us Below to sustain future episodes. Support the Show.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BidMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. There's never enough time to do everything you have to do. You are literally swamped with work and personal responsibilities, projects, stacks of magazines to read, and piles of books you intend to get to one of these days as soon as you get caught up. But the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of all your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all those books, magazines,

and leisure time activities that you dream of. And forget about solving your time management problems by becoming more productive. No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplish in the time you have available to you, no matter how much time it is. You can get control of your time in your life only by changing the way you think, work, and deal with a never-ending river of responsibilities that flows over you each day.

You can get control of your tasks and activities only to the degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few activities that can really make a difference in your life. If you're like most people today, you are overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. As you struggle to get caught up, new tasks and responsibilities just keep rolling in like the tides. Because of this, you will never be able to do everything you have to

do. You will never be caught up. You will always be behind in some of your tasks and responsibilities, and probably in many of them. For this reason, and perhaps more than ever before, your ability to select your most important task at each moment, and then to start on that task and get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop. It's been said for many years that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can then go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that it's probably the worst thing that's going to happen to you all day long. Your frog is your biggest, most important task. It's the one you're most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it right now.

It's also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else. Think of this as a test. Treat it like a personal challenge. Resist the temptation to start with the easier task. Continually remind yourself that

one of the most important decisions you make each day is your choice of what you will do immediately and what you will do later if you do it at all in study after study of men and women who get paid more and promoted faster the quality of action orientation stands out as the most observable and consistent behavior they demonstrate in everything they do. Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete. Failure to execute is one of the biggest problems in organizations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings,

and make wonderful plans. But in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required. Fully 95% of your success in life and work will be determined by the kinds of habits that you develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination, and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition over over and over again, until it locks into your subconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your behavior. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes both automatic and easy to do. Whenever you complete a task of any size or importance,

you feel a surge of energy, enthusiasm, and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the happier, more confident, and more powerful you feel about yourself and your world. The completion of an important task triggers the release of endorphins in your brain. These endorphins give you a natural high. The endorphin rush that follows successful completion of any task makes you feel more creative and confident. Here's one of the most important of the so-called secrets of success. It is that you can actually develop a positive addiction to endorphins and to the feeling of enhanced clarity, confidence, and competence that they trigger. When you develop this addiction, almost without thinking, you begin to organize

your life in such a way that you are continually starting and completing ever more important tasks and projects. You actually become addicted, in a very positive sense, to success and contribution. One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career, and feeling terrific about yourself, is for you to develop the habit of starting and finishing important jobs. At that point, this behavior will take on a power of its own, and you'll find it easier to complete important tasks than not to complete them. Practice is the key to mastering any new skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior

or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary. You need three qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration, which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination. First, make a decision to develop the habit of task completion. Second, discipline yourself to practice the principles you are about to learn until you master them. And finally, back everything you do with determination until the habit is locked in and becomes a permanent part of your personality. The number one reason why some people get more work done faster is because they are absolutely clear about their goals and objectives and they don't deviate from them. The more clear you are about what it is you want and what you have to do to achieve it, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination, eat your frog and get on with the completion of the task.

Here's a great rule for success. Think on paper. Only about three percent of adults have clear written goals. These people accomplish five and ten times as much as people of equal or better education and ability, but who, for whatever reason, have never taken the time to write out exactly what it is they want. There's a powerful formula for setting and achieving goals that you can use for the rest of your life. It consists of seven simple steps. Taking any one of these steps can double and triple your productivity if you're not currently using it. Step number one, decide exactly what you want. Either decide for yourself or sit down with your boss and discuss your goals and objectives

until you are crystal clear about exactly what is expected of you and in what order of priority. One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all. Stephen Covey says, before you begin scrambling up the ladder of success, make sure that it's leaning against the right building. Step number two, write it down. Think on paper. When you write down your goal, you crystallize it and give it tangible form. You create something that you can touch and see.

On the other hand, a goal or objective that's not in writing is merely a wish or a fantasy. It has no energy behind it. Unwritten goals lead to confusion vagueness misdirection and numerous mistakes set number three set a deadline on your goal a goal or decision without a deadline has no urgency it has no real beginning or end without a definite deadline accompanied by the assignment or acceptance of specific responsibilities for completion, you will naturally procrastinate

and get very little done. Step number four. Make a list of everything that you can think of that you're going to have to do to achieve your goal. As you think of new activities, add them to your list. Keep building your list until it is complete. A list gives you a visual picture of the larger task or objective. It gives you a track to run on. It dramatically increases the likelihood that you will achieve your goal as you have defined it and on schedule. Step number five. Organize the list into a plan. Organize your list by priority and sequence.

Take a few minutes to decide what you need to do first and what you can do later. Decide what has to be done before something else and what needs to be done afterwards. Even better, lay out your plan visually in the form of a series of boxes and circles on a sheet of paper. You'll be amazed at how much easier it is to achieve your goal when you break it down into individual tasks. With a written goal and an organized plan of action, you will be far more productive and efficient than someone who is carrying his goals around in his mind. Step number six.

Take action on your plan immediately. Do something. Do anything. An average plan vigorously executed is far better than a brilliant plan on which nothing is done. For you to achieve any kind of success, execution is everything. And finally, step number seven. Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal. Build this activity into your daily schedule.

Read a specific number of pages on a key subject. Call on a specific number of prospects or customers. Engage in a specific period of physical exercise. Learn a certain number of new words in a foreign language. Never miss a day. Keep pushing forward. Once you start moving, keep moving. Don't stop. This decision, this discipline alone, can make you one of the most productive and successful people of your generation. Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it right now.

The very act of thinking and planning unlocks your mental powers, triggers your creativity, and increases your mental and physical energies. Conversely, as Alex McKenzie wrote, action without planning is the cause of every failure. Your ability to plan well

in advance of acting is a measure of your overall competence. The better the plan you have, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination, to get started, to eat your frog, and then to keep going. The good news is that every minute spent in planning saves as many as 10 minutes in execution. It takes only about 10 or 12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but this small investment of time will save you at least 2 hours, 100 to 120 minutes, in wasted time and diffused effort throughout the day.

You may have heard of the 6P formula for time management. It says proper prior planning prevents poor performance. And planning is really quite simple to do. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen. Always work from a list. When something new comes up, add it to the list before you do it. You can increase your productivity and output by 25% or more from the very first day that you begin working consistently from a list. Make your list the night before, at the end of the workday. Move everything that you've not yet accomplished onto your list for the coming day

and then add everything that you have to do the next day. Move everything that you've not yet accomplished onto your list for the coming day, and then add everything that you have to do the next day. When you make your list the night before, your subconscious mind works on your list all night long while you sleep. Often, you will wake up with great ideas and insights that you can use to get your job done faster and better than you had initially thought. The more time you take to make written lists of everything you have to do in advance, the more effective and efficient you will be. Now, you need different lists for different purposes.

First, you should create a master list on which you write down everything that you can think of that you want to do sometime in the future. This is the place where you capture every idea that comes to you and every new task or responsibility that comes up. You can sort out the items later. Second, you should have a monthly list that you make up at the end of the month for the month ahead. This may contain items transferred from your master list. Third, you should have a weekly list where you plan your entire week in advance.

This is a list that is under construction as you go through the current week. This discipline of systematic time planning can be very helpful to you. Many people have told me that the habit of taking a couple of hours at the end of each week to plan the coming week has increased their productivity dramatically and changed their lives completely. This technique will work for you as well. Finally, you should transfer items from your monthly and weekly lists onto your daily list. These are the specific activities that you are going to accomplish the following day.

As you work through the day, tick off the items on your list as you complete them. This activity gives you a visual picture of accomplishment. It generates a feeling of success and forward motion. Seeing yourself working progressively through your list motivates and energizes you. It raises your self-esteem and self-respect. Steady, visible progress propels you forward and helps you to overcome procrastination. As you work through your list, you will feel more and more effective and powerful. You will feel more in more effective and powerful. You will feel more in

control of your life. You will be naturally motivated to do even more. You will think better and more creatively. You will get more and better insights that enable you to do your work even faster. We always have time enough if we will but use it aright. The 80-20 rule is one of the most helpful of all concepts of time and life management. It's also called the Pareto Principle after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who first wrote about it in 1895. Pareto noticed that people in his society seemed to divide naturally into what he called the vital few, the top 20% in terms of money and influence, and the trivial many, the bottom

80%. He later discovered that virtually all economic activity was subject to this Pareto principle as well. For example, this rule says that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your sales. 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. This means that if you have a list of 10 items to do today, two of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than all the other 8 items put together.

Here's an interesting discovery. Each of these tasks may take the same amount of time to accomplish, but one or two of these tasks will contribute five or ten times the value of any of the others. Often, one item on a list of ten tasks that you have to do can be worth more than all the other nine items put together. This task is invariably the frog that you should eat first. Can you guess on which items the average person is most likely to procrastinate? You're right. The sad fact is that most people procrastinate on the top 10 or 20% of items that are the most valuable and important, the vital few. They busy themselves

instead with the least important 80%, the trivial many, that contribute very little to results. You often see people who appear to be busy all day long but seem to accomplish very little. This is almost always because they are working on tasks that are of low value while they procrastinate on the one or two activities that could make a real difference to their companies and to their careers. The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex, but the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80% while you still have tasks in the top 20% left to be done. Before you begin work, always ask yourself,

is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%? And here's a rule for success. Resist the temptation to clear up small things first. Remember, whatever you choose to do over and over again eventually becomes a habit that's hard to break. If you choose to start your day on low-value tasks, you will soon develop the habit of always starting and working on low-value tasks. This is not the kind of habit you want to develop or keep.

The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue. A part of your mind loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can really make a difference. Your job is to feed this part of your mind continually. Time management is really life management, personal management. It's really taking control of the sequence of events. Time management is control over what you do next. And you're always free to choose the task that you will do next.

Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work. Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They accomplish vastly more than the average person and are much happier as a result. This should be your way of working as well. The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something.

The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important it really is to you and your company. This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how you determine what your next frog really is. Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University, after more than 50 years of research, concluded that long-time perspective is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America. Long-time perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections, or virtually any other factor in determining your success in life and at work. Your attitude toward time, your time horizon,

has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices. People who take a long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future. And here's a rule for success. Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making. Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think 5, 10, and 20 years out into the future. They analyze their choices and behaviors in the present to make sure that they are consistent with the long-term future that they desire.

Before starting on anything, you should always ask yourself, what are the potential consequences of doing or not doing this task? And here's another rule for you. Future intent influences and often determines present actions. The clearer you are about your future intentions, the greater influence that clarity will have on what you do in the moment. With a clear long-term vision, you are much more capable of evaluating an activity in the present

and to ensure that it is consistent with where you truly want to end up. Successful people are those who are willing to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the short term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term. Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, think more about short-term pleasure and immediate gratification while giving very little thought to the long-term future. If a task or activity has great potential positive consequences, make it a top priority and get started on it immediately. If something can have large potential negative consequences, if it's not done

quickly and well, that should become a top priority as well. You see, the time is going to pass anyway. The only question is how you use it and where you are going to end up at the end of the weeks and months that pass. And where you end up is largely a matter of the amount of consideration you give to the likely consequences of your actions in the short term. Thinking continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions, and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine your true priorities in your work and personal life. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey there, fellow listeners. If you're passionate about fitness and wellness,

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fitness dreams. We also tackle common challenges women encounter on their fitness journeys, offering advice on balancing exercise with life's demands and breaking free from societal norms. Don't miss out on this incredible deal of 50% off. Get your ebook now before it's too late. So what is holding you back? What sets the speed at which you achieve your goals? What determines how fast you move from where you are to where you want to go? Why aren't you at your goal already? These are some of the most important questions you will ever ask and answer on your way to achieving high levels of personal productivity and effectiveness. Whatever you have to do, there is always a limiting factor that determines how quickly and well you get it done.

Your job is to study the task and identify the limiting factor or constraint within it. You must then focus all of your energies on alleviating that single choke point. In virtually every task, large or small, one factor sets the speed at which you achieve the goal or complete the job. What is it? Concentrate your mental energies on that one key area. This can be the most valuable use of your time and talents. This factor may be a person whose help or decision you need, a resource that you require,

a weakness in some part of your organization or something else. But the limiting factor is always there, and it is always your job to find it. The accurate identification of the limiting factor is always there and it is always your job to find it. The accurate identification of the limiting factor in any process and the focus on that factor can usually bring about more progress in a shorter period of time than any other single activity. The 80-20 rule applies to the constraints in your life and in your work.

What this means is that 80% of the constraints, the factors that are holding you back from achieving your goals, are internal. They are within yourself, within your own personal qualities, abilities, habits, disciplines, or competencies. Only 20% of the limiting factors are external to you or to your organization. Your key constraint can be something small and not particularly obvious. Sometimes it requires that you make a list of every step in the process and examine every activity to determine exactly what is holding you back. Look into your company honestly.

Look within your boss, your coworkers-workers, and members of your staff to see if there's a key weakness that is holding you or the company back, that is acting as a break on the achievement of your key goals. In your own life, you must have the honesty to look deeply into yourself for the limiting factor or limiting skill that sets the speed at which you achieve your personal goals. Successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking the question, what is it in me that is holding me back? They accept complete responsibility and look to themselves for both the cause and the cure of their problems. Keep asking, what sets the speed at which I get the results I want?

The failure to identify the correct constraint or the identification of the wrong constraint can lead you in the wrong direction. You can end up solving the wrong problem. Behind every constraint or choke point, once it's located and alleviated successfully, you'll find another constraint or limiting factor. Whether it's getting to work on time in the morning or building a successful career, there are always limiting factors and bottlenecks that set the speed of your progress.

Your job is to find them and to focus your energies on alleviating them as quickly as possible. The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they could be. The problem is that no one is coming to the rescue. These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no buses pass. As a result, if they don't take charge of their lives and put the pressure on themselves, they can end up waiting forever. And that is what most people do. Only about 2% of people can work entirely without supervision.

We call these people leaders. This is the kind of person you are meant to be. Your job is to form the habit of putting the pressure on yourself and not waiting for someone else to come along and do it for you. The standards you set for your own work and behavior should be higher than anyone else could set for you. Make it a game with yourself to start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. Always look for ways to go the extra mile, to do more than you're paid for. Your self-esteem, the core of your personality, has been defined by psychologist Nathaniel Brandon as your reputation with yourself.

You build up or pull down your reputation with yourself with everything you do or fail to do. The good news is that you feel terrific about yourself whenever you push yourself to do your best, whenever you go beyond where the average person would normally quit. Imagine each day that you have just received an emergency message and that you will have to leave town tomorrow for a month. If you had to leave town for a month,

what would you absolutely make sure that you got done before you left? Whatever it is, go to work on that task right now. Imagine that you just received an all-expense-paid vacation as a prize, but you will have to leave tomorrow morning on the vacation or it will be given to someone else. What would you be determined to get finished before you left so that you could take that vacation? Whatever it is, start on that one job immediately. Successful people continually put the pressure on themselves to perform at high levels. Unsuccessful people have to be instructed and supervised and pressured by others. By putting the pressure on yourself, you accomplish more and better tasks faster than ever before.

You become a high-performance, high-achieving personality. You feel terrific about yourself, and bit by bit, you build up the habit of rapid task completion that then goes on to serve you all the days of your life. Now, here's how you can put these ideas into action. Set deadlines and sub-deadlines on every task and activity. Create your own forcing system. Raise the bar on yourself and don't let yourself off the hook. Once you set yourself a deadline, stick to it and even try to beat it. Write out every step of a major job or project

before you begin. Then determine how many minutes and hours you will require to complete each phase. Organize your daily and weekly calendars to create time segments where you work exclusively on these tasks. The strategy of creating large chunks of time requires a commitment from you to work at a scheduled time on large tasks. Most of the really important work you do requires large chunks of unbroken time to complete. Your ability to create and carve out these blocks of high-value, highly productive time is central to your ability to make a significant contribution to your work and to your life. Many business executives set aside a specific time each day to call customers

directly to get feedback. Some people allocate specific 30 to 60 minute time periods each day for exercise. Many people read great books 15 minutes each night before retiring. In this way, over time, they eventually read dozens of the best books ever written. The key to the success of this method of working in specific time segments is for you to plan your day in advance and specifically schedule a fixed time period for a particular activity or task. You make work appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them. You set aside 30, 60, and 90-minute time segments that you use to work on and complete important tasks. Many highly productive people schedule

specific activities in pre-planned time slots all day long. These people build their work lives around accomplishing key tasks one at a time. As a result, they become more and more productive and eventually produce two times, three times, and five times as much as the average person. A time planner, broken down by day, hour, and minute, organized in advance, can be one of the most powerful personal productivity tools of all. It enables you to see where you can consolidate and create blocks of time for concentrated work. During this working time, you turn off the telephone, eliminate all distractions, and work non-stop. One of the best work habits of all is for you to

get up early and work at home in the morning for several hours. You can get three times as much work done at home without interruptions as you ever could in a busy office where you are surrounded by people and bombarded by phone calls. One of the keys to high levels of performance and productivity is for you to make every minute count. Use travel and transition times, what are often called gifts of time, to complete small chunks of larger tasks. Remember, the pyramids were built one block at a time. A great life and a great career is built one task and often one part of a task at a time. Your job in time management is to deliberately and creatively organize the concentrated time periods you

need to get your jobs done well and on schedule. Napoleon Hill once wrote, do not wait, the time will never be just right. Start where you stand and work with whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along. Perhaps the most outwardly identifiable quality of a high-performing man or woman, as I mentioned earlier, is action orientation. Highly productive people take the time to think plan and set priorities they then launch quickly and strongly toward their goals and objectives they work steadily smoothly and continuously and seem to go through enormous amounts of work in the same time period that the average person spends socializing wasting time and working on low-value activities. When you

work on high-value tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called flow. Almost everyone has experienced this at some time. Really successful people are those who get themselves into this state far more often than the average. In the state of flow, which is the highest human state of performance and productivity, something almost miraculous happens to your mind and emotions. You feel elated and clear. Everything you do seems effortless and accurate.

You feel happy and energized. You experience a tremendous sense of calm and personal effectiveness. In the state of flow, identified and talked about over the centuries, you actually function on a higher plane of clarity, creativity, and competence. You are more sensitive and aware. Your insight and intuition function with incredible precision. You see the interconnectedness of people and circumstances around you. You often come up with brilliant ideas and insights that enable you to move ahead even more rapidly. One of the ways that you can trigger this state of flow is by developing a sense of

urgency. This is an inner drive and desire to get on with a job quickly and get it done fast. This inner drive is an impatience that motivates you to get going and to keep going. A sense of urgency feels very much like racing against yourself. With this ingrained sense of urgency, you develop a bias for action. You take action rather than talking continually about what you are going to do. You focus on specific steps you can take immediately. You concentrate on the things you can do right now to get the results you want and achieve the goals you desire. A fast tempo seems to go hand in hand with all great success.

Developing this tempo requires that you start moving and keep moving at a steady rate. When you become an action-oriented person, you activate what is called the momentum principle of success. This principle says that although it may take tremendous amounts of energy to overcome inertia and get going initially, it then takes far less energy to keep going. The good news is that the faster you move, the more energy you have. The faster you move, the more you get done and the more effective you feel. The faster you move the more experience you get and the more you learn. The faster you move the more competent and capable you become at your work. A sense of urgency shifts you

automatically onto the fast track in your career. The faster you work and the more you get done the higher will be your levels of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride. One of the simplest and yet most powerful ways to get yourself started is to repeat the words, do it now, do it now, do it now, over and over to yourself. If you feel yourself slowing or becoming distracted by conversations or low-value activities, repeat to yourself the words, Back to work. Back to work.

Back to work. Over and over. In the final analysis, nothing will help you more in your career than for you to get the reputation for being the kind of person who gets important work done quickly and well. This reputation will make you one of the most valuable and respected people in your field. Every great achievement of humankind has been preceded by a long period of hard concentrated work until the job was done.

Single handling requires that once you begin a task, you keep working at it without diversion or distraction until the job is 100% complete. You keep urging yourself onward by repeating the words back to work over and over whenever you're tempted to stop or do something else. By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce a task, to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it, can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500%. You see, each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do.

You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively. The truth is that once you've decided on your number one task, anything else that you do other than that is a relative

waste of time. Any other activity is just not as valuable or as important as this job based on your own priorities. The more you discipline yourself to working non-stop on a single task, the more you move forward along the efficiency curve. That means you get more and more high quality work done in less and less time. Each time you stop working, however, you break this cycle and move backward on the curve to where every part of the task is more difficult and time-consuming. Albert Hubbard defines self-discipline as the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

In the final analysis, success in any area requires tons of discipline. Self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control are the basic building blocks of character and high performance. Starting a high-priority task and persisting with that task until it is 100% complete is the true test of your character, your willpower, and your resolve. Persistence is actually self-discipline in action. The good news is that the more you discipline yourself to persist on a major task, the more you like and respect yourself, and the higher is your self-esteem. And the more you like and respect yourself, the easier it is for you to discipline yourself to persist even more. By focusing clearly on your most valuable task

and concentrating single-mindedly until it is 100% complete, you actually shape and mold your own character. You become a superior person. You become a stronger, more competent, more confident and happier person. You feel more powerful and productive. You eventually feel capable of setting and achieving any goal. You become the master of your own destiny. You place yourself on an ascending spiral of personal effectiveness on which your future is absolutely guaranteed. And the key to all of this is for you to determine the most valuable and important thing you could possibly do at every single moment and

then eat that frog. Here's something you can do immediately. Take action. Resolve today to select the most important task or project that you could complete and then launch into it immediately. Once you start your most important task, discipline yourself to persevere without diversion or distraction until it is 100% complete. See it as a test to determine whether you are the kind of person who can make a decision to complete something and then carry it out. Once you begin, refuse to stop until the job is finished.