The Secret to Time Management & Success – Exclusive Interview with Brian Tracy

you know we talk about time management in reality we're talking about life management life management yes it's time after all life what is life it's time [music] yes and what would a person not pay to get more life yes [music] exactly you know it's interesting if you are the richest person in the world I came across this I [music] I read so much material and time management I still do I can write another book on time management that will [music] as a matter of fact in the next two weeks be completely different from this on time management but but what I said is imagine you had worked all [music] your life to become the richest person in the world and you were worth billions and billions of dollars and you found out that you had a fatal illness and that you are going to die within 24 hours however there was this special medicine and if you took this special medicine you would [music] live 24 hours more than if you didn't take the medicine listen [music] you would give everything you have ever earned for that one day more you give everything you everything you'd ever [music] earn for that one day more that's how precious life is and when you say that to somebody oh wow and yet one of the great writers said [music] that people think nothing of wasting the day the hours and days uh of their lives and yet they always talk about important time [music] management is but they think nothing about wasting uh the hours in days of their [music] lives and that's really important if you told a person that a cosmic [music] accident was going to happen today if you told a person that a meteorite was going to destroy the entire Earth in 3 days and you only had 3 [music] days left is how would you spend that last 3 days well the first thing is [music] you would want to spend it with the most important people in your life and I said then why aren't you spending it with the most important people in your life right now I mean if you had only a short time to live you would realize what is more important [music] than anything else and let us say you had a year to live or 10 years to live and you had only a certain period of time there's a wonderful question that they teach at Stanford it says imagine that you have $20 million cash taxfree in the bank but you find that you only have 10 years to live how would you spend your time and in other words you have all the money that you need [music] to be financially free for the rest of your life but you only have to 10 years to live how would you spend your time well I spend my time doing this and I do that and I quit this lousy job and I want to do that and and and I and I stop putting this off and so on [music] so it's when people start to see how valuable the time is and really [music] think about it and when I what I do is I encourage people to think about how valuable your life is they change their lives I they sometimes [music] they leave my seminars and they quit their jobs they walk away from a bad [music] relationship they they Chang their health habits they do all kinds of things when they ask that question what if you only had a short time left to live so it's a [music] great question great good thing to think about I want to ask you um I I created a course called how to earn seven figures [music] by using your unique talent and one of the things I'm mentioning in the course and I [music] think that this is very much in line to what you were saying yes let's say uh the life the lifetime of the person is 100 years yes and then you come to a doctor it's exactly what you said before with the 24 hours but let's say you come to the doctor the do when you're ad80 the doctor tells you you're going to die unless you know it's going to cost you your entire wealth to get 20 20 more years he would give everything he would give everything so what is the difference between living to ad [music] and adding another 20 years than between living your young year younger years and then your older years that they call the golden years the retirment age and then in the middle right in the middle you have like 20 30 40 years that you're dead because you do what you absolutely hate doing yes isn't that like living dying living again yeah absolutely well here's a wonderful [music] idea that my friend Dan Sullivan is a coach strategic coach strategic [music] coach yes and he says imagine that you're going to die at a certain [music] time what what age are you going to die at and he said most people never ask themselves that question what age are you going to die at well [music] say you're going to die at the age of 80 which is becoming more and more uh the common some [clears throat and music] people die older some people die at the age of 80 okay so how would you like to feel at the age of 80 how would you like to feel at the age of 80 in Health Fitness weight [music] relationships U and you say well I'd like to feel this I like to have that i' like to I have lots of energy I get up in the morning everything else okay so now how would you like to feel one day before that when you are one day before the age of 80 and then how would you like to feel one day before that and then work it all the way back to the present day you ever heard this it's it's a wonderful idea [music] is so that one day before you die you would want to feel terrific about yourself so now what you do is you're working all the way back to today [music] and what you need to do today to feel wonderful about yourself how would you organize your day [music] why I I teach in my coaching program I say that there's only four ways to change your life you can do more of some things and you can do less of other things you can start doing something that you've not [music] done before or you can stop doing something altogether and those are the only four ways you can change your [music] life and I've worked with a thousand entrepreneurs business owners over the years and we've never found a different answer to that question is [music] what would you one of those four things and so we say well number one is [music] what would you do more of well you do more of those things that give you the best results that make you the happiest that make you more fulfilled that give you the greatest joy of course what would you do [music] less of well you less of the things that you don't enjoy that you don't like [music] that are not that helpful to you and so on what would you start doing that You' never done [music] before well you've always meant to do this what is this what would you stop doing completely stop smoking stop [music] drinking stop you know eating desserts or anything else what would you stop doing and then have the discipline to [music] just follow through on what you decided to do or not do it's like when you don't live like this it's like going around around a a death person in Al live body so to speak that's right A lot of people look alive but you know you you start touching them you don't feel any energy you don't feel anything in them yes you you know if you ask what is the highest form of life [music] the highest form of life of all and the answer that I've come up to is to [music] experience Joy it's to experience joy and so you ask the question and we've [music] done seminars and we've worked with so many people you ask the question what gives you Joy what gives you the greatest joy in life and this is not a simple question [music] it's not a simple answer and don't set be settled or satisfied with the first answer first answer is usually Joy comes [music] from the quality of your real relationships and being with people you love and [music] doing things that that that help and change other people but think about it what gives you Joy and how can you organize your life so you doing more of the things [music] that give you Joy and then you organize your life around that by the way there's a piece of music I believe it's by Mozart called Old to Joy and it is [music] one of the great pieces of music you listen to it and it does give you Joy beautiful piece of I [music] think you know talking about the purpose of life the way I look at it and the way I constantly communicate this with my members um the purpose of life is there is a certain purpose and if you really want to know what the purpose in life is just look what your unique talent is because God gave you what you need to have to accomplish your purpose yes and nothing gives you more joy than accomplishing your purpose yes so it's it's basically starting with your Finish Line where do you want to get yes [music] and the same as you mentioned from Dan Sullivan that you want to you know the last day of your life and then look back the same every morning this day as you mentioned Brian is a part of that life yes so I want to know crystal clear in the morning what is it that I have to accomplish by the end of today that I should be happy with my progress yes towards the bigger picture yes that will give you Joy that will give me joy you [music] know that's that's a very important thing is ask asking yourself all the time you know what gives [music] me joy and then having the discipline to do only that one of the things I learned in uh time management which I [music] teach is what I call the law of three and it says basically in your work [music] there's only three things that you do that account for 90% of the value of everything that you do and so your job is to identify [music] them and the way you do it is you make a list of everything you do in a week or a month [music] and then you ask yourself three magic questions magic question number one if I could only do one thing on this list all day long which one activity would contribute the greatest value to my life and put [music] a circle around and usually that one jumps out at you then it becomes [music] difficult second one if I can only do two things all day long would would be the second thing that contributes the greatest [music] value to my life and that takes a little bit of reading and research [music] and thought and so on most people have write down 20 to 30 things in their answers I've given this [music] to my coach clients over the years and it's very interesting because it's a lifechanger and then question number three is is if you could only do three things on this list what would be number three and this this law of three which I began teaching 20 years ago 25 years ago has now become a basic law in some of the biggest companies in the world IBM uses it as their man management law um every manager is trained to ask each person what are your big three and is what you're doing right now one of those three by the way people say well how do I find my area of Excellence my great joy and what I find is [clears throat] you ask the question who do I admire the most whose accomplishments do I admire the most who do I want to be like what gives me joy what do I like to read about what fascinates me what what draws me and pulls me well that's an indicator of what you are born to be good at what you're born to be great at it it grabs you and it moves you it pulls you uh and when you [music] think about it it makes you happy when you do it when you see somebody else doing it it makes you happy makes you want to do more of it [music] yourself I wanted to ask you since I told you know I founded the jweld book club JW book club is basically for busy entrepreneurs working people they don't have too much time to read right and every month we coming out with a new book yes that we're covering in the month [music] doing interviews with the authors when we can and doing a snapshot of the book for next month we chose this book The eat eat that fra right so and I'm very happy that you know actually on the way here on the plane I was reading again some of the some chapters of the book and I really love it thank you so I I would love if you can talk more about what what motivated you to write this book that become became such a great bestselling book you know what is it that you can say to people that motivated you for this well I uh have mentioned [music] in in our conversations here that uh a major turning point in my life was uh what I had always thought that time management was like cooking know or sports [music] or travel it was a subject it was you read about it here read about it there and so on and then one day I realized that time management was not a peripheral subject it was [music] the core subject is the way you manage your time the quality of your time management determines the quality of [music] your life every single thing that you do that enables you to manage your time better improves the quality of your life [music] improves your self-esteem increases your income makes you happy gives you a feeling of personal power it changes your belief system it's it's everything is in managing your time so I said all right I've read all these books and articles uh what are the most important things that I learned and I just start to write them down write them down uh some years ago I uh came up with an idea I called them my 21s so I just took all the research that I had done over the years and I wrote down 21 ideas [music] and then I wrote out 21 chapters and then and as I mentioned earlier when the publisher asked do you have a book I said in this book with 21 ideas [music] and they chose this title eat that frog 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster because everybody wrestles with procrastination and you know who is the most concerned about procrastination [music] the ones who don't procrastinate the one the people most concerned about self-discipline they're the ones who are the most disciplined [music] uh they always feel that they could do better so that's why I focus on that and the wonderful thing about this is that each time you practice or read through this book your self-esteem [music] goes up you feel happier you feel stronger you feel more powerful and very simply you actually make more money is you get more done you uh have spend better time uh with your family you feel stronger yourself [music] so it's a it's a wonderful book that people actually feel different after they've read it and each time they read it they moves them upward on this spiral so that's why I wrote [music] the book and then as for some reason um people started to experience this wonderful [music] feeling of power when they read this book and applied it and um so the book [music] started to sell and sell and sell and sold hundreds of thousands and millions of of god wow what you just mentioned BR brings me to my next question you talk in the book about um deliberate procrastination yes which I love the idea it makes a whole lot of sense especially the way that you just described it you you you put a few things on paper what you want to accomplish you identify the most important thing and then what do you do with the rest yes you just put them aside you just put them aside yes deliberately and and conscious procrastinations so [music] that uh you don't accidentally procrastinate which is what most people do is you say it's not that I'm not going to do these things it's just I'm not going to do them now is I am going to work on these three things only and I will come back to these other things lower value at a later [clears throat] time when I have more time and of course [music] like that poem we were talking about earlier and knowing how we leads on to way I knew that I would never come back well what happens with those things of kn importance is you never come back to them and they are of no loss to you because they are such low value you just keep working on your three most important tasks because those are the tasks that give you [music] Joy when you complete them and this is what I'm always struggling with with why is it that if this is this the thing that's going to give me joy if this is the thing that I love so much why naturally do people procrastinate this very thing and they don't procras so much the other things well [music] because task completion gives you a sense of energy it makes you happy uh it raises your self-esteem and even if it's [music] a valueless task it's still gives you [music] something so therefore your biggest tasks are big tasks they're things that are going to take you sometimes several hours [music] to do they're very hard work um but these little tasks you can do immediately you can do [music] quickly so they're and they're easy distractions so that's something that you can do something everybody should do is get to do not disturb sign and carry it with You For Heaven's Sake put it on your door [music] when you're busy and people will understand it's amazing how respectful people are of your time if you just just hint do not disturb they won't disturb you you can double your productivity working in an office environment [music] if you just use a do Doge dist stb sign what you do is you must Train everybody you train people to recognize [music] that you don't have time to waste time people respect it when you [music] respect your time if you don't respect your time then people actually think think less [music] of you right so let me ask you if there is one thing that people can take out of this book only one thing what do you want that to be well the answer is is very simple it is the most valuable thing that you have in your life is your self self-esteem this is how you how valuable and important [music] you feel you are as a person it's the source of all your energy it's the source of your confidence it's the source of your ability to stay with your goals how much you like yourself and respect yourself is everything and how much you like yourself and respect yourself is determined by how regularly you start and complete your most important tasks and remember in in [music] life everything that you do affects your self-esteem it raises [music] or lowers your self-esteem uh I used to do a speech called Everything counts [music] everything counts everything counts everything that you do causes you to like and respect yourself more or less and when you start and complete your tasks before anything else your self-esteem goes up and it makes you more powerful it makes it easier for you to do it again [music] and again and again so you like yourself and other people like like you and you become wealthy uh because you get so much done [music] and you spend more of your time on valuable things and your whole life gets under this wonderful upward spiral well is it fair to say that the reason sometimes people don't respect your time because because you don't respect your time absolutely [music] so I respect my time people see the same thing absolutely respect yourself other people [music] respect you more let me ask you some uh final questions Brian how important do you think it is for somebody to read books and constantly educate yourself and be on the edge [music] well it's an interesting point is that the amount that you read determines [music] the size of your vocabulary and what we have found is that the more words you know [music] of your language the more intelligent you are because every word is [music] is called a thinking tool it's a tool with which you think in some words like Love and Hope and wealth are very rich words they have many many different aspect you can write entire books on that single word [music] so the more words you know the more words you can combine with other words to create more complex thoughts and that's why people who know more words [music] from Reading think at a much higher level they have a higher quality of life they earn more money [music] they're more respected by other people whereas people who don't read just don't have the vocabulary and they don't have the rich inner [music] life that is necessary for you to be really happy in yourself and respected by others the more you read the more you learn things that can help you and suddenly you start to realize that reading is really important because it's a source of pleasure also it's a source of wealth I still remember to this day my first sales book I remember going to the bookstore because my top salesperson told me to read that's all he said I went to the bookstore and I found this book and I still remember I took it home and I read it and I read it and I read it and my income went up and up and pretty [clears throat] soon I wrote read more and more books and my income kept going higher and then I started to read audio programs which are books [music] and my income kept going up and then I started going to seminars and my income was very important that you read all the time I've taught my children from the time they were infants that that [music] readers are leaders and all of them quote that back to me readers [music] are leaders