Focal Point

A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals

Brian Tracy

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9780814426258
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management

The true secret of high achievers is that they know how to find their "focal point" - the one thing they should do, at any given moment, to get the best possible results in each area of their lives.

Bestselling author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy brings together the very best ideas on personal management into a simple, easy-to-use plan. Focal Point helps readers analyze their lives in seven key areas and shows them how to develop focused goals and plans in each.

This best-selling guide provides timeless truths that have been discovered by the most effective people throughout the ages, answering questions like:

In Focal Point, Tracy provides timeless truths that answers questions such as:

• How can I get control of my time and my life?
• How can I achieve maximum career success and still balance my personal life?
• How can I accelerate the achievement of all my goals?

Focal Point shows you how to develop absolute clarity about what they want, and how they can achieve supreme satisfaction, both personally and professionally.

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.

—ORISON SWETT MARDEN

You can dramatically improve the overall quality of your life far faster than you might think possible. All you need is the desire to change, the decision to take action, the discipline to practice the new behaviors you have chosen, 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 had been working six to seven days per week, ten to twelve hours per day, and had not taken a vacation in more than four years when he began the program. 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 the areas where he was getting the best results and earning the most money. At the same time, he identified the areas that consumed an enormous amount of time but contributed very little to his real goals. He made a list of everything he was doing, and then he applied the zero-based thinking question to each activity: “Knowing what I know now, if I were not doing this now, 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 his real goals. He then set new goals for his work, his family, his health, his financial situation, and his life in general. He compared everything he was doing with his goals. He decided to do more of some things and less of other things and to start doing certain things and stop other activities altogether.

This executive had a wonderful quality possessed by all truly effective men and women I know. 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 work week from seven days to five days. He had refocused his efforts on the top 20 percent of his clients and organized his activities to acquire more clients in that same category. At the same time, he began reducing and cutting back on the amount of time he was spending with the 80 percent of his clients who contributed only 20 percent of his revenues. This enabled him to spend more of his time with the clients who provided most of his income.

With his work life simplified and streamlined, he refocused on his family. 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 a year his income increased by more than 300 percent. He was exercising regularly and had lost 22 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 Process to your life, you can double your income and double your time off. Many people achieve these twin goals in as little as thirty days.

When they hear this claim, most people are 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: They believe that the only way they can increase their incomes is by increasing the amount of work they do or the number of hours they work. In fact, many people 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 Mind-power. 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. 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 you achieve in your area of responsibility. This change in the paradigm of work opens up unlimited opportunities for creative people 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, almost guaranteed to work.

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

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

Second, identify the activities in the bottom 80 percent, the 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, if you discipline 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 the 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.

Among the most important personal choices 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 preeminent trait of leadership and the wellspring of high performance in every person in every situation.

Accepting complete responsibility for your life means that you refuse to make excuses or 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-onlys and what-ifs and focus instead on what you really want and where you are going.

This decision to accept complete responsibility for yourself, your life, and your results, with no excuses, is absolutely essential if you 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 the 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 and begin doing something about it.

When you accept responsibility, you feel personally powerful. Accepting 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.

Accepting responsibility is the foundation of high self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride. Accepting 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 the world is on top of you. This way of thinking leads you into 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 a company with one employee: you. You see yourself as responsible for selling one product—your personal services—in a competitive marketplace. You see yourself as completely responsible for every element of your work, for production, quality control, training, development, communication, strategy, productivity improvement, and finances. You refuse to make excuses. Instead, you make progress.

Your personal company, or any company, can increase its 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. 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, you have these three options.

In the Focal Point Process, you identify the few things you can do that are more valuable and important than all the others. You then discipline yourself to focus all your energy and attention on those specific tasks. You 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

Life is the study of attention. Where your attention goes, your heart goes also. Your ability to divert your attention 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 best combination of working conditions to achieve 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 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, productivity levels went up. The researchers were 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...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Unlock Your Full Potential
• Chapter Two: Double Your Productivity
• Chapter Three: Simplify Your Life
• Chapter Four: Tap Your Most Precious Resource
• Chapter Five: Practice Personal Strategic Planning
• Chapter Six: Supercharge Your Business and Career
• Chapter Seven: Improve Your Family and Personal Life
• Chapter Eight: Achieve Financial Independence
• Chapter Nine: Enjoy Superb Health and Fitness
• Chapter Ten: Become Everything You Are Capable of Becoming
• Chapter Eleven: Make a Difference in Your Community
• Chapter Twelve: Spiritual Development and Inner Peace
• Seven Lessons for the Twenty-First Century
• Focal Point Advanced Coaching and Mentoring Program
• Appendix: List of Values
• Recommended Reading
• Index
• About the Author