No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline (17 page)

Read No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline Online

Authors: Brian Tracy

Tags: #Self Help, #Business, #Non-Fiction, #Psychology, #Inspirational

 
Unfortunately, when you waste time at work, your work does not go away. It continually builds, like an avalanche overhang. Deadlines come closer and closer. Stress mounts up until you finally force yourself to do the job, usually at the last minute, and then you often make expensive mistakes.
 
Develop an Excellent Reputation
 
There is nothing that will bring you more quickly to the attention of people who can help you than for you to develop a reputation for hard, disciplined work, every hour of every day.
 
Average employees increase their income at only about 3 percent per year, which is just about the rate of inflation or cost-of-living increases. In other words, if you’re an average employee, you’re not really making any more money from year to year. Rather, you’re just keeping up with your expenses. But the top 20 percent in most fields increase their income anywhere from 10 to 25 percent per year—which is also compounded, year after year.
 
The top 20 percent of people at work earn 80 percent of the money. The bottom 80 percent of employees have no choice but to share the 20 percent of the money that is left over. They must scramble for the crumbs that fall off the tables of the highly productive people in their fields.
 
YOU
CAN
DOUBLE YOUR INCOME!
 
When I say to people in my seminars that you should set a goal to “double your income” in the months and years ahead, people react in different ways. Often, at the break, someone will come up to me and say, “You don’t understand my company. There is no way that I could double my income at my current company. They simply would not pay me that amount of money.”
 
Having heard this before, I then ask them the critical question: “Is there
anyone
at your company who earns twice as much as you?”
 
The person who I am talking to will always agree that, “Yes, there are people in my company who earn two or three times as much as I do.”
 
I then make the key point, “So your company is quite willing to pay
some
people twice as much as they pay you. They’re just not willing to pay
you
twice as much. Why is that?”
 
Then suddenly the light goes on. This individual realizes that it is not
the company
that is not willing to pay the money. It is
the individual
who is not contributing enough to be worth that additional money. The responsibility is
his,
not the company’s.
 
 
The Law of Three Helps You Prioritize
 
When we coach entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners, we take them through an exercise that is designed to help them double their productivity, performance, and output within twelve months—sometimes, even, within thirty days. It’s simple. Here’s how it works.
 
First, make a list of all the things that you do in a week or a month, from the time you start work on Monday morning through to the end of the week. Write everything down, both small and large, including checking your e-mail and returning phone calls.
 
Then, review this list and ask this key question:
“If I could do only
one
thing on this list, all day long, which one task or activity contributes the most value to my company?”
 
 
 
As you go over your list, the correct answer will probably jump out at you. Whatever it is, put a circle around it.
 
Then ask the second question:
“If I could do only
two
things on this list, all day long, which would be the second task or activity?”
 
 
 
Review your list again, and identify your second most important task in terms of contribution to your company.
 
Finally, ask the question once more:
“If I could do only
three
things on this list, all day long, what would be the third item?”
 
 
 
We call this the “Law of Three.” The Law of Three says that there are three primary things you do that contribute 90 percent or more of your value to your company or organization. Your job is to identify those three critical tasks and then
discipline yourself
to do them
all day long.
All of your other minor tasks will be support tasks, complementary tasks, enjoyable tasks, or useless tasks. They will be little things that you have often gotten into the habit of doing as a way of unconsciously avoiding the big, difficult, important tasks that can make a tremendous difference in your work and career.
 
Calculate Your Hourly Rate
 
Another way for you to double your income is for you to use the “hourly rate” method of calculating your personal value and your time allocation. First, determine the amount that you earn each hour. You do this by dividing your annual income by the number 2,000 (which is the roughly the number of hours that an entrepreneur or executive works each year in our society: 40 hours a week × 50 weeks a year).
 
For example, if you earn $50,000 a year, divided by 2,000, your hourly rate would be $25. If you earn $100,000 per year, divided by 2,000, your hourly rate would be $50.
 
Whatever it is, from that moment onward, resolve to do
only
those things that pay you your hourly rate or better. Refuse to do those things that someone else can do at a lower hourly rate than you. Do not waste your time doing things of low value or no value while your other important tasks are building up.
 
Get on the Same Page About What Work Is Most Important
 
Once you have made a list of all the results you feel you have been hired to accomplish and you have determined the three most important things you do to justify your hourly rate, take your list of key activities to your boss and have your boss organize your job based on his or her priorities. You need to do this because you must be sure.
 
Benjamin Tregoe, cofounder of the Kepner-Tregoe consulting firm and author of
The Rational Manager
, once said, “The very worst use of time is to do very well what need not be done at all.”
 
Yet it is amazing how many people are working hard on tasks that are of little or no value to their bosses. No matter how well you do an
unimportant
task, it does not help you. Even worse, working on low-value tasks keeps you from working on the most important things you could be doing. Hard work on the wrong job can actually
sabotage
your career.
 
The happiest days you will have at work will be when you are working on those tasks that your boss considers to be most important. The unhappiest days at work will be when you and your boss are at cross-purposes and not getting along primarily because you are not completing the jobs that are most important to him and to his career.
 
Your goal is to be paid more and promoted faster. Your goal is to become one of the most valuable and highest paid people in your field. Your job is first, to make yourself valuable, and then to make yourself
indispensable
to your company. This requires first and foremost that you are always working on those tasks your boss considers most important.
 
Work All the Time You Work
 
The key to doubling your productivity and output—and eventually your income—is to really
work
all the time you are at work. Simply put, when you work,
work
. Don’t waste time. Don’t delay. Don’t chat with coworkers or sit around drinking coffee. Don’t read the newspaper or surf the Internet. When you come into work in the morning, put your head down, and then work all day long.
 
The biggest time wasters in the world of work are other people who want to talk with you, distract you, delay you, and take up the time that you should be spending on high-value tasks. When a time waster approaches you and says, “Do you have a minute to talk?” you reply by saying, “Yes, but not now. Why don’t we talk at lunchtime, or after work? In the meantime, I have to get this job finished. I have to get
back to work.
”
 
When you tell people that you are under the gun, that you have to get a task finished for your boss, they will usually leave you alone. If you do this often enough, they will develop the habit of leaving you alone and, instead, find someone else with whom to waste time.
 
Keep yourself motivated and focused by talking to yourself in a positive way. Your mantra from now on should be, “Back to work! Back to work! Back to work!”
 
Whenever you find yourself slowing down on a major task, begin repeating to yourself those magic words, “Back to work!”
 
Who Works Hardest? The Secret Survey
 
Imagine that an outside company is going to do a study of all the people who work in your organization. They are going to give each person a list of all the employees and ask him to rate his fellow employees in terms of who works the hardest, the second hardest, and so on.
 
They are then going to give this list of people, organized from the hardest worker down to the laziest, to your superiors. This list is going to be used to determine who gets paid more and promoted faster than others.
 
Now, imagine that this survey is already being taken, but in secret. The fact is, in any organization, everyone knows who works harder than anyone else. Everyone knows who works less and who does not pull his weight.
Everyone knows
—it’s not a secret at all
.
 
Resolve today that, if a survey like this were to be taken, one year from today, you would “win” the contest. Resolve today that you are going to develop the reputation for being the hardest-working person in your business. This will do more to help you than almost anything else.
 
When you are surrounded by time-wasting people and situations, it takes tremendous self-discipline to work all the time you are at work. You must constantly fight against distractions and interruptions so you can get back to work.
 
THE SUCCESS FORMULA
 
When I began my career working for a large company, I was the low man on the totem pole. Everyone had been there longer than me and was ahead of me in the company pecking order. Even though I was in my early thirties, I still had no idea how to play the game or what to do to get ahead in the cutthroat, corporate competition that existed.
 
Somewhat by accident, I stumbled onto the formula that made me successful. It was simple. Whenever my boss gave me something to do, I did it immediately. Like a dog chasing after a thrown stick, I would immediately throw myself at the task, complete it, and hurry back to my boss with the finished job.
 
Initially, he would smile and say something like, “I didn’t really need it that quickly, but thank you for getting it done.”
 
 
 
ASK FOR MORE RESPONSIBILITY
 
When I was caught up with my work, instead of relaxing, I would go to my boss and say, “I’m all caught up. I want more work to do. I want more responsibility.” These words became my mantra: “I want more responsibility.”
 
Again my boss, who was preoccupied with an enormous number of projects, would say something like, “Okay, leave it with me; I’ll think about what else I can give you to do.”
 
Every day, like a broken record, I would go to my boss at the end of the day and say, “I’m all caught up; I would like more responsibility.”
 
Bit by bit, he began to toss me “sticks.” He would give me a little task to do to keep me busy. Whatever it was, I would go out immediately, complete the task, and bring him the results. I would then say, “I’m all caught up. I want more responsibility.”
 
Within six months, he began to see me as the “go-to guy.” Whenever he had something he needed done quickly, he passed by everyone else and gave it to me. He knew that whatever he asked me to do, I would do it quickly.
 
 
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
 
Once, my boss asked me to fly to Reno to begin development work on a property that the company was purchasing. He told me I could go sometime in the next couple of weeks. Instead, I left the next morning. I went straight to the lawyer who was handling the transaction and then to the engineer who was in charge of the development work. I immediately sensed that something was seriously wrong with this land purchase. I didn’t know what it was, but I went from person to person, asking questions and gathering information.
 
By the end of the day, just a few hours before this $2 million transaction was set to close and the money would change hands forever, I found that we were about to be sold a piece of land that had no water and was therefore
undevelopable
. Because of complex laws and limited riparian rights (i.e., water rights), the property was a worthless piece of ground that could not be developed within the next hundred years. If we had proceeded with the purchase, we would have lost $2 million!
 
I immediately stopped the transaction, demanded that the lawyer cut me a certified check for the $250,000 deposit that was in his trust account, and flew home to my boss to tell him the story. As you can imagine, my boss was very happy with what I had done.
 
 
THE BIG PAYOFF
 
From that day forward, I received more and more responsibilities. Within another year, I was running three divisions of the company and had a staff of forty-two people in three cities. I later learned that my boss paid me more money than anyone else who had ever worked for him, and he did so all on the basis of results and profitability.
 

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