unfocused and easily distracted. They work at about 50% of capacity. Sadly
enough, they don’t even seem to know how to work any differently. Even if
they wanted to, like speaking a foreign language, they wouldn’t know how
to do it.
Much of the blame for poor work habits goes back to the school system, to
the attitudes of teachers toward academic excellence, and the attitudes of
parents toward homework. If people go through 10 or 12 or even 15 years of
schooling and never have to learn how to settle down and produce good
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quality work, it’s not surprising they will have a hard time producing high
quality work when they enter the workforce.
The Habits of Highly Productive People
In this chapter, you will learn how to develop the habits of highly productive
people. To begin with, the foundations of good work habits can be
summarized in two words: Focus and Concentration.
Focus requires clarity concerning the desired results and the relative priority
of each step that you need to take to achieve those results. When you think
of focus, think of a photographer adjusting his or her lens to keep the key
subject of the photo sharp in the center of the picture.
In order to be truly effective at work, you must be continually adjusting your
lens to be sure that what you are working on is the most important thing you
could be doing at the moment to achieve your most important goal. The
worst waste of time is doing something very well that need not be done at
all.
Concentrate Your Energies
Concentration requires the ability to stay with a task until it is 100%
complete. Concentration means that you work in a straight line from where
you are to where you want to go without diversion or distraction.
Concentration requires that you stay on task, without getting sidetracked into
doing things of lesser importance.
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There is a story of a traveler in ancient Greece who met an old man on the
road and asked him how he could get to Mount Olympus. The old man, who
turned out to be Socrates, replied by saying, “If you really want to get to
Mount Olympus, just make sure that every step you take is headed in that
direction.”
If you want to accomplish your goals, you must be sure that everything you
do is taking you in that direction. This decision alone will dramatically
increase the quality and quantity of what you get done each day.
Four Steps to High Productivity
There are four main steps to high productivity, and they cannot be repeated
too often:
First, set clear goals and objectives in writing. Think through what you are
trying to accomplish before you begin. Ask, “What am I trying to do? How
am I trying to do it?” Whenever you experience frustration of any kind, go
back and repeat these questions.
Second, develop a detailed plan of work and action for achieving your goal.
Setting clear goals answers the question: “What am I trying to do” and
making detailed plans of action answers the question: “How am I trying to
do it?”
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Third, set clear priorities with each of your work tasks organized in a
hierarchy of value and importance to the desired result.
Apply the 80/20 Rule over and over, day by day and hour by hour, before
you embark on any task or activity. Discipline yourself to work on your
highest priority before you do anything else.
Fourth, concentrate single-mindedly, without diversion or distraction, on
the most important thing you can do to achieve the goal. This is the real key
to getting things done.
The Benefits of Concentration
There are several benefits from learning how to concentrate. First, important
task completion is a source of energy, enthusiasm and self-esteem. On the
other hand, incompletion of important tasks, or only partial completion, is
not only a major source of stress but it depletes your enthusiasm and self-
esteem.
When you complete an important task, you experience a surge of energy and
well-being. But when you work on an unimportant task, even if you
complete it in a timely fashion, you get no feeling of satisfaction or personal
reward at all.
Disciplining yourself to concentrate on a job until it is finished gives you
confidence, competence and feeling of mastery. It gives you an experience
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of self-control, and makes you feel that you are in charge of your own
destiny.
The Habit of Task Completion
The habit of completing your tasks, finishing what you start, is an essential
part of character building. You cannot imagine a fully mature, fully
functioning person who is unable to finish what he or she begins. The
development of this habit is the key to long-term success.
You can accelerate the process of becoming a highly productive person by
visualizing yourself over and over as focused and channeled toward high
achievement. See yourself as a highly productive, efficient person. Feed your
subconscious mind with this picture until it is accepted as a command.
Remember, the person you “see” is the person you will “be.”
Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real experience
and one that you vividly imagine. If you create an imaginary picture of
yourself performing in an efficient and effective way, your subconscious
mind reacts exactly as if that is what you were actually doing at the moment.
Each time you replay this image of yourself performing at your best, your
subconscious mind records it exactly as if it were happening again. It then
adjusts your words, actions and behavior so that your actions on the outside
are consistent with the picture you have created on the inside.
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Each time you remember a time when you were performing at your best with
pleasure, your subconscious mind records it, just like a new photograph and
imprints it into your self-concept. The more often you see yourself as the
very best that you could possibly be, the more rapidly this becomes your
automatic behavior. You program yourself for success by feeding your mind
with positive pictures, either imaginary images that you create or repeat
pictures of previous peak performance experiences.
Combine Thoughts with Feelings
The principle of emotionalization is very powerful when you use it in
conjunction with visualization. There is a formula that says, “Thought times
emotion equals result (T x E = R).” What this means is that, if you create a
clear mental picture of yourself working efficiently and well, and you
combine that with the emotion of enthusiasm and enjoyment, this picture is
more rapidly accepted as a command by your subconscious mind, and the
faster it becomes your current behavior.
A powerful method for reprogramming your subconscious mind with the
thoughts, feelings and behaviors of highly productive people is for you to
“act as if” you were already the efficient, effective person that you desire to
be.
Assume the Position
It turns out that there is a physical position for almost every mental or
emotional state. There is a body language for good work habits as well. For
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example, if you work at a desk and you sit up straight, erect and lean
forward, you actually trigger a feeling of being more productive. If you walk
briskly, with your head up, your shoulders back and your chin held high, you
tend to feel like a more confident and productive person.
The Law of Reversibility says that if you feel a particular way, on the inside,
you will act that way on the outside. It also says that, if you act as if you
already felt the way you desire, the actions, which are under your direct
control, will create the feelings, which are not.
If you want to be confident, act confidently. If you want to be courageous,
act courageously, if you want to be efficient, behave as if you already were
an efficient person. Your actions generate your feelings and beliefs, just as
your feelings and beliefs determine your actions.
Sit Up Straight
On the other hand, if you slouch in a chair or walk slowly with your head
down, you will feel lethargic and unproductive. If you put your feet up or
lean back and relax, your energy levels will drop and you will lose your
enthusiasm for any kind of productive work.
Throughout the workday, you should stop regularly and observe how you
are sitting and doing your work. Ask yourself, “Would a highly effective
person sit and look like this?” If the answer is no, then change your posture
and your position so that it is more consistent with the way you think a
highly productive person would sit and work.
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Perform Like a Genius
Some years ago, the Readers Digest reported on a study of geniuses. The
story examined the life and habits of many geniuses over the ages in an
attempt to determine what characteristics geniuses had in common. They
finally concluded that all geniuses seemed to behave the same in three ways.
Fortunately, an ordinary person with average intelligence can develop these
three qualities or behaviors, and dramatically increase their mental
productivity as a result.
The first quality they found was that all geniuses seemed to take a systematic
and orderly approach to problem solving. Whenever something went wrong,
they would stop and analyze it carefully, step by step, before jumping to a
conclusion or taking action to resolve it. As a result, when they finally did
make a decision, it was better than those of ordinary people who simply
reacted to a problem rather than thinking it through.
Maintain a Sense of Wonder
The second quality that the geniuses in the study seemed to have in common
was a sense of wonder, the ability to look at situations in a fresh, almost
childlike way.
Geniuses keep an open mind, and a flexible attitude toward all subjects.
They allow their minds to “float freely” and examine all the possible ways of
approaching a situation or solving a problem before they come to a
conclusion. They continually ask, “What else might be the solution?”
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The third quality of geniuses is that they seem to have the ability to
concentrate with greater depth and intensity than the average person.
Thomas Carlisle once said, “Genius is simply an infinite capacity for taking
pains.” Almost anyone who can discipline himself or herself to concentrate
single mindedly on a single subject until he or she completes that task or
masters that subject, will begin to perform vastly better in that area.
This ability to concentrate single-mindedly applies to sales, management,
parenting, negotiating or anything else. All great achievements are the
results of long periods of single-minded concentration, focused on a single
task or objective, until the job is complete.
Six Steps to Better Concentration
There are six ways to develop the qualities of concentration common to
exceptional men and women. These are all business skills that can be learned
by anyone who is determined enough to practice them repeatedly until they
become habits.
First, before you start work, clear your workspace of everything except
exactly what you need to complete your highest priority task. Simplicity and
order tend to be more conducive to highly productive work, for average
people as well as for geniuses.
Second, plan your days and organize your work so that you create blocks or
chunks of time to work on completing major tasks.
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Use your ingenuity to find ways to take time from other activities and
consolidate this time into blocks of a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes each.
Because of the time it takes you to settle into a task, it is usually not possible
for most people to accomplish meaningful tasks in less than 60-90 minute
periods. By meaningful tasks, I am referring to creative work such as reports
and proposals, as well as meetings and discussions with and about people
and projects. Almost all important tasks require unbroken periods of time
where total concentration is possible.
You cannot rush important conversations, discussions or negotiations. You
need blocks of time. To be able to concentrate your attention, you must
become creative in finding these blocks of time. There are many ways to
accomplish this.
Early to Bed, Early to Rise
One very effective technique is to work at home in the morning for an
extended period, before you go into work. You are usually fresher and more
capable of concentrated effort first thing in the morning than at any other
time during the day.
For example, you can go to bed early and get up at 5:00 am. Start work
immediately and work without interruptions for three or four hours before
going into the office. You will be amazed at how much you get done in these
unbroken, uninterrupted chunks of time, early in the day, when you are
rested and at your best.
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It is amazing how many great men and women practice this way of working.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The sun has never caught me in my bed.”
When you get up and get going early, you can get the equivalent of an entire
day’s work done before the normal working day even begins. If you work
from 5:00 am to 8:00 am, and then go to work, you will soon be on top of all
your major tasks. Everything else you get done during the day will be a
bonus.
Work without Interruptions
Many companies in large cities will often rent an apartment near the office
and furnish it with desks, chairs and office supplies so that executives can go
there and work without interruption away from the telephone and drop-in
visitors. This dramatically increases their productivity, especially when they
are working on important tasks and projects that have to be done on a
specific schedule, and completed by a certain deadline.
The very fact that you know that you will not be interrupted enables you to
concentrate better and produce more. If you are working at home, you
should disconnect your telephone so that no calls can get through to you.
