11 keys to maximizing productivity--Brian Tracy

Eleven Keys to Increasing your Productivity
By Brian Tracy

• Develop clear goals and write them down.
  Because higher productivity begins with clear goals, goal setting is a key component of our coaching program. As you know, a goal must be specific and measurable to be effective in guiding your behavior. It must reflect your beliefs and be within your power to achieve.
• Write a clear action plan.
  Next, if you want to turbo-charge your productivity, make sure you have a clear, written plan of action. Every minute you spend in careful planning will save you as many as ten minutes in execution.
• Set your priorities.
  The third step is to prioritize your list. Analyze your list before you take action. Identify and start with the high-value tasks on your list.
• Concentrate and eliminate distractions.
  In this step, choose a high-value activity or task, start on it immediately, and stay with it until it is done. Focusing single-minded attention on one task allows you to complete it far more quickly than starting and stopping.

• Lengthen your workday but increase your time off.
  By starting your workday a little earlier, working through lunchtime, and staying a little later, you can become one of the most productive people in your field.
• Work harder at what you do.
  When you are at work, concentrate on work all the time you are there. Don't squander your time or fall into the habit of treating the workplace as a community where socializing is acceptable.
• Pick up the pace. At work, develop a sense of urgency and maintain a quicker tempo in all your activities. Get on with the job. Dedicate yourself to moving quickly from task to task.
• Work smarter.
  Focus on the value of the tasks you complete. While the number of hours you put in is important, what matters most is the quality and quantity of results you achieve.
• Align your work with your skills.
  Skill and experience count. You achieve more in less time when you work on tasks at which you are especially skilled or experienced.
• Bunch your tasks.
  Group similar activities and do them all at the same time. Making all your calls, completing all your estimates, or preparing all your presentation slides at the same time allows you to develop speed and skill at each activity.
• Cut out steps.
  Pull several parts of the job together into a single task and eliminate several steps. Where you can, cut lower-value activities completely.

Brian Tracy-- The Key to Motivation

Another great daily newsletter from Brian Tracy
Your Real Goal

• Your goal is to become a transformational leader, 
• the kind of person that motivates and inspires people to perform at levels far beyond anything that they had previously thought possible.

Keep People In the Know

• Transformational leaders empower others by keeping them "in the know,"
•   People want and need to feel that they are "insiders," that they are aware of everything that is going on.
• Nothing demoralizes people more then not knowing whats going on in the company.

Give Regular Feedback

• One empowering behavior practiced by transformational leaders is regular feedback on performance and results. 
• People need to know how they're doing so they can improve if performance is below standards and so that they can be proud of their successes. 
• The more feedback you give to people, the better it is, as long as the feedback is objective and not critical. 
• Ken Blanchard says that, "Positive feedback is the breakfast of champions."

Be Generous With Praise

• Be generous with your praise and encouragement. 
• people are the only asset that can be made to appreciate in value by giving them warmth, respect, approval and by creating a climate of positive expectations.

Create An Exciting Future

• What companies and countries and institutions need today are courageous visionary leaders who are committed to creating an exciting future for themselves and others. 
• You have within yourself the ability to evolve and grow as a leader and to make a real difference in the world around you.
• the one thing you can know for sure about yourself is that, no matter what you've accomplished up to now, there is far more that you can do.

Brian Tracy on 2 Key Questions for Maximum Effectiveness

These thoughts are from Brain Tracy's newsletter

There are two questions that you can ask on a regular basis to keep yourself focused on getting your most important tasks completed on schedule. The first question is:
"What are my highest value activities?"

or what are the most important tasks you have to complete to make the greatest contribution to your organization? To your family? To your life in general?

Think it Through Carefully
This is one of the most important questions you can ask and answer. What are your highest value activities?  Like focusing the lens of a camera, you must be crystal clear about your highest value activities before you begin work.

Keep Yourself Focused
The second question you can ask continually is, "What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?"

This question comes from Peter Drucker, the management guru. It is one of the best of all questions for achieving personal effectiveness.

Every hour of every day, you can ask yourself this question and there will be a specific answer. Your job is to be clear about the answer and then to start and work on this task before anything else.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, make a list of everything you do at work and then select your most valuable tasks from that list.

Second, resolve to start in on your highest value task and stay at it until it is 100% complete.