Brian Tracy shares three evening habits to boost productivity: write tomorrow's to-do list and identify the single most important task, skip email in the morning to focus on that task first, and prepare your list the night before to reduce procrastination.
Define your life in your own terms and live every minute consistent with the very best person you can possibly be. Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today I'm going to tell you three things you can do each night to prepare for a productive next day. The preparation that you make in the evening for the day ahead will have an enormous effect on how successful you are. Have we talked several times about the importance of thinking on paper when it comes to goal setting and making a clear plan for your future? And that's exactly what we want to do when preparing for the day ahead. So my first tip is Always Think on paper. All successful people think on paper. They make lists, they write things down, they take notes. And all unsuccessful people walk around ditzy and dozy thinking that they're so smart that they don't need to capture it on paper. So take a piece of paper and write down everything you intend to do the following day. Include everything, even your plans to eat a healthy lunch and work out or to prepare dinner for you and your family. Write down every detail and refuse to do it before you write it down. Then organize the piece of paper by asking yourself this great question. If I could only do one thing on this list before I was called out of town for a month, which one thing would it be? That's the greatest question in organizing your day. And then ask yourself, if I could only do two things before being called out of town for a week or a month, what would be number two and what would be number three? And then when you start first thing in the morning, start off with task number one and discipline yourself to work only on number one until it's complete. Then move on to number two. My second tip is don't check your email in the morning. Checking your email in the morning makes getting off track entirely too easy. It starts with just one email and before you know it, you're several hours into your day and you still haven't started on your number one task. This is common everywhere and it's destroying people's productivity. Keep your phone away from you or off to avoid distractions from your most important task. There's nothing so important that it can't wait. Focus on your most important task for as long as it takes to complete, even all day. Work on it until it's done, and then you can reward yourself by checking your email and looking at other incoming requests. Third tip, make your list of written tasks the night before. The final way for you to make sure you have a productive day is to make this list of goals and tasks the night before you see. Your ability to make good plans before you start acting is a measure of your overall competence. The better plan you have, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination, to get started and then to keep going. So by writing down your goals before you go to sleep, you will think about the things you need to do and mentally prepare yourself at a subconscious level to do the most important things when you wake up the next morning. When you plan each day in advance, organize your list by priority and stick to your plan. The work will go faster and smoother than ever before. You will feel more powerful and competent. You will get more done and faster than you thought possible. Eventually you will become like a force of nature. You will become unstoppable. Before we wrap up, I'd like to leave you with a thought to share with your friends and followers about this message. It is this. Your ability to set goals and and to make plans for their accomplishment is the master skill of success and everything else is secondary to that. So those are my three suggestions for increasing your day to day productivity. If you haven't seen my other videos about improving your productivity and increasing your position in life, take a look now. I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is what strategies have you used to prepare yourself for a productive day? Why did they work for you? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action and take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you how to increase your day to day productivity, subscribe to my channel and share this video with your friends or anyone else who might benefit from this information.
