Short YouTube Q&A where Brian Tracy answers Facebook users' questions about his biggest personal challenge, how he developed himself, and how to find time for personal goals. He recounts crossing the Sahara as his toughest experience, emphasizes clear goal-setting and continuous learning, and gives time-management advice (identify your ‘big three’ tasks, avoid frequent email/interruption).
Hi there. Throughout the year, I've received a lot of questions from my friends on Facebook. So we've decided to sit down and answer these questions and let me give you my thoughts and insights and experiences, and they may be helpful to you. And questions from one person may be a question that you might have asked yourself. So let's get started.
Kosh from Facebook asked, what was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
Well, the biggest challenge that I ever had was crossing the Sahara Desert many years ago. I sort of set off when I was about 20 years old to see the world. And I decided I would go to Johannesburg, from Vancouver, British Columbia, which required going all the way across Canada, getting a job on a ship all the way to England, riding a bicycle from England all the way down to Gibraltar, trading the bicycles in for a used Land Rover, and driving the Land Rover across the Sahara. Now, that's the place where I have come closest to dying and where I learned more lessons about goals and persistence and tenacity and ingenuity and recovery. I had malaria, sunstroke, dysentery. I lost £20. I got arrested several times and thrown in jail, but I finally made it to Johannesburg. And after that, when I look back, I realized there really wasn't going to be anything else in life that was much harder than that, and that's turned out to be true.
Rodrigo from Facebook asked, how did you become the person you are today besides hard work?
Well, I think the most important thing that I learned in life was to set a very clear goal and focus on that goal and just keep working until you achieve it. But the second thing that changed my life was the discovery of personal development, the fact that you could learn anything you needed to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself. Now, it's not easy to learn a subject, but when I set off traveling, for example, I knew I would be in Africa for a long time and in French speaking, Equatorial Africa. So I learned French. And it took me six months of study and then six months of practice just to be able to read, write, and speak basic French. I later learned Spanish and German, and now I'm learning Russian and Chinese. Learning important subjects is very important, but it's hard, hard work, and most people won't do it. So the two things that changed my life the most, in addition to basically persisting and being too pigheaded to quit, is first of all, to have clear goals and write them down and make plans for their achievement and work on them every day. But second of all, to Continue learning and growing and becoming better at the most important things that you need to do to achieve your most important goals. And this more than anything else took me from rags to non rags.
Mahmoud from Facebook asked, how can I find time to work on my dream when I spend almost 10 hours a day at work?
Well, everybody is concerned that they have too much work to do and too little time. And I fortunately have studied this subject of time management at work for about 30 years. And here's the shocking fact is that most people waste fully 50% of their time at work and they waste it in what is called invisible wastage. So one of the reasons why people don't have time to work on exercise, to work on their families, to write their books, to build their businesses is because they're wasting so much time, mostly in idle conversation with co workers. Today they play on the Internet hour after hour, two or three hours a day is they read the paper, they go shopping, they take long lunches and coffee breaks, they come in late and they leave early. So here's a very simple formula. Ask yourself, what are the three most important things that you do at work? What are the three most important things you do that account for 90% of your value? We call these the big three and there's always three. And then what you do is you make a resolution from now on that when you go to work, you're going to work all the time you work, you're going to do those three tasks and you're going to work at them single mindedly until they're complete. Now here's one more thing. Don't check your email in the morning, do not come into work and check your email because then what happens is you become addicted to your email and you end up checking your email all day long. And every interruption, it's called an electronic interruption. Every electronic interruption kicks you out of working gear and it takes you about five to 10 minutes to get back into working gear. So a whole day goes by, 10 hours and you haven't accomplished anything. And this isn't just you Mohammed, this is everybody. Most people are wasting their work life to death. They're actually killing their careers by spending so much time doing things of no value or low value. And the rest of the time they're checking their Internet. So if you can resist the temptation to do that and just work on your major tasks, check your email twice a day. Then you'll have lots of time to follow your dreams. Now I've given you a couple of ideas. So the most important thing that you can do is to take action. So what one action are you going to take as a result of these key ideas that I've just given you? 1. Whatever it is, jot it down and let me know. Remember, one action that you take that you would not have taken in the absence of this discussion can change your life forever.
