The Single Best Word for Ultimate Success | Brian Tracy

Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today I want to talk to you about the single best word to help you to achieve ultimate success. One of the most important factors in your success is your reputation. You want to get a reputation for starting and completing important tasks quickly. Highly successful people all have one thing in common. They develop through hard work and focus a series of successful habits that allow them to set and achieve almost any goal they desire. Developing these successful habits can take weeks and months and even years to perfect. But there's one habit that you can start implementing right now, today that will help propel you forward to your ultimate success goal. So what is this secret habit for developing great success? Over years of research and dozens and dozens of books that I have written on personal success and read on the same subject, I have found the best strategy for keeping your career and business and ambitions on the fast track is for you to master the art of saying the word no. Today I'm going to show you how to use the five principles to master the why, when, and how of saying no to reach your goals in any area of your personal or professional life. First, utilize the 8020 rule. The 8020 rule shows that 80% of your success comes from the top 20% of your efforts. This means that if you're daily to do list has 10 items on it, your top two items are going to have a massive impact on your success and the rest is just noise. Real success comes when you identify which 20% of your tasks you should focus on that will give you 80% of the results. Start by prioritizing your list and starting your day with those things that are of the highest importance. Then you can work down your list with confidence, knowing that you've accomplished the most important things first and haven't sacrificed essential tasks for less important ones. One of my favorite time management techniques is to make a list of everything you have to do and then ask yourself this. If I was to be called out of town for a month and I could only finish one task on this list, which one task would I be most determined to finish before I left? That's the key task that you must start and complete before anything else. Prioritize the things that will make you most successful and say no to those things that won't help you get to where you want to be. The American philosopher Henry David Thoreau says, it is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? So be a doer, but not an ant. Apply this principle to your business goals, family life, and personal goals any part of your life and watch your success take off. Second, say no to low level tasks. Use the A B C D E method to help identify which tasks are most important and which tasks aren't worth your time. This powerful technique can be applied to any list of items that you need to accomplish. Begin by making your to do list for the day. Remember, all successful people are list makers. They make a list before they start. Ideally they make a list the night before, then apply the following formula to each task. A items are the most important and they have serious consequences if you don't complete them. The word consequences is the key word to your success in life. Everything you do has a consequence of some kind and thinking about the likely consequences, positive or negative, before you begin is very, very important. Completing these tasks, the one that have ones that have great consequences, will increase the value that you bring to everything you do and help you earn more and be gifted with new responsibilities at work. B items A, B C D E B items are those you should do, but the consequences are not as great as A items. If possible, only start on your B tasks once all your A tasks are complete. The rule is never work on a B task if you have any A tasks left undone. Once you have all your A tasks completed, then start on your B tasks and start on your most important B tasks. C items are things that are nice to do, but they don't have any consequences at all. Nobody, nothing will matter if you do them or you don't do them. D tasks are those you should delegate to someone else and E tasks are tasks that you should eliminate altogether. This is where the power of no really comes in. Saying no to things that you don't need to be doing. Things that won't get you to your goals will move you closer to success much more quickly. Use the ABCDE method to help you identify what you should delegate, what you should stop doing, and what you should really be focusing on for ultimate success. I've had many people come up to me in my seminars and tell me that this simple ABCDE method made them rich. One person told me not long ago it made him a millionaire. The simple system of focusing only on the most important tasks, starting only with those tasks, and saying no to everything else, at least for the short term. The third tip for ultimate success is for you to say no to distractions. It will eliminate what they call the attraction of distraction. Distractions are an inevitable part of your day, whether it's a phone ringing, emails coming in, non stop, social media updates or interruptions from friends and co workers. Most people spend 50% of each working day dealing with distractions. Dealing with distractions can kill you and kill your success. It takes discipline to weed out emergencies to most of them are not and not let distractions deter you from the task at hand. A very wise man once said that the key to success is leave things off. Leave things off and if they're on, turn things off. Discipline lets you resist the lure of excuses. Self discipline enables you to vote yourself off the island. Self discipline enables you, like in the television program, to vote yourself off the island. It's the key to a great life, and without it, no lasting success is possible because you'll keep going back to things that are of low or no value. When it comes to self discipline, the best line of defense is often a good offense. Be proactive about minimizing distractions and learn how to handle them when they do come up. Turn off your notifications and schedule a specific time to read emails and text. What I find is if you recheck your emails three times a day, morning, midday, and the end of the day, and then turn it off and leave it off, you'll accomplish two and three and five times as much than if you constantly respond and react to your computer and your email. When working from home, post your schedule and let your family know when and when not to interrupt you. Close the door. Time is your most precious resource, and it's the one that people give away for free far too often. A survey of college students found that 64% of those who were conditioned to say I don't, I don't eat ice cream were able to say no to a distraction that led them away from their goal. In comparison, only 39% of the students who said I can't, I can't eat ice cream were able to resist temptation. Fourth, say no to work that is below your pay grade. Ask yourself, how much do you earn per hour? Take the number 2000 and divide it by your annual income. That is the hourly rate that you earn. Then ask yourself, when you think of doing anything, does this pay you your desired hourly rate? Making coffee? Checking the newspaper? Chatting with your friends? Ask yourself, would you pay someone else your hourly income rate to do what you're doing with this other person? If the answer is no, just say no and stop doing it. Saying no means passing on tasks that are not on your A list and delegating them to others. If you can outsource or delegate a task that people charge $20 an hour to do, so you can focus on a task that makes you hundreds of dollars per hour. Then you absolutely need to delegate that task. Start making a list. Which tasks should you delegate that impact your business or career? Start with those that fall into these categories. Tasks that take up a lot of your time but don't move your business or your income or your career forward. Routine and administrative tasks that don't require your skill set. Repetitive tasks that someone else can learn to do. Tasks you're not very good at, which take too long and give you too little return. Tasks that help others develop their talents and interests. Once taught properly, delegate or delete as many unimportant tasks as possible. And focus as much of your time as possible only on the tasks that generate the biggest return on your investment of time and labor. Finally, to be successful, say yes to A level tasks. Say yes to those A level tasks and develop a reputation for being someone who can dependably tackle important tasks. This, above all is the key to your ultimate success. Perhaps one of the most important factors in your success is your reputation. And what you want to do is you want to get a reputation for starting and completing important tasks quickly. That basically summarizes the success formula for your career. Start and complete important tasks tasks quickly and well, purposefully. Focus on those things that will give you the most results and say no to the rest whenever possible. And don't forget to dream big and set lofty, powerful goals. Great success and achievement always starts with big dreams. And once you allow yourself to dream big, your confidence grows and you can start mapping out the course that will bring your dreams to reality. So to help you get started and stay on track, please download my free personal development Plan template. It's on my website and it's completely free. It'll help you develop your goals, identify those A level tasks, and use that single best word, no to get get you where you want to be. Yesterday I was going through my material on the Internet and I found an interview with Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett has been one of the richest men in the world for many years. He started off in a small town in Nebraska and he started working and investing for himself and then for others. And today he's worth almost a hundred billion dollars. Warren Buffett reads five hours a day, but he doesn't spend a single minute doing anything that does not contribute the ultimate amount of value to him. So what would you do? If you want to be financially independent, just say no. Just say no to everything and anything that are not those few tasks at any moment that bring you closer and to your most important goals. Now. I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is this. How can saying no help you in your career and business? Remember, the bigger reason you have for it, the more likely it is that you will use it. 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 that it was valuable in teaching you about success, share it with your friends or anyone else who might benefit from this information. For more resources on success, visit my website@briantracy.com thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, you take action and take action now.