Robin Sharma argues concentration is the foundation of time management and mastery. He cites Edison on applying all your energy to a single problem incessantly, and Edwin Bliss on why concentration matters more than other time-management tricks. The core: focus on your top priorities and say no to everything else.
Hi, it's Robin Sharma, your success coach. Our session today is called Concentrate to Win. Time management expert Edwin Bliss wrote in his excellent book Getting Things Done. Of all of the principles of time management, none is more basic than concentration. In counseling people who are having serious time management problems, I find invariably that they are trying to do too many things simultaneously.
Valuable idea there. In my book Leadership Wisdom from the Monk who Sold His Ferrari. In the chapter on personal effectiveness, I quote the great inventor, one of my favorite people of all time, Thomas Edison, who was asked the secret of his extraordinary success. He thought about the question and then he replied, the ability to apply your physical and mental abilities to one problem incessantly, without growing weary. You do something all day long, don't you? He asks. Everyone does. If you get up at 7am and go to bed at 11pm You've put in 16 good hours, and it's certain that people have been doing something all that time. The only trouble, he says, is that they devote their time to a great many things, while I devote mine to only one. If they took the time in question and applied it to only one object, they would succeed.
So getting to professional and personal mastery requires concentration, focusing on your most intelligent priorities. Sticking to your knitting, saying a giant no to your most important yeses. Sa.
