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Summary

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Ask people how they did it
Intro
Ask successful people what they did
that made them successful and do the
same to get the same results.
Your “frog” is the task that can have
the most significant impact on your
life.
To avoid procrastination, always eat
the biggest frog first. Make it a habit.

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1. Set the table: Clearly written goals increase
the drive to achieve them!
1) Clarity: Decide exactly what your goal is,
and the order of them
2) Write it down, think on paper, accomplish
5-10x more
3) Set deadlines and sub-deadlines to avoid
natural procrastination, make it urgent
4) List all the tasks for one goal
5) Make a sequential visual plan
6) Take action immediately
7) Do something every day to move forward
with your goal → it becomes a habit
Incentivize yourself

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2. Plan every day in advance: Work from a list.
When something new comes up, add it to the
list before you do it.
Daily List: Make a sequential & prioritized list
the night before; subconsciously, it prepares
for the next day. As you go through the day,
tick off items from the list as this motivates.
Master List: List for big life goals.
10/90 Rule: Spending 10% of the time for
planning will save you 90% of the time for
execution.
Plan to overcome short-term temptations

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3. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything: 20% of your
activities will account for 80% of your results.
Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20%:
out of 10 equally long tasks, often one, the frog, is
worth more than all others.
Resist cleaning up small tasks first, start with the
high impact task.
Motivate yourself by choosing the right sequence of
tasks aligned with your willpower.
Anticipation of accomplishing a high-value task can
motivate and help to overcome procrastination.
Achieving low-value tasks gives no energy.
Anything that is worth doing is worth doing
poorly!

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4. Consider the consequences to find your priorities.
Your most important tasks and priorities are those that
can have the most serious consequences, positive or
negative, on your life.
Rule: Long-term thinking improves short-term decision
making.
Build a sizable buffer of 20% or more to compensate
for unexpected delays. Make it a game of getting done
in advance of the deadline.
3 Questions:
What are my highest value activities?
What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a
real difference?
What is the most valuable use of my time right now?
Choose between the path of least resistance
and what you truly want

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5. Procrastinate purposely on low-value tasks
Start with the big task directly in the morning
and schedule small high-value tasks directly
after.
Say no to everything that is not high-value. Be
polite but distinct.
Cut down on low-value time-consuming
activities (e.g., TV, internet surfing). Instead,
concentrate on time with friends, play games,
have a drink, exercise, or something else that
enhances life quality.
Know your no

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6. ABCDE Method: Start with a list of everything you
have to do the next day.
Classify each item:
A = the most important task that you must do. If you
have more then one A you can write A-1, A-2, A-3, etc.
B = a task that you should do, which would have mild
consequences if you would not follow it.
Rule: never do a B task when there is an A task
undone.
C = nice to have, but without consequence, if canceled.
D = delegatable tasks. Rule: delegate everything that
anyone else can do so that you can free up more time
for A-tasks that only you can do.
E = tasks you can eliminate altogether, and it won’t
make any real difference.
Start on you’re A-1 task immediately and stay at it until
it’s done.
All you need is a strategy which works for you

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7. Focus on key result areas:
Why are you on the payroll? If you are not clear about
this, it is very hard for you to perform at your best. Find 5
key result areas where you can contribute the max to your
organization.
Give Yourself a Grade on your key areas on a scale of 1-
10. Rule: Your weakest key result area sets the height of
your performance. Identify your areas of weakness and
make a plan to solve them.
Question:
What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent
fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my
career?
Make it a habit of regularly analyzing your key areas and
discuss it with others.
Essentialism – Focus

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www.021.be
8. The law of three:
(1) Write A list of all the things you are doing.
(2) Ask yourself the question: If you could only do one thing on this list,
all day long, which one task would contribute the greatest value?
(3) Then ask what would be the 2nd and 3rd most valuable thing.
(4) Full 90% of the value that you contribute is contained in those three
tasks, whatever they are. Everything else is either a
support/complimentary task that could probably be delegated/
eliminated.
The Quick List Method:
(1) Write down in 30 sec. the 3 most important goals in your life.
Subconsciously it helps to do it in a short time.
(2) Grade yourself from 1 to 10 how you are doing in each of your goals.
(3) Find the 3 biggest in each field: career, family, relationship, financial,
personal/ professional development, social/ community, and
problems or concerns. Only give yourself a short time to answer the
questions.
The reason that you work more efficiently is that you can do whatever
brings your joy more of the time. There always needs to be a balance.
85% of your happiness in life will come from happy relationships with
other people and the amount of time that you spend face to face.
There always needs to be balance

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9. Prepare thoroughly before you begin:
One way to overcome procrastination is to have
everything ready, this will reduce the willpower needed
to get started and reduce noise by removing other
elements. You just focus on one task. Create a
Comfortable Work Space. Once you are prepared, get
started immediately.
Get it 80% right and then correct it later. The road to
success is often not blocked by a lack of ability or
opportunity but fears of failure and rejection. No matter
what the level of your ability, you have more potential
than you can ever develop in a lifetime.
Do the thing you fear:
(1) To develop the courage, act as if you already have it.
(2) Assume the body language of high performance.
Use your willpower wisely for what matters to you

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10. Take it one oil barrel at a time:
(1) Select any goal, task, or project in your
life where you have been
procrastinating and make a list of all the
steps you will need to take to complete
the task eventually.
(2) Then take just one step immediately.
Sometimes, all you need to do to get
started is to sit down and complete one
item on the list. And then do one more,
and so on.
Every step counts – Knowing is not being

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11. Upgrade your key skills:
(1) Become a lifelong student: E.g. read in
your field for one hour every day, take
seminars, workshops, listen to audio
programs.
Rule: Continuous learning is the minimum
requirement for success in any field.
(2) Identify the key skills which you need to
fulfill your most important task in life.
Make studying fun for life

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12. Leverage your special talents:
(1) Questions:
What am I really good at?
What do I enjoy the most about my work?
What has been most responsible for my
success in the past?
What would I do if I knew I could not fail?
(2) Develop a personal plan to prepare
yourself to do your most important tasks in
an excellent fashion. Focus on those areas
where you have special talents, and which
you most enjoy doing.
Follow your talent and purpose

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13. Identify your key constraints by asking yourself
questions such as “What is holding me back?”
(1) Find the constraint which is holding your back on your
most important task in life. Then focus all your energy to
remove the limiting factor. This will increase the speed of
achieving the task.
80/20 Rule @ Constraints: 80% of the constraints are
internal: your own personal qualities, abilities, habits,
disciplines... Or they are contained within your own
company or organization. Only 20% of the limiting factors
are external to you or to your organization in the form of
competition, markets, governments, organizations...
Your key constraint can be something small and not
particularly obvious, thus it requires that you make a list of
every step to find it.
Free yourself from limiting beliefs

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14. Put the pressure on yourself:
About 2% of people can work entirely without
supervision. We call these people “leaders”.
(1) Set Imaginary Deadlines: E.g., you have to
leave town for a month and work as if you
had to get all your major tasks completed.
Create your own “motivation/force
system”. E.g., positive motivation,
something nice in the evening or stickK.com
(2) Break down your projects into milestones
with a deadline each. Then race against your
own clock. Make it a game, and resolve to
win!
Imagination and motivation

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15. Maximize your personal powers by identifying your
periods of highest energy each day and structure your most
important tasks around these times.
Sleep: When you are fully rested, you can get 2-5 times
more done. Your productivity begins to decline after 8 or 9
hours of work. Working long hours into the night means
that you are usually producing less in more time.
Spare Day: Take at least one full day off every week. Refuse
to do anything that taxes your brain; instead, you can
exercise, spend time with your family/friends, go for a walk,
meditate, etc.
Physical Health: eat healthy + exercise about 200 min each
week = 30 min per day, build exercise into your daily
routine.
(1) Select one activity or behavior that you can change
immediately to improve your overall levels of energy.
Practice that one action until it becomes a habit and so on.
The power of sleep

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16. Motivate yourself into action:
(1) Control your thoughts: Most of our emotions are
determined by how we talk to ourselves. It is not
what happens to us, but the way we interpret it.
As Victor Frankl wrote “The last great freedom
of mankind is the freedom to choose your
attitude under any set of external conditions.”
To keep yourself motivated, you must become a
complete optimist. Their behaviors:
(1) Look for the good in every situation
(2) Seek valuable lessons from every setback
(3) Solution- and action-oriented, think about goals
and look forward. Visualize your future to
motivate yourself.
Find your why

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17. Get out of the technological time sinks:
(1) Create zones of silence: To stay calm and focused,
detach on a regular basis from technology/communication
devices. If your phone is not the most important task in
your life, do not check your phone first thing in the
morning, but work on the most important task.
80/20 Rule: Full 80% of the emails you receive are of no
value; they should be deleted immediately. Out of the
20%, only a minimal amount of 4% needs to be answered
quickly. Standardize/ delegate e.g., to an assistance.
Use technology as a servant, not a master.
Do we have to keep current with the news? If it is really
important, someone will tell you.
(2) Create one technology-free day in the week.
Control technology, to not be controlled by it

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18. Slice and dice the task
Salami Slice Method: You lay out the task in its
details and resolve it one slice at the time. Feeling
that you completed one slice will give you the
satisfaction to continue with another one.
Swiss Cheese Your Tasks: You resolve to work for a
specific time period on a task. This may be as little as
5 or 10 min, after which you will stop and do
something else. Once you start working, you
develop a sense of forward momentum and a
feeling of accomplishment.
Become action-oriented: A common trait of high-
performance people is that, when they hear a good
idea, they take action on it immediately.
Create forward momentum

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19. Create large chunks of time, e.g.
for tasks you do not like, or you want
to time limit, smartphone, emails,
book reading, social media
(1) Schedule time slots (eg., 10-11AM)
where you work on specific tasks.
During these pre-set time slots
(2) Eliminate all distractions e.g. the
smartphone.
Time is all we have

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20. Develop a sense of urgency to get
into the flow and take action
immediately.
Momentum Principle: although it may
take tremendous amounts of energy
to overcome inertia and get started
initially, it then takes far less energy to
keep going. The faster you move, the
more energy you have.
Avoid the trap of thinking you have something to
lose. We are already naked. Get into your flow.

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21. Single handle every task by
concentrating single-mindedly on your
most important mission, you can
reduce the time required to complete
it by 50% or more. The tendency to
start and stop a task can quadruple the
time necessary to complete it.
(1) Take action, work on your most
important task immediately.
(2) Try not to stop until you are
finished.
When we multitask what we really do is task-shifting