The Recipe For An Amazing Life

I love Jim Rohn. In addition to being an incredible inspiration, he was like America’s grandfather. I’m sitting on my couch on this Saturday night relaxing, browsing through YouTube videos on my TV, and I came across this video of his.

At first glance, I thought it was going be along the lines of Gary Keller’s credo in regards to focusing on “one thing” in your career, but it turned out to be a lot more than that.

I highly recommend you listen to it, but I took some notes on it and added some of my own interpretations to better internalize the takeaways. I hope they help you do the same.

Major Time & Minor Time

What activities matter most? You did 1,000 things today, but which ones actually mattered?

How much time did you spend doing the things that bring the most results? If you’re in sales, how long were you in front of prospects? In engineering, how long were you actually coding?

Spend more time on the major things that matter, save the minor things for later.

Don’t major in minor things, major in major things.

Don’t Mistake Movement For Achievement

Its not the busyness that matters, its the productivity.

Nowadays, everyone is busy, but many are not productive. Go into any office and you’ll see people on the phone, shuffling papers, in meetings, talking business jargon…everyone is busy. But busyness is not productivity, busyness is busyness.

Busyness is the consumption of time through activity, productivity is moving things forward toward a desired endpoint.

You can be busy by being productive, but you can’t be productive by being busy.

Learn to discern the difference between the two. It comes down to discerning the necessary from the unnecessary:

Take severals step back from the painting that is your life. View it from across the room and do it often. Make sure everything you are doing up close with your brush is moving you towards the picture you truly want to create.

We have to remind ourselves daily of what we’re focused on because our attention is so easy to divide. Between work, friends, activities, emails, texts, personal interests, and house work, its so easy to veer from the lines we’ve drawn for our future.

Which leads to the next point…

Be Alert To What Steals Your Time

Time is like capital. You wouldn’t let people steal your capital, don’t let people steal your time. You must spend it more wisely than capital because you can’t make time back.

Beware of Phones & Other Communication Systems

Let all communication systems serve you, don’t serve your communication systems. Don’t let them intrude. When you are with your friends, be with your friends, not on social media. When you are at dinner, enjoy your food and focus on your company, not how many likes the photo of your food is getting on Instagram.

Concentrate On The Situation At Hand

Think about about work at work, think about the beach at the beach. Don’t think about the office at the beach and the beach at the office. Both will be still be there, concentrate on what’s in front of you right now.

Be present in your awareness. When you are somewhere, don’t be elsewhere.

Take Work Seriously

Not grim, not unhappy, but seriously. When you’re at work, work. When you’re at play, play. But don’t play when you’re at work. You’re trading a piece of your life for the work you do, make it count for something.

Works deserves the utmost conservative passion.

All Work Is Good

You may not like your job, but if it’s the stepping stone to get you where you want to go, then you have to appreciate your job.

You don’t have to have a passion for your job, instead be passionate for success in every department of your life. No job is menial. Every job contributes to society in a meaningful way. Remember that’s what you’re doing it for.

Learn To Ask Important Questions Up Front

How often have you spoken to someone at length or gone back and forth on a deal, only to find out if you just asked a few key questions up front, you could’ve saved all that time?

Learn to be direct, qualify people quickly, and determine the best use of your time by getting the key information immediately.

Learn To Think On Paper

Solving problems, setting goals, journaling, blogging…learn to spew your thoughts on paper so that you can see them in a pile in front of you.

Directed action comes from directed thought, and usually our stream of conscious thought isn’t nearly as directed as it could be. Put it on paper, collect good ideas, straighten them out, then act on them.

Focus On What You Want, Not On What You Don’t Want

Shift your thinking to focus on how to move towards the things you want, rather than away from the things you don’t want.

Focus on how you can achieve, rather than how you can avoid, because by achieving you will naturally avoid, but by avoiding you won’t naturally achieve.

Learn To Say No

In regards to achieving your goals, there are a fixed amount of things for you to focus on that can move you towards your goals, but there are an infinite amount of things to distract you away from them.

Having both the time and the energy to focus on the activities that matter for goals relies more on our ability to say ‘no’ to most opportunities rather than ‘yes’.

The More You Chase Success, The More It Will Elude You

In business, when you try too hard to achieve, you look impatient. In dating, when you chase too hard, you look desperate. With people, when you try too hard to be liked, you usually achieve the opposite.

When you chase the end result, it will always elude you.

Instead of chasing the result, chase the process. Focus on developing the skills you need to succeed and people will naturally want to work with you.

Focus on having an interesting life and people will naturally become attracted to you.

Focus on liking people rather than being liked, and they will naturally gravitate towards you.

Focus on the process and you will magnetize success towards you.

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