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Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals (Paperback)
by Brian Tracy
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Time management, Productivity, Self improvement, Personal success |
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Join the 2 million business leaders who have listened to Brian Tracy talk. Focal Point is his latest guide to help you take control of your life. |
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Author: Brian Tracy
Publisher: Time management, Productivity, Self improvement, Personal success
Pub. in: October, 2004
ISBN: 0814472788
Pages: 224
Measurements: 9 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00107
Other information: Reprint edition
ISBN-13: 978-0814472781
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- Awards & Credential -
Brian Tracy is one of the world's top business speakers and a master peak performance coach. |
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Personal development, in years past, has been a primary interest among people of all ages. We don't hear as much about the topic today as we used to. Nevertheless, the need is still present... perhaps even more than ever before. With so many people today focused on their computers, some have forgotten about the fine art of balanced personal growth.
Brian Tracy is a master in the field of personal and professional development. His speeches, seminars, and consulting around the globe have contributed to Tracy's reputation. He is highly respected and quite influential, particularly among the thousands who attend his presentations each year. As Tracy lived his life, then taught others his system, his approach was continually refined. In Focal Point, it all comes together for anyone who reads the book.
Focal Point explains how users of this tool (you'll do more than just read the words in this book to get its powerful total value) can unlock their full potential. At the same time, using the system will enable you to double your productivity and simplify your life. Of course, this sounds like the makings of a fine motivational speech; Tracy is a motivator. But, this book invests most of its pages in the how-to.
The chapters are filled with the knowledge of the sages in this field. Many teachings will sound familiar-good! In Focal Point, all that advice is pulled together into one place, one system to learn and apply. A listing of the chapter headings will reveal what you will explore in these pages: Tap Your Most Precious Resource, Practice Personal Strategic Planning, Supercharge Your Business and Career, Improve Your Family and Personal Life, Achieve Financial Independence, Enjoy Superb Health and Fitness, Become Everything You Are Capable of Becoming, Make a Difference in Your Community, and Spiritual Development and Inner Peace. Note that these are how-to chapters, filled with things like "Six Steps to Doubling Your Income and Doubling Your Time Off" and "Seven Keys to Higher Productivity." Each chapter includes challenging questions to help you see where you still have some work to do.
Tracy's Focal Point process consists of seven steps to be applied in each area of concern:
Values, vision, goals, knowledge and skills, habits, daily activities, and actions. The whole valuable system is explained so you can use the book as a tool to make a substantial difference in yourself, your success, and your personal satisfaction. The book concludes with a chapter on Seven Lessons for the Twenty-First Century, a List of Values, a Recommended Reading list, and an index.
If you want to strengthen your life, your effectiveness, and your happiness, you'll discover a great friend in Focal Point. And you'll probably recommend it to your friends. It's just that kind of a book: it bothers you, makes you uncomfortable, but shows you how to make the improvements you want to need and desire. Go for it!
(From quoting Roger Herman, USA)
Target readers:
Anyone who desires to take full control of his/her life read read Brian Tracy.
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Brian Tracy (Solana Beach, CA) is one of America's top business speakers and a leading consultant on personal and professional development. A bestselling author, his books include Time Power; Focal Point Victory! TurboStrategy; Goals; Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life; and Eat That Frog.
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From Publisher
The Wall Street Journal business bestseller with over 50,000 copies sold! The true secret of high achievers is that they know how to find their "focal point" - the one thing they should do, at any given moment, to get the best possible results in each area of their lives. In Focal Point, Tracy brings together the very best ideas on personal management into a simple, easy-to-use plan.
Focal Point helps readers analyze their lives in seven key areas and shows them how to develop focused goals and plans in each. Finally in paperback, this best-selling guide provides timeless truths that have been discovered by the most effective people throughout the ages, answering questions like:
- "How can I get control of my time and my life?"
- "How can I achieve maximum career success and still balance my personal life?"
- "How can I accelerate the achievement of all my goals?"
Focal Point shows readers how to develop absolute clarity about what they want, and how they can achieve supreme satisfaction, both personally and professsionally.
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Chapter One
Supercharge Your Business and Career
You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be. - Robert Collier
Once upon a time, people grew up, got a job, and worked at it for the rest of their lives with little variation. But those days are gone forever.
According to the experts, a person starting work today will have, on average, fourteen full-time jobs lasting two years or more and five careers in completely different fields or industries. According to a study cited in Fortune magazine not too long ago, 42 percent of the workforce is made up of "free agents." These are contingency workers who will move from company to company throughout their careers.
Each year, more than 1 million new businesses start up in the United States. These are in addition to the more than 20 million businesses that already exist. On top of that, hundreds of thousands of new partnerships, joint ventures, and sole proprietorships are formed each year. Tens of thousands of new products, processes, and services are introduced into an already crowded marketplace. Millions of people move up, down, or sideways in their jobs, companies, or careers. The rate of change, growth, and expanding opportunity has never been greater and, if anything, it is getting better every year.
Here are three predictions for you: First, there will be more changes in your field, whatever it is, in the year ahead than ever before. Second, there will be more competition in your field than ever before. And third, there will be more opportunities in your field than ever before, but they will be different from those of today and in different areas than you expect or anticipate.
As many as 72 percent of people working today will be in a different job within the next two years as a result of the incredible speed of change, increase in competition, and explosion of opportunity. As many as 50 percent of working people today are in the first year of their current jobs. Whatever you are doing, your job responsibilities and outputs probably have changed dramatically in the last few months, and they will continue to change.
Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel Corporation, wrote recently that one of the most profound changes of the last decade is that each person today is now the architect of his or her own career. You can no longer rely on a corporation to take care of you and accept responsibility for your long-term success in your work life. You must think and act for yourself.
As mentioned in Chapter One, you are the president of your own personal services corporation. You are always self-employed, no matter who signs your paycheck. The biggest mistake you can ever make is to ever think that you work for anyone but yourself. The key to your success in whatever you do is to see yourself as an independent agent. You must continually look for ways to add value, every single day. You are responsible.
A sense of control is the key to a positive mental attitude and a feeling of personal power. When you accept complete responsibility for your life, you take control of your destiny and you feel terrific about yourself. You feel stronger, more confident, and more powerful. You become a master of circumstances rather than merely a victim of circumstances.
Your primary responsibility to yourself is to design your future the way you want it to be. Clarity is essential. The very act of becoming clear about what you want and what you have to do to get it dramatically increases the likelihood that you will realize your goals exactly as you imagined and on schedule.
The Focal Point Process helps you to identify exactly what is most important to you. It helps you identify what you need to do to achieve your most important goals. It enables you to determine the steps you have to take to get from wherever you are to wherever you want to go.
Determine Your Business and Career Values
The starting point of business success for both individuals and organizations lies in value clarification. Value clarification is an exercise that enables you to determine what principles are important to you and in what order. You then build your career on the foundation of these values.
People are happiest and most fulfilled when their lives are consistent with their highest values and their innermost convictions. High-performing people are clear about what they believe and stand for, and they don't deviate from these values.
Unhappy, underachieving people are often fuzzy or confused about their values, and they compromise them regularly.
You live from the inside out. The core of your being is composed of your deepest beliefs about what is right and good in the human condition. Your values determine your emotions, your motivations, and your responses to the world around you. Your values determine the kind of people you like, love, are attracted to, and enjoy working and living with. Your values determine the activities you most enjoy and what sort of work you will excel at.
You identify most strongly with people whose values are consistent with your own. You fall in love with a person who has the same values you do. You enjoy working for a company and with people who share your values. When you see your values upheld in the world around you, you feel happy and satisfied. When your values are violated, you feel angry and frustrated.
Stress and unhappiness arise when you compromise your values in some part of your life. Most relationship problems revolve around a conflict of values. Happiness in relationships is the result of two or more people sharing the same values in the same order of importance. You can resolve most of your problems by returning to the values that are most important to you.
Your values are organized in a hierarchy. You have values that are higher than some and lower than others. You have a primary value, a secondary value, a tertiary value, and so on.
You demonstrate your values in your behaviors. It is not what you say but what you do that shows you and the world around you what you truly believe. A person cannot do one thing on the outside and be someone else on the inside.
You will always sacrifice a lower-order value in favor of a higher-order value when you are forced to choose between them. When you are under pressure, you reveal your true character. When you are under pressure, you will choose the value that is dearest to you. You demonstrate who you are on the inside when you are forced to make a choice on the outside.
For example, imagine two people with the same three values. These values are family, health, and career success. However, John's order of values is different from Jim's. John's primary value is his family. After his family comes his health, and after his health comes career success.
Jim has the same three values but in a different order. Jim values career success first, family second, and health third.
Is there a difference between John and Jim? Is there a small difference or a large difference? Which of the two people would you prefer to have as a friend? If you met the two people at a social occasion, would you be able to tell which person was which on the basis of their conversation and behavior?
The answer is clear. A person's choice of values determines his or her character and personality. In general, it determines his or her priorities and choices. It dictates his or her conversation and interests. A person's values determine what he or she will do and won't do. The order of a person's values is the critical factor in shaping his or her destiny.
Values are reflected in how people behave when they are forced to choose. Anyone can express high and noble values when nothing is at stake. But when there is a price to pay, a sacrifice to make, a discipline to adhere to, people reveal their true selves and their true beliefs.
Of course, as discussed in Chapter Two, tasks that are both urgent and important take highest priority. For example, a man who values his family above his career might choose to miss a family dinner if a very important meeting comes up; a woman who values her career above her health might take time off to deal with a pressing medical problem. Their values have not changed, but their actions reflect both the urgency and the importance of events in their lives.
You develop your values early in life as the result of the influences around you. If you grow up with good role models, you will develop life-enhancing values that help you to become a successful, happy person. If you grow up with no role models or receive no guidance in values, you can reach maturity and have little or nothing that you believe in or stand for.
Sometimes your values are called your organizing principles. These are the standards you use to judge your behavior and the behavior of others. These are the rules you follow when you make decisions. When you are clear about your values and their order of priority, you find it much easier to make decisions in the critical moments of your life.
One of my clients was a large conglomerate that was developing a telecommunications division. The first thing they did was to spend several weeks discussing their values and developing their mission statement for this new division. Once they had defined their values, they agreed on the meaning of those values and how those values would be used to guide behavior.
Whenever the managers or executives of the company had a question or a problem, they took out a laminated card describing their values and discussed the problem with the card in hand. They asked each other, "Based on this value, how should we handle this situation?" They then went through their values, using these definitions as the basis for discussion and decision making.
Interestingly enough, the company started with an idea and some seed capital in a highly competitive industry and became a great commercial success. The company continues to grow and is highly profitable. Everyone in the company knows and lives by the values. Everyone who works in the company is happy, enthusiastic, and highly motivated. Values make the difference.
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| View all 6 comments |
Mathew Lee (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Although Someone who has listened or read many of Brians materials might feel that it tends to become monotinous, I think Focal Point has actually condensed down a lot of Brian's information. Just like Brian Likes to quote the 20/80 rule, and how 80% of one's effectiveness will comes from 20% of their Efforts, this book is close to encompassing 80% of the ideas and principles that Brian Tracy is famous for presenting. At least in this book you will have a condensed version- Only 209 Pages. Althought this book is not that long, in order to really digest it, you will have to invest time in doing the Exercises. If I had never read any of Brian's Materials, I would read this first, and then select more based on my interest in specific areas, like Management, Sales, and Financial Independence. I feel I have always liked his Sales stuff the best. Focal Point is key in helping get the balance, and maintain the balance in your life by sharpening your goals and values in the areas of Business&Career, Family& Personal, Financial, Health& Fitness, Personal Development, Community Involvement, and Spiritual development. This balance is key to overall Peak Success. |
Reggie Mitchell (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Focal Point really changed my life and is a book I follow religiously. Brian Tracy tells you how to increase your work production, and at the same time he is giving you tools that will help you in your work and personal life. After reading Focal Point my production increased and I am now a Top Producer in my organization. This book is so special to me that I have recommended it to co-workers and friends. This is one book that I carry in my briefcase for reference at all times when I need some advice in my personal or work life. If you retain 10% of the information in this book you will see changes in your life.
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R. Shaff (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Brian Tracy is one of the premier motivational/professional development speakers in the U.S. today. He has written several books and given hundreds of seminars (and continues to do so) on the subject(s). Focal Point is his latest offering; a self-proclaimed process previously available only to his private clients who "unhesitatingly" paid thousands of dollars for his private coaching. While I have no doubt about this fact (that clients have paid thousands of dollars), this represents a bit of unnecessary commercial hype. Regardless, Mr. Tracy's reputation and knowledge base command attention.
The Focal Point Process is simplistically defined as self-analysis (introspection) of the actions/areas generating the best results in various aspects of one's life and those actions/areas consuming inordinate amounts of one's time yet generating moderate-to-poor results. After this bit of introspection, Tracy informs the reader to apply "Zero-based Thinking" to each activity: "Knowing what I know now, if I were not doing this now, would I start it up again today?" In other words, even though I perform this task/duty periodically, if I had the choice to start again, would I continue to perform this task/duty? This type of conceptual thinking is truly the poignant theme within the book and, in my opinion, germane and applicable to most.
Tracy leaks in more commercial tripe with the lead-in, "Double your income, double your time off" on page 9. This "claim" is based on the well-publicized yet empirically correct 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule stipulates that one spends 80% of one's time generating 20% of one's results while 20% of one's time is spent generating 80% of one's results. With a few general exceptions, this rule is accurate, particularly to one's professional life. Tracy then takes this concept a step further and says if one were to "concentrate" on the 20% activities and eliminate the 80% activities, one will have the capability to "double your income, double your time off." Not an altogether dismissive thought yet, once again, commercial.
The meat of Focal Point is then spent on identifying the various Focal Points ("X" marks the spot is his mantra) in the reader's life, illustrating the concept of Zero-based Thinking to each area and finally proposing application of the 80/20 rule to each. While this is repetitive in nature, it is a reasonable roadmap to develop a personal/professional foundation for future achievement. In many ways, Tracy takes our current day modeling guru, Anthony Robbins, to task by implying that success can be achieved through self-analysis and introspection and modeling the 20% tasks (as opposed to Robbins' theory of modeling other successful individuals). This is a solid concept.
On page 199, Tracy reaches the finality of his coaching by providing the reader with his "Seven Lessons for the 21st Century" as follows [paraphrasing]:
1. Life gets better when you get better,
2. Where you've been doesn't matter; only where you're going,
3. One must fail to succeed,
4. Freedom comes through development of options,
5. See the good out of every problem or difficulty (i.e. learn the lesson),
6. You can learn anything you need for success through proper goal-setting, and
7. The only limits to success are within your mind.
These "lessons" do not cover any new ground in personal/professional development theory. However, Tracy does provide the reader with a backdrop for practical application and, ultimately, realization of one's goals. A fitting summarization to the book's message.
For anyone new to personal/professional development theory, this is an outstanding book for gleaning conceptual foundations. My only warning is don't expect the "Double your..." theory to come to fruition without much trial-and-error. For those learned in the theories, it is a reasonable refresher and provides a new spin for condensed introspection.
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Greg Hopkins (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Mr. Tracy first got my attention with Maximum Achievement. Focal Point is outstanding! Yeah, some will say this stuff is repetitive or found in other sources. However, I assure you this information is the very best for getting your life on track. I do need to read repetive information. As I have repeated my mistakes so many times, so must I relace those habits with great material over and over again. Mr. Tracy is a brilliant writer who will hold you, excite you, motivate you, and guide you with his fresh approach to this material. It's all here, in one book.
If you have even the slightest desire for something better in your life, then get this book.
Of all the success authors and speakers out there Brian Tracy has helped me the most and stayed the test of time! He may not be a "household name" in your home, but he is in mine!
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