Overcome Any Obstacle By Rich Schefren

Overcome Any Obstacle

By Rich Schefren

What if I told you that whatever is holding you back… whatever barriers are preventing you from increasing your income… whatever obstacles are keeping you from achieving financial success… can be overcome simply by thinking differently?

Now I know that this might not be what you are accustomed to hearing. But the fact is, you don’t need rah-rah rhetoric, secret strategies, quick-fix solutions, or incredibly complicated tactics you’ll never apply to get ahead.

What you need to see is that both the causes of and cures for your problems are found inside your mind.

Over the years, I’ve shared the following techniques with my private clients. And I’ve received mind-blowing reports of the business success they have stimulated. You, too, can use them to bust through the obstacles that are preventing you from achieving the success you want.

They are incredibly easy to incorporate into your daily routine. But their simplicity has nothing to do with their power. In fact, you may be surprised at how drastically these simple tools will impact your success.

Get ready to see the world and yourself differently. Pay close attention. And be prepared for the payoff.

Barrier Buster #1: Grade Your Performance

When you think about the big, important areas of your life – your business, your family, your health, etc. – you may find that you aren’t as successful as you want to be.

Perhaps there is an area of your life where you have gone off track. An area that is currently on the failure curve. An area where you just can’t seem to make progress.

You can turn this area of your life around completely and achieve incredible results… by simply remaining conscious of your behaviors.

This technique has been proven to work in many different ways. For example, tons of research shows that simply writing down everything you eat (as you’re eating) can help you eat less and eat healthier.

And one of the easiest ways to remain on the success curve is to issue yourself a performance grade, every day, for an important area of your life where you’ve headed in the wrong direction.

The best way to do this is to take a moment each night, right before you hit the sack, to give yourself a score from 1 to 10 on your performance that day in that area. If your grade is lower than you’d like, write out what you’ll do the next day to make certain you’ll give yourself a better score.

It really is as simple as that.

Barrier Buster #2: Identify Your Most Expensive Words

The costliest words you’ll ever utter are the excuses you use to rationalize not doing the things that must be done.

You might not be aware of them right now, because they may seem to be accurate and rational in the moment. But upon reflection, you’ll see them for what they really are: Excuses that allow you to stay inside your comfort zone.

Overcoming this success obstacle is easy. Simply keep a log of the excuses you use for not doing the things you know you ought to.
Over time, you’ll probably notice that there are a few excuses that you repeatedly use.

You will also realize that these words are keeping you from turning your dreams into reality. And once you see them for what they truly are, they’ll lose their power to impede your success.

Common excuses include things like these…

• I’m too tired to work on this right now. I’ll do it tomorrow when I feel better…
• Before I can start I need…
• It’s too important to get this right. I need to talk to ___ before I go further…
• I’ve done enough already today…

And so on…

Once you’ve identified your excuses, be skeptical of their truthfulness when they surface. Instead of letting them stop you, turn them into reasons to take immediate action to achieve the success you desire.

Barrier Buster #3: Use Micro-Goals to Create Instant Accountability

How many times have you planned out your day… and by day’s end hadn’t been anywhere near what you should have or could have gotten done?

This used to happen to me all the time. I’d write out some ambitious goal for the day in my journal. And then in the evening, I’d write how disappointed I was with myself for not staying on track – not doing what I’d promised myself.

It was usually because, at some point during the day, I’d develop goal amnesia. I’d get swept up in something else… and totally neglect what was truly my most important task.

This never happens to me anymore. And the method I used to get over it is so easy I know it’ll help you if you’re struggling with this problem.

I realized that the time between writing out my ambitious goal in the morning and beating myself up in the evening was too long.

If I simply compressed that time – and therefore the goal – I figured I wouldn’t run the risk of allowing myself to get off track.

So what I did was start writing one-paragraph entries into my journal every hour or two. I’d quickly recap what I’d accomplished since the last entry and what I was planning on completing before the next entry.

Let’s say you have to write a big report. To force yourself to stay on track, you might log journal entries at 6:00 a.m., 6:45 a.m., 8:55 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11:05 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 3:40 p.m., 5:45 p.m., 7:40 p.m., and 9:45 p.m. In each entry, you would write about the section of the report you have just completed, including the number of words you’ve written. Then you would write about the section you’ll work on next, including the number of words you will complete.

By simply working these three techniques into your daily routine, you will find that fewer obstacles stand in your path. I use all of them regularly, and I can almost guarantee that they will contribute significantly to your success.

By the way, practicing these techniques has an interesting side effect… Once you get into the habit, you’ll invent your own barrier-busting methods that will serve you even better than mine.

Trust me, you’ll see.

How to Get Better at Anything By Craig Ballantyne

How to Get Better at Anything

By Craig Ballantyne

I recently started meditating. As you can imagine, particularly if you've tried taking up this habit yourself, my first few attempts were painfully difficult. I wanted to quit. And in past attempts, I had. 

My first sincere effort at meditation occurred in the spring of 2006. At the time I was struggling with chronic anxiety issues. Every morning I woke up and felt like I was about to have a heart attack. In addition to Qi Gong, yoga, and tai chi, I tried meditation. The first few sessions brought me some limited relief, but despite my desperation I couldn't manage to stick to the practice.

I tried again in the summer of 2008. After experiencing minor flare-ups with my anxiety, I tried inventing my own form of meditation. It involved lying down on a yoga mat and doing deep breathing exercises. 

Shockingly, this approach, when applied at two o'clock in the afternoon not too long after lunch, causes you to fall asleep. Most civilizations refer to this as a siesta, not meditation. Again, I quit.

The years passed. Every few months I'd read about a leader, such as Steve Jobs, or Phil Jackson, using meditation, and I'd consider giving it another shot. But nothing was strong enough to move me to action.

A turning point in my attitude toward meditation came when Matt Smith and I acquired Early To Rise in July, 2011. This led to spending more time with Matt on work trips around the world, from Thailand to Nicaragua, and many days at his home in Denver.

That's where I learned that meditation is a non-negotiable daily habit for him, like my Daily Document review and early morning writing is for me. On many trips we would agree to meet for breakfast or a morning workout, but neither could commence until after I did my writing and he did his meditation. 

Hmmm, I thought, here's a guy that I respect who is committed to this simple act. What does he know that I don't?

I was one step closer to trying again. 

But still, it was not enough to garner my full commitment.

Finally, the tipping point was reached in late January of this year. While I no longer suffer from near crippling anxiety issues like I did in 2006, I often felt a gnawing discomfort in my chest when hurrying to finish tasks on a busy day. I would catch myself breathing from my upper chest, which only makes things worse. 

One day, while working on the ETR editorial calendar, I just happened to choose two essays for Early to Rise that mentioned the power of meditation. Later that afternoon I discovered that even the US Military was teaching meditation to their elite fighting forces. 

In addition, I had just given up on my "Wisdom" goal in the ETR Transformation Contest (I'll explain why I gave up on the original goal in a future essay). That left me needing to make a new "Wise" change in my life, one that really mattered to me. 

It was time to get serious about my commitment to meditation and take action, no matter how imperfect. 

As General Norman Schwarzkopf taught, "It is easier to correct motion going in the wrong direction than it is to get started." 

That's the big lesson here. 

You begin by committing. Then taking action. In the past, I had missed that first mental step. 

I wasted years of potential progress by delaying my commitment. But getting started, committing, and taking action is the first step in getting better at anything. We must stop dabbling, and get serious. That's how I created a new, positive habit in my life.

I committed.

My first morning was Monday, January 28th. I sat down on the floor, cross-legged, eyes closed, and forearms resting lightly on my legs.

The first two minutes were miserable. 

My mind was racing. I couldn't focus. My brain would not stop thinking about all the things I had to do or could be doing. And despite all my effort, I still wasn't breathing properly. 

But I persisted. Seven minutes passed, each better than the last. I began to calm down, even experiencing moments of almost pure stillness in mind and body. My breath came deep from my belly, diaphragmatic breathing, a proven way to reduce stress and anxiety.

Something had clicked. And it was all because of my commitment and the end of my dabbling.

Later that day I described my difficult experience to Matt. He has since become my teacher, offering valuable feedback as I engage in deliberate practice of this new commitment. Each day since has gotten better as I've corrected course with Matt's advice.

Today, I can sit for almost twenty minutes in a calm, meditative state. It still takes a few minutes for me to reduce the chaos in my cranium, to focus, and to get into a good breathing rhythm. And my monkey mind still chatters while I sit there. But each day there is improvement. My breathing is better. The anxiety that often bubbled up on busy days has quelled. I'm even becoming more patient when going about daily activities, something I've always struggled with.  

That is how you get better at anything - you stop dabbling and you start taking it serious. You pledge yourself to a craftsman-like approach of new skill development. 

You must commit. 

It's a mental shift. As soon as I made that decision, as soon I resolved to take meditation as serious as I take my reading, writing, exercise, and healthy eating, my progress accelerated because I accepted that I was willing to put in the time and sacrifice to improve.

This first step will work for you, too. 

It is possible to get better at anything. It might take a few false starts before things start to click, but if you persevere, you'll see improvement.

But wait, there's more.

Tomorrow, you'll receive a classic essay from Mark Ford that continues on this subject. He'll show you how to implement deliberate practice into your skill development system. It can make you healthy, wealthy, and wise. 

And when you do read it, remember the wise words of Epictetus. Progress does not come without a price. But valuable progress is worth the price to be paid. 

Getting out of your comfort zone - Playing Up a Level in Life By Craig Ballantyne

wenty-one years ago this month, one of my most significant accomplishments occurred. It happened on a soccer field, and it involved two of my best friends (still to this very day), along with eight other guys that have also been lifelong mates.

It was on a sunny September afternoon in my hometown of Stratford, Ontario, that we became the Southwest Ontario Regional Under-16 champions. It was a long journey to the top, one that spanned seven seasons and many, many losses. But it was one loss in particular that actually turned the tide and changed our mindset from losers to champions. More about that in a moment.

When we first started out, as a rag-tag group of misfits in the Under-10 division, we lost every game that season. We were the perennial Bad News Bears, traveling to larger cities on an old school bus and getting thumped 4-0, 6-0, even 9-0.

But each year we got a little better and our opponents scored on us a little less (especially when they stopped putting me in net). While we still lost, we actually started scoring a few goals of our own. Suddenly we began beating the mediocre teams in the league.

Each spring the same core group of boys from last fall would come together, one year older and closer to being the young men we would be on that Under-16 team. Our pre-season indoor training brought optimism and as each one of us improved, so did the others.

Finally, one year we made it to the second round of the playoffs. We were up against the city of Guelph, a perennial powerhouse and a team that we had never beaten. In fact, we considered it a moral victory when we held them to under three goals. That night, in that playoff game, the young boys that we once were played like the young men we had become.

We traded goals with them in the first half, played on a soggy pitch just outside the world famous Stratford Festival Theater. It was an odd place to have a soccer field, with the theater on one side and a river on the other. Every game was certain to be interrupted by an old couple taking a shortcut across the playing field or a ball getting lost in the river, and adopted by one of the local swans as one of their own.

In the second half, Guelph scored early, but we battled back to a 2-2 tie. Only minutes remained, and overtime – and penalty kicks – loomed. Alas, on nearly the final kick of the game, Guelph scored. They were relieved. In fact, looking at the two teams as the final whistle blew; you might even think that we were the victors.

We might have lost the game, but we won the battle. We had played up a level.

You see this in sports all the time. Perhaps your children have played an exhibition game against a team a year older than them and nearly won – or perhaps even achieved an upset. It happens in the pros and the Olympics too. Small countries, just 1/100th of the size of America, such as Lithuania, come within just a few points of beating the “Dream Team” headed by multi-million dollar superstars.

Why does this happen? And how can we take these lessons and put them to use in our lives?

The answer is to play up a level. You only do that by getting out of your comfort zone. In that game where your child played the older team, there were two perspectives out on the field or court that day.

First, there was the team that was taking the competition lightly – the older kids. “This will be so easy,” they thought, “I’m not even going to try.” But do you see what happens when this mindset is adopted? It’s a loser’s attitude and a no-win situation when you play down a level, because even if you do win, there’s nothing to be gained. There are no learning experiences when you don’t give yourself competition or surround yourself with people that push you to perform.

On the other hand, your youngsters on the underdog team enjoy a mix of sheer terror (look how big these guys are!) and excitement (just imagine if we can score on them first!). Each positive result from a great pass to an excellent block boosts their confidence. Each second that went by with the score tied at zero, or even in their favor was another notch on their belt.

Each tick on the clock changed their perception from “Can we do this?” to “We can do this” and finally to “We CAN do this!”

Your children grew up that day. Not physically, that takes years, but mentally. Giant leaps forward occur because their coach and mentors knew that only by taking the players out of their comfort zone could they see their true potential.

(When you’re done reading this essay, please send a big “Thank you” email to your child’s coach for doing this, if you haven’t already.)

Now back to your life. How can we incorporate this lesson into your career or into building your business?

The answer is simple. You must put yourself in situations where you have to play up a level. You must surround yourself with positive people that push you to your peak performance. You must volunteer when the boss offers up a terrifyingly difficult opportunity. You must raise your hand when the committee asks for volunteers to lead a group through a monumental task. You must book your plane ticket, register for the conference, and put yourself out there at the seminar and in the post-event networking opportunities.

You must, you must, you must play up a level any chance you get.

Surround yourself with the best. Build a better network of people that you spend the most time with. Increase your average. Find opportunities that challenge you, terrify you, and bring out the best in you.

That night, after our season ending loss to Guelph, eleven young men left the field as different people. The boys that walked on ninety minutes earlier were nowhere to be found. That feeling never left us over the winter and when it came time for indoor practice, there was a sense of purpose and potential like never before.

As the next season began, each week our confidence grew. We beat Kitchener, a team of untouchables that averaged seven goals against us for many years. We split a home-and-home series with Cambridge, the team we would eventually meet in the finals. And yes, we even beat Guelph.

Those teams had taught us too many lessons over the years. The students had become the masters. And then, on one sunny Saturday afternoon, just a few miles from where I write to you today, we left the field as champions. That was a feeling that you could never take away from us, and a lesson that will never be forgotten.

Find your opportunity to play at a higher level. Get out of your comfort zone, and seek to be pushed to that potential you are capable of achieving. It’s the only way to know what truly resides inside of you

Practice Makes Perfect By Mark Ford (1000 hours to competence, 5k to mastery)

Practice Makes Perfect

By Mark Ford

Several years ago, Renato, one of my jiujitsu instructors, convinced me to get back into grappling in a kimono. "It will be hard at first," he told me. "But after a few months, when you go back to fighting without the gi, your game will be better." 

[A gi is a lightweight two-piece white garment worn in judo and other martial arts. A gi typically consists of loose-fitting pants and a jacket that is closed with a cloth belt.] 

He was right. During that first month of training, I felt like a white belt again. He was slapping arm bars, foot locks, and collar chokes at the rate of one per minute. It was downright depressing.

But I knew from experience that if I kept on practicing, I'd get better. And I did. Shortly thereafter, I increased my training from two to three times per week. Nowadays, I practice five or six days out of seven when I'm not traveling, which means I get in an average of 15 hours of practice per month, or about 15 sessions per month--270 per year.

I have no great natural talent for submission wrestling, but at 62, I keep improving. I got my brown belt two years ago, and my main instructor, Marcel, tells me that he's going to give me a black belt this year.

Incidentally, getting belts in Brazilian jiujitsu (BJJ)--at least, the way it has been done traditionally--is not like most martial arts in which belts are essentially sold (awarded to students who take X number of lessons and can perform some moves). To get a brown belt in BJJ, I had to win two national championships at the "expert" level. To get my black belt, I'll have to perform well at a competition in Brazil.

Making yourself a better wrestler is no tougher than improving your foreign language skills. You must set specific goals, put in the time to practice, and practice well. I believe that there is almost nothing you can't accomplish as long as you are willing to follow those three simple rules.

Long before Malcolm Gladwell wrote Outliers, I made this case to my readers. I hypothesized that it takes about the same amount of time to improve in any complex skill: 1,000 hours to gain competence and 5,000 hours to gain mastery. I also said you could probably discount that time by as much as half if you practiced consciously under the instruction of a great teacher.

I've been thinking about this because of some of the letters I've received from Palm Beach Letter subscribers. I'm speaking about letters from people who complain they don't have the capacity or the time to learn about some of the wealth-building programs we recommend. Most of our subscribers understand how to buy and sell stocks, but some have trouble understanding how to trade options or invest in real estate or collectibles.

I'm writing this essay today to you if you have had such doubts. I want to convince you that no matter your education, experience, or age, you can learn and even master every kind of wealth-building activity we recommend.

It will take effort. It will take time. But it can be done--and without stress or strain.

K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, has studied the subject of "expert performance" for pretty much his entire professional life. More than 30 years ago, he performed an experiment in which he trained people to hear and repeat series of numbers.

Untaught subjects were able to remember about seven digits in a row. After 20 hours of training, their memories had improved to the point where they could remember a 20-digit sequence. After 200 hours of training, they could remember a sequence of more than 80 numbers.

Later experiments in this area led Ericsson to conclude that whatever innate capacity a person might have for remembering is nothing, compared with how much he can learn by practice.

The bottom line: "Talent is highly overrated." All of Ericsson's research and findings have been put together in an 800-page book called The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.

Do what you want to do, Ericsson advises. Even if that means pursuing something for which you have no evident talent. "A lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they were born with," Ericsson told The New York Times. "But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it." 

That doesn't mean all people have equal potential. Some people--like my neighbor's child (who is singing opera at age nine) or Renato--seem to be "hardwired" at birth with a facility for certain skills.

But in order to realize their potential, they will have to put in many hours of practice. And if they don't, someone who has no natural talent can easily surpass them. 

That's one of the important messages in Ericsson's book: Anyone can learn to be good at pretty much anything as long as he has the time and tenacity to practice doing it.

Of course, it can't be just any sort of practice, Ericsson warns. It must be what he calls "deliberate practice." 

Deliberate practice involves more than repeating a specific task. 

To achieve the kind of expert performance we're talking about: 

1. You have to set specific goals.
2. You have to get instruction from an expert teacher.
3. You have to concentrate on technique as outcome.

As I said, this confirms what I've been saying for years.

1. Setting specific goals

The more specific your goal is, the more likely you will be to achieve it. In The Success Principles, author Jack Canfield explains how to set ultra-specific goals:

• Instead of "I want a new oceanfront house," say, "I'll own a 4,000-square-foot house in Malibu, Calif., by April 30, 2014." 
• Instead of "I'm desperate to lose some weight," say, "I'll weigh 185 pounds by 5 p.m. on Jan. 1, 2014."
• Instead of "I need to treat my employees better," say, "I will acknowledge at least six employees for their contributions to the department by 5 p.m. this Friday."

2. Getting instruction from an expert teacher 

Not only must an expert teacher be an expert in the subject he is teaching but he must also be an expert in teaching you. I have learned from experience that not every jiujitsu black belt can help me make progress. 

Some know the game but don't know how to explain it. Others are good at teaching younger people but don't have the patience for someone my age. If you want to accelerate your learning in any field or endeavor, make sure that you have a teacher who works well with you.

Expert teachers help you in two ways: They chart a course of instruction for you to follow, they correct you every time you veer off course, and they pretty much force you to keep track of your progress.

As I said earlier, getting expert help will shorten your learning curve dramatically and thus significantly reduce the time (and sometimes money) you have to invest in it. It will also greatly reduce the frustration that comes with learning anything new--and that might keep you from giving up.

The very best athletes, entertainers, and business leaders all have someone in their corner whom they can go to for advice, leadership, and teaching. It stands to reason that if you want to achieve your wealth-building goals sooner, rather than later, you should select an expert teacher who works well with you.

And who might that be? We hope it is The Palm Beach Letter team. If you like our approach to investing and wealth building and feel you can trust us, do. Listen carefully to what we say.

3. Concentrating on technique as outcome 

This is a subtle qualification. What it means is that in practicing a skill, you should concentrate on the correct execution of that skill and not so much on the rewards you will enjoy once the skill is fully mastered.

In other words, the reward for accomplishing any specific technique should be the psychological satisfaction of knowing that you've mastered it.

This approach makes sense. It is, more or less, how behavior modification specialists work. Here's an anecdote about "The Jazz Master's Secret." 

The jazz master was blues guitarist Howard Roberts, who claimed that the secret of his virtuosity was to "never practice a mistake." His theory was that any learning is the biological process of creating neural networks in the brain. 

Every perfect repetition beats a good path--one that you can travel on later. Every incorrect repetition beats a parallel but incorrect path--one that you can easily slide onto if you aren't careful. 

The more you practice the right moves, the deeper the memory path. The trick is to make the correct paths as deep as possible and the incorrect paths shallow or nonexistent.

Concentrate on What Counts By Craig Ballantyne

Concentrate on What Counts

By Craig Ballantyne

Recently one of my good friends, Bob, experienced a family emergency. Like many ETR readers, he is now responsible for the medical care of a parent, while still having the responsibilities that go along with trying to grow a business. 

Perhaps you are facing a similar dilemma of priorities in life. Hopefully it's one of greater joy. Maybe you have welcomed a newborn at the same time as earning a new promotion at work. Or you might simply be trying to hold on to your current position while being saddled with more work as the company cuts back.

Whatever your situation, it can be made better with three simple steps. 

Let me give you the same advice I gave to Bob. 

Now that his family emergency is over and the situation has stabilized, Bob must begin integrating his new caretaker role with his current responsibilities. To do this, he needs to plan his work day better than ever. This all starts with a review of what he does on a daily basis, combined with a renewed focus on what really matters.

That's the big lesson we can all take from this situation.

You Must Concentrate on What Counts

Bob, like many of us, has taken on too many projects in the last few months. To be harsh, the majority of his daily tasks simply don't matter. He should not be doing them. They do not move the needle in his business in a significant way. But like you and me, Bob has gotten caught up in the minutiae of daily work. He is doing many things that should be delegated to his team members that have more time for these tasks and are better skilled to handle them.

Yet he's reluctant to change. Bob is hardwired to hold on to these tasks. You probably act the same way. 

Are you doing $10 an hour tasks when your goal is to make $100,000 a year?

If you are, then I encourage you to quickly do the math. You can't make that kind of money annually working for so little daily.  Something's got to give.

I'll admit I'm also guilty as charged. As I was helping Bob identify the critical few tasks that he needed to focus on in his limited time each day, I found that I was also sweating too much of the small stuff.

My main goal each day is to produce excellent content. My writing time is sacred to me. Or at least it should be. However, as I helped Bob remove the small stuff from his plate, I realized that my own plate was crowded with too many appetizers and not enough meat.

Focus Starts with Awareness

After doing a time journal for an average day, I realized that was barely writing for a full hour. Worse, instead of carving out more writing time, I was wasting my precious time formatting the finished articles on websites.

What was I thinking? This needed to stop.

The reason I kept on doing this was because I felt that it only required a few minutes to format the blog post. Worse, I felt "bad" asking one of my team members to do this for me. That's a classic self-limiting belief that many entrepreneurs have, including Bob.

He was majoring in the minor. He was getting caught up in the 95% of stuff that someone else could do, and not focusing on his 5%.

Your 5% Unique Ability

The 5% Unique Ability system comes from the combined wisdom of my friends and mentors, Dan Sullivan and Bedros Keuilian.

Sullivan, the leader of Strategic Coach, recommends that we spend the majority of our workday on our "Unique Ability." This is the vital skill or task in your business that you can do better than anyone else. It is what makes you the money. 

Keuilian takes it a step further. In order to spend more of your time working on your Unique Ability, he suggests you identify the 95% of tasks that you should not be doing each day. 

As you go through your day, write down every task that you are working on. Decide whether or not you could have someone else do it. Your goal, over time, is to get rid of 95% of the little stuff in your life that someone else can be doing for you. 

Yes, it might take thirty minutes now to teach another team member or a virtual assistant how to do a task that you should not be doing. But if that task takes you 10 minutes each day, five days per week, it will still save twenty minutes this week alone by getting someone else to do it. Imagine if you could do this with even more of those time-sucking tasks that you do each day. This could open up hours of valuable time for you to concentrate on what counts.

Add an Old-School Trick to Make It Even Better

Now here's a little twist I added to this system. 

The idea comes from Cal Newport in his book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You." Newport, a computer scientist, identified a valuable skill in his life that he wanted to improve. For Newport, it was spending time studying advanced mathematical formulas. He knew that the more time he could spend on this task, the better his research skills would become.

However, he realized he was spending very little time on this activity each week. To solve this problem, he simply set aside blocks of time for deliberate practice on improving this skill. Each day he'd record how much time was devoted to this act, and it was added up for a monthly total. This kept him concentrating on what counts.

My twist on this solution was to buy a stopwatch. I like the look and feel of the old watches your high-school gym teacher would use. Each morning, after changing into my writing clothes, I sit at the kitchen table, hit start on the timer, and write. I force myself to avoid distractions and having the face of that little black stopwatch staring up at me reminds me to stay focused and concentrate on what counts.

Finally, when my output is all put out, I hit stop and record the time on a chart. At the end of the month the cumulative time is noted. The goal is to spend more time in this critical task each month.

Reality

Like Bob, you have a lot going on in your life. You have family to take care of. You have serious responsibilities at work. You have a family budget to balance. You have miscellaneous appointments to keep. And you have your own health to take care of. 

But like Bob, you are probably doing too much busywork, and not enough of the things that matter.

If you feel that your time is slipping away from you, then do three things. Identify your Unique Ability. Delegate the 95% of work you shouldn't be doing. And then track the amount of time you spend working on Unique Ability each day, and try to improve the total cumulative time each month.

Once you've made these adjustments, you now have a new goal of increasing the amount of time you spend working on your Unique Ability. The end result is that you'll focus more on what matters. 

It's a liberating exercise, and one that we should all do immediately before an emergency demands it.