Thank you for picking up this book. I hope these ideas help you as much as they have helped me and thousands of others. In fact, I hope this book changes your life forever. Maybe a parent or teacher gave this to you, and if so, thank you for giving it a chance and making this commitment to your future!
It is an incredible time to be a student. Never before in history have there been so many resources available to you, so many opportunities, and so much potential. Once upon a time the only resource available to students was their teacher—and maybe a library if they were lucky. All students could do was learn from their teacher and research at the library, limited to whatever books happened to be in that collection.
Today, learning is limited only by how much or how little you choose to engage in the endeavor. Through any computer—your own, the library’s, one you are given at school—you have access to educational resources your parents could only imagine. More than any time in history, you have the resources and ability to take control of your own learning.
Whether you are reading this book in high school, college, or even grad school, this is a turning point in your life. It is a time when your parents decide less and less what you must do, and you get to make more and more of those decisions. You are on the cusp of an extraordinary life—if you choose to seize the opportunity.
With all the demands on your time in school and outside school, you may already be overwhelmed by all your responsibilities. But the reality is there will never be enough time to do everything you need to do. This is true of your time as a student, and it will be even more true when you join the workforce. As if classes were not enough, you are swamped with everything else that comes along with being a student these days—a part-time job or an internship, sports, community service, the arts, or any other of the millions of activities and leadership opportunities clamoring for your attention.
Here’s the reality: you can get control of your time and your life only by changing the way you think, work, and deal with the never-ending river of responsibilities that flows over you each day. You can take control of your tasks and activities only to the degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few activities that can really make a difference in your life.
I have studied time management for more than forty years. I have immersed myself in the works of Peter Drucker, Alec Mackenzie, Alan Lakein, Stephen Covey, and many, many others. I have read hundreds of books and thousands of articles on personal efficiency and effectiveness. This book is the result.
Each time I came across a good idea, I tried it out in my own work and personal life. If it worked, I incorporated it into my talks and seminars and taught it to others.
Galileo once said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”
Simply put, some people are doing better than others because they do things differently and they do the right things right. Especially, successful, happy, prosperous people use their time far, far better than the average person.
I came from an unsuccessful background. Early in my life I developed deep feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. I had fallen into the mental trap of assuming that people who were doing better than me were actually better than me. What I learned was that this was not necessarily true. They were just doing things differently, and what they had learned to do, within reason, I could learn as well.
This was a revelation to me. I was both amazed and excited with this discovery. I still am. I realized that I could change my life and achieve almost any goal I could set if I just found out what others were doing in that area and then did it myself until I got the same results they were getting.
Within one year of starting in sales, I was a top salesman. A year later I was made a manager. Within three years, I became a vice president in charge of a ninety-five-person sales force in six countries. I was twenty-five years old.
Throughout my career, I have discovered and rediscovered a simple truth. The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book.
This book is written to show you how to get ahead more rapidly in your studies. These pages contain the most powerful principles on personal effectiveness I have ever discovered.
These methods, techniques, and strategies are practical, proven, and fast acting. In the interest of time, I do not dwell on the various psychological or emotional explanations for procrastination or poor time management. There are no lengthy departures into theory or research. What you will learn are specific actions you can take immediately to get better, faster results in your work and to increase your happiness.
Every idea in this book is focused on increasing your overall levels of productivity, performance, and output and on making you more valuable in whatever you do. You can apply these ideas to any task or activity you have. They are primarily focused on classes and academics but can also be used to manage your time practicing an instrument, motivate your performance on a sports team, manage your time in a part-time job, and manage your time overall, while balancing all the different well-rounded activities you engage in.
This book was written to be a resource to help you with whatever area of your life you are struggling in. Don’t feel you need to read it cover to cover. After the first three chapters, you should look at the table of contents and go directly to whatever part or chapter seems most useful to you at any given moment. The resources in this book have been carefully organized to help you with what students in today’s classrooms find to be their biggest challenges. In fact, some of the techniques can be useful in several domains, so while every chapter has something new to offer, you may see similar techniques suggested in multiple parts.
In all these areas, however, the one key to success is action. These principles work to bring about fast, predictable improvements in performance and results. The faster you learn and apply them, the faster you will move ahead in your education—guaranteed!
There will be no limit to what you can accomplish when you learn how to eat that frog!