Brian Tracy Quotes

Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

I really get my best work done in the morning, so if I have to edit speeches or comments, that all happens before I get to work.

I get up every day and work in the morning. I have my coffee and get to work. On good days I look up and it's dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I don't know where it's gone. But there's bad days, too. Where I struggle and sweat and a half hour creeps by and I've written three words. And half a day creeps by and I've written a sentence and a half and then I quit for the day and play computer games. You know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. [Laughs]

If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done. By contrast, people with poor work habits almost randomly react to the stuff that comes at them, or they can't bring themselves to do the things they need to do but don't like to do (or are unable to do).

Never check email first thing in the morning. Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading email as a postponement excuse.

I always do my firing in the morning because that's when I'm fresh.

As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.

Also, I'm always learning better and better how to prioritize and how to leave certain things for the next day.

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

Otherwise, my whole career has just been flinging myself at whatever is most overdue first and letting everything else stack up.

I have a crazy amount of different jobs, so the way I manage that is to not do more than one at a time. It's like old computers that had small memory chips, they would do something called swapping, where they would fill the memory with one task, do it and get it out.

The enjoyment of work - to the extent that you have any - is likely highest in the first hours of the day when you are fresh, not tired, working on the most important things.

Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand.

I'm at my desk before nine, and I go all day. I'm not necessarily productive all day, but really, who is?

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

I used to start at about 10 at night and work until early morning. My preferred way to work is to start in the early afternoon and work until about 3, go do errands, have dinner, and then write for a few more hours in the evening.

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.

I work early in the morning, before my nasty critic gets up - he rises about noon. By then, I've put in much of a day's work.

The biggest way to be productive is if you're procrastinating on another more important project.

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy.

In promotional mode, every day is a series of decisions. You can easily fill up your day with checklist stuff.

I prefer a long day of starting in the morning over working late into the night.

I love to-do lists.