Business Book Review: Bull’s-Eye by Brian Tracy
Bull’s-Eye is more than a guide to productivity; it will teach you to set targets your future self actually wants you to hit.
My Rating: ★★★★
Length: 79 pages
Publisher: Simple Truths
Released: 2015
Key Takeaways for Personal Branding
Productivity guru Brian Tracy delivers another rewarding read with Bull’s-Eye. This tiny but mighty book packs a punch in its 79 pages. It proves its own premise of the critical importance of 1) clarity, 2) focus and 3) concentration brilliantly. With little fluff, short and sweet science and highly practical tips, Bull’s-Eye makes you wonder why more books aren’t written with such conciseness.
The Bull’s-Eye mindset has an unwavering focus on what your target is:
“You must become absolutely clear about who you are and what you want. You must focus on your most important goals and activities. And finally, you must concentrate single-mindedly until you have completed your tasks and achieved your goals.”
The Power of Clarity
Tracy proposes that the most important thing that he does for his work is think. This is because it develops his ‘concept of consequences’ for every action:
“Of all the things you can do, the quality of your thinking has the greatest consequences of all. The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your choices and decisions. Your choices and decisions determine the actions you take. And the actions you take determine the quality and quantity of your results.”
The concept of consequences says:
“Something is important to the degree to which it has serious potential consequences. Something is unimportant to the degree to which it has minor or no potential consequences.”
From a fresh perspective to most of his counterparts, Tracy focuses not just on getting things done, but getting the right things done. And , not just for the short term, but for the long term:
“In time management, one of the best ways to set priorities is to think about the likely consequences of doing or not doing a task. Successful people are those who spend most of their time on tasks and activities that have big potential consequences. They can have a real impact or influence on the future.”
The Power of Focus
To help you then start executing on the thoughts worth actioning, you need focused attention on the targets you’ve set.
Laser-focused attention starts with writing down your goals. Research shows only 3 percent of adults do this, according to studies from Yale and Harvard. These people eventually earn on average ten times more than people without goals.
Written goals help activate the Law of Attraction. But, when you write down your goals, ensure you write them with Tracy’s ‘Three P Formula’:
Personal - using first person.
Positive - e.g. avoid ‘quit’ and focus on a positive perspective of the outcomes you want.
Present - write in the present tense as though you have already achieved the goal.
Your goals should also have deadlines. This will help engage the software of your subconscious to work toward your goal 24 hours a day. Write down all of the activities that support the goal and their deadlines.
You’ll need to do more than just think about your target and actually take action:
“Take action on your list of activities. Do something. Do anything. As Einstein said, “Nothing happens until something moves.”
Whatever your first action is, you’ll gain some immediate feedback, you’ll get more ideas, and you’ll increase your self-confidence.
While any starting action will help you activate your momentum, you’ll, of course, also need a more concrete plan of action. Create your plan as you would a project organised by:
Sequence
Priority
“As Henry Ford once said, “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.”
Make sure that you then do something every day that moves you toward your most important goal, what he describes as the ‘Momentum Principle of Success’.
So, how do you determine your most important goal? Tracy discusses the importance of discovering your ‘Major Definite Purpose’ and shares a simple formula to find what it is. Tracy proposes that once you have 10 goals written down, imagine you have a magic wand that, when you wave it over the page, instantly grants you success in one thing on the list within 24 hours:
“Here’s the question: If you could achieve any one goal in life within twenty-four hours, which one would have the greatest positive impact on your life today? Whatever your answer, this then becomes your major definite purpose. It becomes your number one most important goal around which you design your entire life.”
Your major definite purpose then determines your concentration.
The Power of Concentration
Practise the ‘Six P Formula’:
“Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance."
Tracy highlights that every minute spent in planning saves ten minutes in execution.
To help you plan priorities, he shares his classic ‘ABCDE’ formula for crafting your to-do list with purpose. Assign one of the following to each task, no matter how small:
A = Must do: Non-completion has serious consequences.
B = Should do: Needs to be done sooner or later but is not as important as A tasks. You should never do B tasks unless you have completed your A tasks.
C = Nice to do: Pleasant and enjoyable, like socialising.
D = Delegate: Free up your time for the task only you can do.
E = Eliminate: You can’t simply work more efficiently forever, you have to say no to some things.
Tracy also highlights another principle from his popular book, Eat that Frog - creative procrastination. This is deliberately procrastinating on low-value activities so you can focus on the ones most essential to your career.
The Power of Excellence
“All great achievements in life are preceded by a long period of focus and concentration, sometimes for weeks, months, and even years, before success is achieved.”
But it’s not enough to simply concentrate your efforts; you have to concentrate deliberately.
Tracy highlights the work of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, an authority on elite performance from Florida State University. His 25-year research on the careers of highly paid executives showed that they all engaged in what he calls ‘deliberate practice’. This is focusing on developing one skill at a time, clearly and deliberately. The net result of mastering one key skill at a time then combines with other key skills in their repertoire, and they become more and more valuable. They eventually go on to earn 10, 20, 100, even 257 times more than the same people they started their careers with.
The University of Chicago asserted there is more of a skills gap in America than an income gap. People with in-demand skills are always employed and well-paid, while those who lack these skills earn far less and can often be unemployed.
Tracy challenges:
"Here’s the key question that largely determines your success or failure, and your income, in your career: What one skill, if I developed it and did it in an excellent fashion consistently, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?"
When you know your single most important skill, you must concentrate an average of two hours a day, five days a week or more, on developing that skill to a higher level, saying:
“If you do this, your future is virtually guaranteed."
Favourite Quotes
"We are living in the greatest time in all of human history. Despite short-term economic fluctuations, there have never been more opportunities for more people to achieve more of their goals than there are today.”
“What if you don’t achieve your goal by the deadline? Simple—set another deadline, and another and another if necessary. Remember, there are no unrealistic goals—only unrealistic deadlines.”
“I learned something that changed my life and removed my feelings of discouragement and low self-esteem. I learned that everyone in the top 20 percent today started in the bottom 80 percent.”
Bull’s-Eye by Brian Tracy: Available on Amazon.
