The Miracle of Self Discipline

Smile everyday
You'll thank me for the advice
That I can promise

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This book is by Brian Tracy and I highly recommend it, as it helped me immensely as I transitioned into the working world. Tracy is a sincere and very knowledgeable person. His ideas really stuck with me unlike some other authors I've been listening to recently.

The biggest takeaways from this book for me were making to do lists, and executing said lists. "Eat that Frog" (another book by Tracy) is essentially just a more in depth book about to do lists and that review is forthcoming. You can really get much more done by planning out your day and executing your plan in the order that you planned. There is a crazy amount of satisfaction on the days when my whole to do list is green rather than the days when even one thing is red.

He gives a very specific way of writing your goals out that has been super helpful for me and I use it at work every day.
A - top priority, if you don't do it, you will suffer
B - medium priority, things you should do but they aren't essential
C - low priority, things you want to do but by no means have to do
D - delegate, things you can delegate
E - eliminate, things you can eliminate

Within each lettered category, you rank your items by number as well. You may have 2 A tasks and 3 B tasks in a day. Never do a B task when an A task is still on the list. He talks about how 80% of your work is contained in 20% of your tasks. If you complete your A1, it will most likely mean you've gotten more done than if you had completed all your other tasks combined. This is where "Eat that Frog" comes in. Eat the biggest ugliest frog first thing, and everything else that day will seem like cake. Do your most complex, longest task first, and everything else will fall like dominoes. There is a terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you come in to work and know that you still have "that thing" sitting on your desk. Long tasks tend to hang over our heads and bog us down. But if we suck it up and eat the dang frog, then we gain a sense of accomplishment that propels us forwards and makes us even more productive later.

ARC