Develop A Sense Of Urgency

But whilst this may be true in a general sense it need not and should not be true for you in a personal sense. Bob Proctor said: “Time and life are anonymous. When you waste one you automatically waste the other.” So you should value your time greatly as an indicator of how you are utilizing your life.

As far as utilizing our personal time for personal goals goes there is a general lack of organized action when it comes to achieving our dreams whether we are African, American, European or from any other place. That can be summed up as a lack of effective use of time in achieving our goals and moving forward in our lives and a general lack of purpose in how we utilize our time.

Take stock of your time
There is a very simple method by which you can assess yourself in this area. Proctor advises that you take stock of your time. Take a day to do a simple exercise that will show you very clearly how you spend your time. He says that humans are creatures of habit so how you spend a typical day is a good indicator of how you spend many of your days.

The exercise simply requires that you get a pen and paper and create a log to keep track of your daily activities. Start when you wake up in the morning and finish when you go to bed. Once you have written down all your activities for that day it is time to analyse each one and classify it. Underline in red the activities that you do which are based on other people’s expectations and demands on your time and which won’t move you closer to your goals. This is, for the most part, wasted time.

Also underline in red activities which are pleasant and fun but which do not move you closer to your goal. This is also, for the most part, wasted time. Ask yourself if the enjoyment you receive from these activities would exceed the joy you would feel if you achieved your goals.

Underline all activities that are productive and help you to reach your goals in green. Work out what percentage of your day you spend on these activities. These are the activities that you need to do more of in order to attain your goals quickly.

Develop a sense of urgency
How do you do more of the important things you need to do on a daily basis? By developing a sense of urgency. I also like the definition Proctor uses to define what a sense of urgency means. The word sense means “to detect automatically.” The word urgency means “calling for immediate attention.” Therefore “a sense of urgency is being able to automatically detect those projects in our daily lives that are goal achieving and which call for immediate attention and then acting on them until they are successfully completed.”

Successful people do a tremendous amount of work in a minimum period of time. They have a long list of projects which are completed daily and which move them closer to the achievement of their goals. They focus on goal achieving projects and work that counts. In addition they have a tremendous sense of urgency with respect to matters that need to get done.

A twenty-five thousand dollar idea
Earl Nightingale talks of the idea that was worth twenty five thousand dollars in his renowned work “Lead the Field.” The story goes that the head of a corporation was talking to someone about how to improve the performance of the company. The gentleman he was speaking to gave him an idea and told him to try it out for some time and then when he was fully satisfied concerning its effectiveness and power he should pay him twenty five thousand dollars as a fee. If he was not satisfied there was no charge.

About two weeks into utilizing this one idea the head of the corporation wrote out a cheque for twenty five thousand dollars. That simple idea really worked and it worked so marvelously that he told everyone in the company to use it. It is said that the fortunes of that company changed dramatically for the better just from one simple idea.

Here is the big idea
That idea was simply this: To list the six most important things you have to do the next day: rate them in order of importance from one to six, with one being the most important; and to carry out each activity the next day in order of their importance as earlier listed and to complete each one as much as is possible before moving on to the next.

This will help you tremendously in developing a sense of urgency concerning your goals and to becoming more effective every day. Do quality work every day, make every day a success and inevitably your whole week, month, year and life will be a success. One day at a time is the rule to live by. Today is, after all, the only day you can be truly sure of and the only day you have control over.

If you desire to live the life of your dreams you must acquire a sense of urgency to accomplish tasks, a sense of urgency to live your dreams and a sense of urgency to get things done. Be on the attacking side of the equation rather than on the waiting side of things.