This document summarizes Brian Tracy's time management techniques. It discusses setting goals, organizing action plans, analyzing tasks, setting priorities using the ABCDE method, concentrating on one task at a time, setting deadlines and rewards, keeping a time log, overcoming procrastination, delegating tasks, managing meetings and interruptions efficiently, focusing on key result areas, batching similar tasks, maintaining a neat workspace, working in chunks of time, using transition time for additional learning, managing the telephone efficiently, and developing a reputation for punctuality. The key ideas are that time management is about self-discipline, setting goals, prioritizing tasks, avoiding distractions, and focusing on high value activities.

1. TIME MANAGEMENT by Brian Tracy
Time management notes from Time management video by brian tracy, video available on my google
docs account.
Key to time management is self discipline that is time management is self discipline in action and self
discipline is the key to success.
Goals (02:19-05:05)
3 Major areas of Goals
1. Personal or Family goals
2. Business or career or financial Goals
3. Self Development Goals (Ability and willingness in developing yourself is the key to
accomplishing everything else.
3 Questions you can ask
1. What would you do if you just won million dollars
2. What would you do if you knew if u had 6 months to live
3. What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you couldn’t fail.
Goals must be in writing, rewrite them, define and redefine them.
Organized Plans of Actions ( 05:06 – 07:02)
• Organized plans of actions are the key to all success, Action without planning is the cause of every
failure and under achievement, frustration, time wastage, anxiety, stress and lack of success.
• Organized plans of action are where you take your goals and you write out every single step that you
are going to have to follow in order to accomplish that objective. You write it out and you list all
those plans of action, all of those different activities and you organize them together into a plan that
you can then implement on a day to day basis. You decide which has to be done first which has to be
done last which is more important which is less important. The ability to set goals and create plans
for their accomplishment is the master skills of success.
Analysis (06:58 – 08:40)
If you make a list before you begin any task or job you will immediately improve your productivity by 25
percent.
How do u make a list?
You make a list for each day the evening before and u always work from a list
Why do u make a list it evening Before?
The primary reason is if u make a list evening before the subconscious goes to work on your list while
you are sleep and during the night subconscious will solve problems and bring insights to you when you
wake up in the morning with the insights, ideas, institution, answers that will make your day more
productive.
Reasons to use a list
1. List gives you a direction or a tract
2. With a list you can analyze where you are
3. You can tell what is more important and what is less important
4. You can tell what is irrelevant, what can be delegated, what can be delayed and what can be
put off
5. When you check things off on a list it give you a feeling of accomplishment
Set Priorities (08:40-11:20)
The biggest single problem in human life is setting priorities determining what si relevant and what is
irrelevant.

2. The Parreto Principle
It says 80 percent of value of what you do will be contained in 20 percent of things that you do.
What does it mean?
You make a list of 10 things you do today, you will find 2 of those things are worth of all of the others
put together.
Highly effective people work on vital few then the trivial many. In effective people work on trivial many.
They work on things that are fun, easy tasks, little tasks irrelevant tasks but they keep putting off and
delaying working on the major task.
Key to Success is asking this Question, What is the most valuable use of my time?
If all you did was organize your life and only work on most valuable use of your time that alone would be
enough to make you an effective efficient person, increase your productivity, your performance, your
profitability, your rewards by 10, 20 or even 50 %.
So before you begin, ask yourself, Is this the most important thing I could be doing, Is this my top
priority task, is this the most valuable use of my time.
Also ask yourself, what impact will the accomplishment of this task have on my future. The Futurity of
decision is the key to measuring the value (or priority of a task). Most people spend their 80 % of time
dealing with the problems of difficulties of the past and only 20% dealing with the opportunities of the
future but successful people always saying what impact will this have on the future. Important task will
always have an impact on the future, Unimportant task will only have impact on the present and may be
even the past so I will say what is the most valuable use of my time right now and what impact will this
have on tomorrow, the next day and the future, One of the key way to keep on track with regard to
priority.
Concentration (11:20-14:44)
• Learning how to concentrate is absolutely essential to success
• It is impossible for you to accomplish anything worthwhile in life without the ability to concentrate
single mindedly one thing at a time and stay with it until its complete.
• Studies have shown if you start a task and you put it down and come back and pick it up and start
and put it down that will take you as much as 500 % of the necessary time to do as task then if you
picked it up and carry it through.
Allen McKenzie (Single handling)
Once you have made a list of what you have to do , organize your goals, determine your most highest
and valuable priority then pick the most important thing and began working on it and stay with it until
its finished.
Concentrate single mindedly on one task at a time. Do first thing first and do one thing at a time.
A,B,C,D,E Method
A = You Must do ( Top priority)
B = You should do ( 2nd priority)
C= Would be nice to do
D=Delegate
E=Eliminate
With Goals what you do is this you make a list of all the things you like to accomplish in the next one to
five years and you go down the list by A,B,C
• What you love to do= A
• What you like to do =B
• Whats not important =C

3. You take A Goals you make them as A1, A2,A3 etc
• A1=most important
• A2=2nd most important
• A3=3rd most important
Example:
1. Job A1
2. Gym/health A2
3. House A3
4. Deen B1
5. Health for Mom/Dad A4
6. Best in Professional field B2
7. Go Mecca B3
8. Learn Quran B4
9. Learn Swimming C1
10. Class M license C2
Now you take A goals and transfer them to another sheet and you make a list of all the things you gonna
have to do to accomplish your goals then you A,B,C the list then you say
What are things I have to do,
What are things I should do and
What are things would be nice to do to accomplish my goals then you put those into the goal list and
then you structure and schedule what you going to do and implement.
Example:
Jobs Make resume A1
Go to temp agencies A4
Apply Online A3
Search Online A2
Personal networking A5
Gym/Health Start diet A2
Go to gym everyday A1
Make a gym strategy A3
Make Dua A4
House in Sf Apply low income A1
Search online A2
Public networking A3
Health for Vitamineral green A1
mom/dad Keep track of their hospital visit A2
India surgery mummy A3
Hajj A4
Ask them regularly A5
This is called six step method
1. Choose your goal
2. Set priority
3. Choose your activities
4. Set priorities
5. Schedule
6. Implement
Deadlines and Rewards (14:50-17:01)

4. To motivate yourself for a task, you give yourself specific rewards when it gets finished.
Set Deadlines. How do you set Deadlines?
• First of all when you set a goal when you specify the task set the deadline when it is going to be
accomplished
• Always set deadlines with lots of room to spare and always try to finish before the deadline
• Force yourself by telling everyone that you are going to finish this work in a specific deadline
• If you don’t set a deadline and don’t force yourself you fall into something called as parkinson’s law
• Parkinson’s law says if you have 2 hours of work to do and 8 hours of time you will stretch that work
over 8 hours
• Parkinson law also says that work contracts to fill the time allotted for it. If you have 8 hours of work
to do and because of emergency you have to have it done in 2 hours, you will get it done in 2 hours
• Highly effective people set strict deadlines on themselves so that they get more work done in a
short period of time rather than less work done in long period of time
TIME LOG (17:01-18:56)
Keep measuring, logging, analyzing your time. Am I spending my time on major goals, top priorities and
important things. Measure and analyze your time every single day to see you are not wasting time
unnecessary.
Procrastination (18:56-21:25)
There are two kinds of procrastination
1. Positive procrastination.
When you procrastinate doing low priority tasks doing things that do not contribute to the
major goals
2. Negative procrastination.
Negative procrastination is when you procrastinate on the most important task
• The tasks are either urgent which means they have to be done now or they are important which
means they don’t have to be done now but they have very high impact on the future
• We have natural tendency to do urgent rather than what is important. Important tasks are seldom
urgent and urgent tasks are seldom important.
Overcoming procrastination using a simple method
Every morning you get up say over and over to yourself
“Do it now”
“Do it now”
“I do it now”
Whenever you have this tendency to procrastinate program your subconscious mind with this automatic
condition command.
• The key to overcome procrastination is to develop a sense of urgency.
• Be the kind of person who gets things done quickly
• Be the person to launches fast on a task. One of the ways to launch fast on task is take a task
and break it up into small pieces and do one piece at a time.
If you just develop a sense of urgency where somebody gives you a task that you get onto it fast that
alone will move you into the top ranks.
Develop Two Qualities
1. Ability to set priorities, to choose what was relevant over what was irrelevant
2. Ability to get the job done fast
Delegate (21:25 – 23:40)

5. Delegation means giving people wok of less value to save your productive time to do work which is more
important and of higher value.
Meetings (23:40-25:48)
• Have a purpose for the meeting, make it clear in the beginning of a meeting
• Look meeting as investment in time.
• If you possibly avoid a meeting, don’t go to it to save time
Make a agenda or a list in the meeting
1. Deal with most important items first
2. Start and stop meeting on time
Time water in meeting
1. Meetings goes off track
2. Conversation becomes irrelevant.
Interruptions (25:48 – 28:10)
Two major types of interruptions
1. Telephone – unplug a telephone when you work or set a voicemail
2. People – most people are time waster, be alert to it. If people ask have you got a minute, say no
right now can you wait this afternoon? If someone visit you, get up and pretend to leave and
then come back to work.
Key Result Areas (28:10 - 30:40)
To find key result areas ask yourself this questions
1. Why am I on the pay roll?
2. What have you been hired to accomplish ( not doing only tasks and activities)
3. What results are expected of you?
4. The accomplishment of what results is going to lead to my promotions?
5. How am I going to earn more money?
6. What results do I have to achieve to get a raise in salary?
7. What results does my company expect of me?
8. What contribution am I expected to make?
What are my key results areas?
Every job has a series of functions there are secondary functions and primary functions or core functions
You have to ask what are the core functions of your job
• Major reason for stress at American work place is today is people don’t know what is expected, not
sure why they are on the payroll
• Go to your boss with a list of everything that you do and ask yoru boss to organize in order of
priority and give it back to you.
• You cannot do excellently superior work or cannot be promoted unless you are doing and doing wll
the key things that your boss has hired you to do that’s the reason you need to know key result
areas
Batching tasks (30:40-31:53)
Learning Curve Theory
• When you do a job first time it takes the most amount of time to do it because you are learning
how to do it. The second time it takes less the third time it take less the fourth time it take less
• Learning curve theory says that you can decrease the amount of time by as much as 80% if you do
the same job over and over again over a period of time
• So batching a task is a major time management tool

6. How do you batch a task?
• When you make a phone call, make all yoru phone calls at once.
• If you are going to do invoice, do all invoice at once.
• If you are going to do correspondence, do all the correspondence at once.
• If you reading, read everything at once.
If you do this on regular basis you will get so much more done by doing it and concentrating on batches
of task then if you didn’t.
Batching or grouping of task reduces total time as demonstrated by learning curve theory.
Neatness (31:53 – 35:00)
• Neatness is critical to productivity
• Study shows if you just clean up your work environment, except the one thing you are working
on that will increase your productivity by 40 to 50 %
How to clean up a messy desk?
Using TRAF system
T = Toss (throw it away what is unnecessary)
R = refer ( If its not relevant to you so you refer it to someone else)
A = Action ( Take your file folder and put it in action folder so its out of the way)
F = File ( File document that are important to you )
If you are not using something, put It away.
Chunks of time (35:01 – 37:23)
• Most serious work cannot be done in less than 60 or 90 minutes
• Allocate a block of time where you can work without interruption.
• Ex: wake up at 5 am and work uninterruptedly for 3 hours you can get entire days work done in
those 3 hours.
Transition time (37:23 – 41:11)
• If you want to earn more learn more
• Successful people continually learn more, continually talking every opportunity to keep current
with their profession and to advance their knowledge.
• Knowledge in every field is doubling every 5 to 7 years so to stay even your knowledge has to
double every 5 to 7 years.
• To do this you must take an hour and read and take ntoes. If you doing less than an hour a day
you are falling behind.
How to get this extra learning time?
1. Driving – Listen audio cassettes while driving
2. Coffee break – Just when you sit for coffee make sure you have something to read whether its
time management or Goal setting or professional related.
3. Lunch Time.
Print out articles and put it in file and when you travel. Keep that file with you. You are sitting, waiting
for something in a waiting room just pull out your file and keep current.
Keep taking more information in what are called as gifts of time.
Telephone (41:15 – 44:32)
• Telephone is a business tool nota social tool
• Get on and Get off as fast on the phone

7. • Control your telephone calls, call back at their lunch time or end of day. You call them back so
you control the time.
• When you call or receive phone calls always have a pen or paper with you.
Punctuality (44:32 – 47:42)
If you want to stand out from the average person, all you have to do is develop reputation for
punctuality
Punctual people are more competent, more reliable, more dependable, more intelligent more valuable
and more likely to be promoted and given greater responsibility than the person who is late all the time.
Person who is alte all the time is considered sloppy, undiscipline, unrealiable, poor time manager and
not capable of greater responsibilities.
Why people are not punctual?
1. They do not realize how important it is when you are late for an appointment. You are insulting
that person who has agreed to see you at that time.
Work simplification (47:45-50:14)
Work simplification means always finding faster, easier, quicker, cheaper more efficient ways to do what
you doing.
Key ideas to get more done in short period of time ( you can add yours latter to this lsit)
1. Work longer
2. Faster
3. Do higher pay off tasks in the same period of time to increase productivity
4. Do things that you are better at
5. Team work
(This are just examples, you can add yours to this list)
Say NO (50:14 – 51:47)
Learn to say NO to activites, task, responsibilities, obligations that do not contribute to the most
important goals that you have set for yourself.
How do you say NO?
When they ask you to do something, ask let me think about it and get back to you. After 24 hours call
them back and say I thought about it I simply don’t have the time but thank you very much for thinking
about me.
Saying NO will save you hours, weeks and months working on projects that contribute nothing to your
goals
Balance (51:47 – 55:36)
The most important thing in personal life’s are health, peace of mind and relationships so take time to
invest time your relationships. Spend time with the people who are close to you
Summary.
1. The essence of success in time management is Goals.
2. The key to goals is to write them down to make organize plans for their accomplishment.
3. The key to those organized plans is to set priorities and determine what is more important and
what is less important and always concentrate on most valuable use of your time.

8. 4. The key to concentrate on most valuable use of your time is to stay at the task until its finished,
persevere without distraction or diversion keep at it. Hammer, hammer, hammer until your
most important tasks are finished
5. Finally develop that sense of urgency. Do it fast, Do it now. Fast tempo is essential to success.
Fast tempo goes hand in hand with energy, with happiness with enthusiasm, with self esteem to
make crystal clear what you want to do. Start working on those steps everyday tto move you
toward the most important goals of your life
6. If you do that you will be excellent time manager an excellent personal manager, an excellent
life manger. You will have great life. THaNK YOU.