Renowned business speaker and best-selling author Brian Tracy says everyone can double their income and double their time off. Sound too good to be true? His latest book, Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals, spells out the secret that successful, fulfilled people already know focusing on key areas gives the greatest return. Tracy asks probing questions to help readers develop goals, and BookPage recently turned the tables on the author to learn more about his intriguing strategy.
Explain what you mean by focal point. How do you find it? Your focal point is the most important point of attention or measure to determine success or failure in a particular area. For example, if health and fitness was your goal, your focal point could be your waist size. If financial independence was your goal, the number of months you could live on your accumulated savings could be your focal point. Your concentration on your focal point almost always improves your performance in that area.
You stress the importance of taking responsibility for every area of your life. How did you learn this lesson? When I was a young man, I looked around me and noticed that most people blamed their circumstances on everything and everyone except themselves. I later learned that when you accept complete responsibility for your life, it gives you a sense of personal power and energy that enables you to take charge of the things that happen to you. Accepting responsibility makes you a creator of circumstances rather than simply a creature of circumstances.
You claim your system will enable people to double their income and double their time off. Is that really possible? Many thousands of my students and graduates have already doubled their income and doubled their time off. Since 20% of what you do accounts for 80% of the value of your work, if you simply concentrate more and more time on the top 20% of your tasks, you will double your productivity and have far more time available for your personal life.
Your book is based on a study of the habits of people who are both successful and fulfilled. What are these people doing differently? The most happy and fulfilled people in our society are doing what they love to do. They are continually getting better and better in that area. They know what is important to them. They throw their whole hearts into their life and work. As a result, they get far more living out of life than the average person.
What’s holding the rest of us back from achieving our dreams? The reason people do not fulfill their potential is because they are confused about what it is they really want in life. We encourage people to ask themselves a series of questions on a regular basis: What do I really want to do with my life? How would I spend my life if I were financially independent today? What would I do if I learned today I only had six months left to live? And especially, What do I really love to do? When you ask and answer these questions on a regular basis, you become clearer about your dreams and goals than ever before.
