- So what do you think holds people back?
They know what they want to do,
but they just can't keep the habit.
They do it once and then they fall off the train,
and then next month they do it again
and they fall off the train.
How do you make that consistent?
- Well, you just keep working at it and working at it.
The best way of all is to plan it in advance.
Instead of sitting down,
never start work without a list,
and never start work without prioritizing your list.
People sit down and they say
well before I make a list I'll check a little email,
check a little spam.
I'll send something to my friend.
See what' going on YouTube and so on and so forth.
And then they look up and it's ten o'clock.
And they haven't got anything of value.
So what you do is you have to do is say
well, if you start it right
it'll work out right.
So start it on your most important task.
And do that until it becomes a habit.
Here's an interesting thing about checking email.
Is when you check email,
it triggers the release of dopamine in your brain.
Dopamine is a drug.
By the way there's all kinds of books and articles
and scientific studies on this.
And dopamine is the same drug in cocaine.
What it does is it's triggered every time
you have a shiny object or something new
or different or interesting or sparkly.
If a telephone rings next to you,
you go bing.
Your brain releases endorphins
and you can't hardly wait to see what it is.
So you're talking to somebody,
and you could be talking to somebody
about something very serious,
and your telephone goes off.
Bing.
Your whole mind goes blank.
The middle of conversation stops.
You grab for your phone.
You pick it up.
You look at it.
You check it out and everything else.
And then you come back.
If you're working on a task,
it takes an average of seventeen minutes
to get back to the task.
And then there's another distraction.
So another seventeen minutes.
Average adult is checking their email and their phone
between 95 and 145 times a day.
- That's crazy.
- Which means they're like attention-deficit disorder dogs.
They're just living running around
back and forth the whole day.
The end of the day they're exhausted.
By the way, USA Today and Harvard
have proved that you lose one IQ point
for every hour that you leave your email on.
At the end of the day you've lost ten IQ points.
You actually become stupider throughout the day.
Dumber.
And I ask this of my audiences, I say,
Have you ever finished a day
where you don't think you've accomplished anything?
You've been on email, responding to your bings,
and beeps and rings and so on all day.
And at the end of the day you go home
and honey says,
"What do you want for dinner?"
and you say,
"I don't know.
"I don't care.
"Anything.
"I just want a drink."
Because you're so exhausted you cannot even decide,
sit there and basically,
like you've just been punched in the side of the head.
Because your brain is dead,
and you lose ten IQ points.
You get stupider throughout the day.
You've got to turn that darn thing off
if you want to remain sharp.
You develop a habit.
You say, "I'm going to develop a habit,
"and I'm going to give myself my reward,
"and my reward will be to check my email
"after I finish my first task."
So all of success in life is task completion.
Let me repeat that.
I just had a long conversation with an entrepreneur
and he almost fell off his chair.
I was coaching him.
And he said he'd never heard that before.
And then I spoke to this group
I was telling you in Japan,
I told them the same thing,
and they were just flabbergasted.
Is the key to success in life is task completion.
If you don't complete tasks you have no future.
And so if task completion is the key,
then what you do is complete more and more important tasks.
And if you start every day
by completing the most important task,
your brain actually releases endorphins.
Now endorphins is another chemical,
and it's only released when you do something
that is life enhancing.
And what that means is when you do something
that is good for you that enhances your life,
that furthers you it makes you happy.
It releases energy.
It raises your self-esteem.
I just want to say,
if you want to be a winner,
how to be a winner?
Well, you win.
Winning means you cross the finish line.
So if you start and complete a task
you're actually winning.
And you get a feeling of being a winner.
Which gives you a suffusion of energy and inspiration.
And it drives you and motivates you
to want to get that feeling again.
So how do you get that feeling again?
You start and complete another task.
So I've developed a habit,
and people who are successful developed the habit
of starting and completing tasks.
So my wife comes in and says dinner is in five minutes.
So I look at my list
and I say okay, there's a five minute task.
And I'm going to start and complete a five minute task.
And each time you complete a task
you get a burst of endorphins.
The bigger the task, the more endorphins.
The more endorphins, the more quickly you become addicted
to starting and completing important tasks.
And every single successful person has a reputation
for starting and completing important tasks.
You want the job done, give it to him or her.
You want the product served on time,
you want the product completed,
you want the product manufactured, shipped, delivered,
give it to him.
Give it to her.
Give it to that company.
Cause they always deliver.
That's the best reputation you can have
if you want to get rich.