The idea of increasing productivity or your results by 1000% might seem far fetched,
but in this video I explain Brain Tracy's 1000 percent rule to help
you get more done through incremental growth!
Brian Tracy acknowledged this principle when younger as he tracked his tax returns,
where at the start of his career he noted his tax return was $14,412, which after 12 years of work
grew to be $1,440,000. Simply, his income grew to be a hundred times greater during that period.
He attributes this to what he calls the 1000% formula,
which he has used to help his clients to see similar success in their own lives.
So... What Is The 1000% Rule
The idea of the 1000% rule is based on the idea of small improvements leading
to extraordinary results, which in Japan is referred to as Kaizen and elsewhere
often referred to as Marginal Gains. These incremental improvements add up and
compound to lead to incredible results and has been used by numerous successful people
and businesses across the world. The idea is to work to get or do a
little bit better each day to increase your productivity and output by 1/10 of 1% each
day. That means each day, you're asked to improve in something by 1/1000 times, something which is
so small that the average person would have no issues with incorporating into their day.
Now continue this level of improvement in a week and you'll see you're 0.5% more
productive in that time, nothing that you'll likely find too noticeable, but a result which
if maintained can lead to big results. You see, that 0.5% becomes 2% in 4 weeks,
and maintain that for 52 weeks of the year and it reaches an impressive 26%,
an impressive outcome by anyones standard. Now over 10 years you might think that this
adds to 260%, but in reality when you factor in the compounding effect of growth in that time,
the reality is that from your starting point in this journey and the fact you've maintained this
habit to keep incrementally adding each day, the growth is actually just over 1000%.
This is because of something known as the momentum principle, whereby it might be difficult when
starting out, but with time it gets easier as you make this a habit. Think of it like pushing
a child on a swing, the initial pushes require greater effort, but as the swing continues to move
forward and backwards, minimal force is required to maintain that speed and height due to the
momentum. However, with this principle, it's as if we never let up on the initial effort we put in,
meaning we're not just doing the minimum to maintain the growth, but rather we continue
to push to continue growth. Not good for the child on the swing, as they would soon be
swinging around the bar at speeds that terrify them, but for us looking to grow ourselves,
it's very much a positive result! Now that we understand a little about the
principle, how do we... Apply It
So, for the first tip to implement the idea of the 1000% rule,
Brian Tracy recommends getting up 2 hours before your first responsibility for the day, for example
work or school. This is so you give yourself one hour of doing something beneficial to you,
known as the Golden hour. A good use of this time is to do some reading, whether it's uplifting or
motivational, educational or spiritual, it should be something that gives value
in your life. Whatever you choose to read, you should set you up for a positive day ahead!
The second tip from Brian Tracy is to put together a to do list of tasks you
need to complete that day, with step three being to priorise that list to ensure you
know which items are of greatest importance! Once your tasks are identified and prioritised,
you can action step four, to go ahead and tackle your most important task. Here, you want to
concentrate as fully as you can through to its completion, being single minded when working.
You then take this approach with each task in your list as you progress through the day.
Now we're onto step 5, in which Brian Tracy recommends listening to audio programs in your
car for your education, rather than listening to music or something else which provides little or
no long term benefits. In today's world where you can consume books and podcasts via audio at pretty
much anytime, this idea can be expanded to outside of just your drive to and from work. Listen to
something educational when exercising, walking, making dinner, cleaning or when doing other tasks.
The point is, you should be looking to utilise opportunities to grow rather than waste them.
Why is this all useful? Well, for the average reader,
if they read roughly 1 hour each day they can theoretically get through 1 book a week,
so roughly 50 books a year. It's been found that to get a PhD at a leading university, you have
to read between 30 and 50 books and combine them into a dissertation in your field. So, what you're
doing here is putting in the up front work of the research and education in your chosen field,
but rather than writing a dissertation, you are looking to practically apply the lessons learned
in your own life, getting a comparable level of education to a higher education student.
Brian Tracy says that through applying this technique of education and planning,
especially with planning each day in advance, you can see your productivity increase by 25%.
If you then add in setting and prioritising tasks to the mix, it increases another 50%.
Then there's step 6, here you want to ask yourself two questions after each task, which is:
What did I do right? and...
What would I do differently next time? Brian Tracy focuses on the positive of what to do
right rather than wrong to avoid the subconscious being influenced by the potential vicious cycle
of negativity and repeating the same mistakes you made by focusing on them too much. Instead,
you want to focus on what you did right to reinforce and repeat the positive behaviours.
Once you have your answers to these questions, write them down to help engrave
the lessons learned into your memory! So that's the 1000% rule in a nutshell,
and don't forget it doesn't have to be limited to school or work,
use it in other areas, especially relationships which you can grow to help be more positive.