When I asked Warren, I said, “what is, what is the number one key to your great success,
if it came down to one thing, what would that one thing be?”
This is the reason for his 50 billion dollar net worth.
Twelve people out of seven billion to put on the cover of Success magazine,
what do these people do that the rest of us not do
that separated them from everybody else?
So let me give you the answer.
The answer is it had nothing to do with what they do.
What Richard Branson does and what Warren Buffett does
is not anything different than what you're doing.
It's not what they do that actually separates them
from you and everybody else, in fact, it's what they don't do.
What they don't do has more to do with their success
than what it is that they do, you're already doing
what everybody you see on the cover of Success magazine is
the problem is all the other crap you're doing is watering that down and diminishing your
results.
You see, yes is easy, when you say yes, a knock at the door, “do you have a minute?”,
“yes, I have a minute”, “will you be on this conference call?”,
“yes, I'll be on the conference call”, “will you join us for lunch?”, “yes,
I'll join you for lunch”, “will you want to go out with this couple,
who you don't even like and go out to dinner?”, “yes, I'll go out with the couple that I
don't want to go out with and spend my time doing that”,
because there's no argument or resistance in yes.
But here's the thing that I want to impose upon you today.
The master skill of success is “no”.
The master skill of success is your ability to say no.
Now, if you don't want to believe me, believe Warren Buffett.
When I asked Warren I said, “what is the number one key to your great success,
if it came down to one thing, what would that one thing be?”
This is the reason for his 50 billion dollar net worth,
this is it, right here, like one answer here it comes,
this is the answer he gave, “for every 100 great opportunities that
are brought to me, I say no 99 times”.
The Oracle of Omaha, of all the wise things he could have said,
he says that his success is saying no 99 out of 100 times.
Matter of fact, he goes on to say, “the difference between successful people
and very successful people is, very successful people say no to almost everything”.
So they have that time to do the thing that actually matters.
I think Kenneth Cole kind of puts it in a one sentence that
sums up this of where we're at so far, “success has less to do with what we can
get ourselves to do”.
So that's what I always thought, “I need to be more successful,
what else do I need to do, what else do I need to do?
He says, “no, no, no, success has less to do with what we can get
ourselves to do and more to do with keeping ourselves from
doing what we shouldn't”.
So consider this, if you looked at your calendar last week,
ok so that we can just sort of bring this into your world,
make sure that it's apical, relook at your calendar last week.
Ask yourself this, what should you have said no to
that you spent a lot of time and energy on?
You know one of the things that will be interesting if you look at your calendar last week,
how much of your calendar there were no appointments scheduled?
Like, in other words, you can't even account for what the hell you did,
but you ran around like a crazy person, when you went home and your spouse said,
“well, how was your day?”, “oh my god, it was so busy”,
but you can't even account for what it is that you're busy doing.
Now we start to look forward, if you look at your calendar next week,
now you start asking yourself, what should I say no to?
Look at your idea list, your project list, your commitment list
and your communication list and start wiping it clean,
what can I start saying no to?
So I ask you the question, what crappy stuff do you need to stop doing
so that you can focus on the good stuff?
Now, I hope that you're hearing me here because this really is the separating factor,
the ability to say no to very tempting, very shiny, very alluring
commitments on your time that make you feel good,
make you look like a hero, make you be the white knight,
all these things that make you look busy and needed and valued and feel significant
and so forth, your ability to abstain and to say no is truly
the big separating factor.
The first time you do that, you’ll have a shocking reality about how little
time you're actually spending, doing anything that matters.
And then if all you do over the next year, 90 days, 30 days
is try to increase that number every single day
you'll multiply your productivity, you multiply your results,
you'll multiply anything you can accomplish in life, simple as that.