15. The Law of Forced Efficiency

Under the Laws of Success

The more things you have to do in a limited period of time, the more you will be forced to work on your most important tasks.

This is another way of saying that there is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things.

The more you take on, the more likely it is that you will be forced to act with maximum efficiency. You will have to think, analyze, and evaluate your tasks and activities more carefully. You will be forced to spend your limited mental and physical energy on just those tasks that are the most vital to your success.

The first corollary of the Law of Forced Efficiency is
There will never be enough time to do everything that you have to do.

The busier and more successful you become, the more valid this corollary will be for you. If you have ample time to do your work, you are probably underemployed, underpaid, and moving along the low road to underachievement and disappointment in your career. If you are successful, you will almost always have too much to do and too little time.

The second corollary of this law is
Only by stretching yourself can you discover how much you are truly capable of.

You can discover how much you can do only by trying to do too much. You can find out how far you can go only by going too far. You learn your true capacity only by stretching yourself to your limits.

For you to be truly happy, you must know that you are working at the outer edge of your potential. You need to feel fully challenged by your work. You need to do what you love, love what you do, and put your whole heart into your work.

The third corollary of this law is
You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time.

This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now?

Discipline yourself to work exclusively on the one task that, at any given time, is the answer to this question. Keep yourself on track and focused on your most important responsibilities by asking yourself, over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now?

How you can apply this law immediately:

1. Remember that you can do only one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest-value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time.

2. Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else.

Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment? Whatever the answer, this is where you must focus your energies, and nowhere else.

Source: Brian Tracy, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, (San Francisco, 2000).