Concentrate to win. Time management expert Edwin Bliss wrote in his excellent book, Getting Things Done, “Of all of the principles of time management, none is more basic than concentration. In counselling people who are having serious time management problems, I find, invariably, that they are trying to do too many things simultaneously.” The valuable idea there.
In my book, Leadership Wisdom From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, in the chapter on Personal Effectiveness, I quote the great inventor, one of my favorite people of all time, Thomas Edison, who was asked the secret of his extraordinary success. He thought about the question, and then he replied, “The ability to apply your physical and mental abilities to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”
“You do something all day long, don’t you? he asks. “Everyone does. If you get up at 7:00 AM and go to bed at 11:00 PM, you’ve put in 16 good hours. And it’s certain that people have been doing something all that time.”
“The only trouble,” he says, “is that they devote their time to a great many things, while I devote mine to only one. If they took the time in question and applied it to only one object, they would succeed.”
