Job. Family and personal life. Economic independence. Professional development. All of us could be more successful in each of these areas if we could strip away the non-essentials that distract us from achieving the goals we set for ourselves. How do we do this? The means is described in Focal Point -- A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve all Your Goals (AMACOM, 2002) by Brian Tracy, a recognized authority on personal and professional development. Tracy, who promises that applying his Focal Point Process to your life can "double your income and double your time off" in as little as thirty days, was recently interviewed about his book for AMA’s web site.

AMA: Your book is entitled Focal Point. What do you mean by "focal point"?

Tracy: Focal point refers to the one task or activity that you can do at any given time to achieve the most important result at that time. Let’s take the example of a company. Its purpose is to increase sales and revenues. So you could say that its focal point is cash flow or revenue generation. All of the energies in the business have to be focused on every conceivable way to generate additional revenues. Everything else becomes secondary to that. The key to generating more revenues is to make more sales, so the focal point for each sales person has to be to make more sales, and the key to that would be to spend more time with better prospects.

From a management perspective, that would mean that the organization would have to focus all the energies of its sales force on spending more time with better prospects to make more sales to generate higher cash revenues.

AMA: This thinking makes sense from a corporate perspective. How does it apply to individuals?

Tracy: It works the same way. The clearer you are about the things you really want, the more rapidly you will bring them about. In the book, we classify desires into seven categories: business and career, family and personal life, money and investments, health and fitness, personal growth and development, social and community activities, and spiritual development. We then lead readers through seven steps to help them identify the goal in each most important and the means to achieve it.

AMA: Can you explain how this would work?

Tracy: Let’s take careers, for example. You have to ask yourself, "What is it I want to accomplish with my career and what is the most important thing I can do to accomplish that goal?"

Maybe you want to be paid more in the future. So you need to ask yourself what you are being paid for doing today: "Why am I employed?" Next, you need to ask yourself: "Of all the things I do, what are the things that are most valuable? Of all these valuable things, how can I focus on and measure the most valuable of all activities and concentrate single-mindedly on that?

AMA: Do you do this for each aspect of your life?

Tracy: Yes, it’s a seven-step process:

1. Define your values in the area--what you believe in and care about.
2. Ask yourself, "What is my long-term vision for my life in this area?"
3. Ask yourself, "What are the goals I need to achieve to accomplish my long-term vision?"
4. Ask yourself what skills and abilities you need to develop to accomplish those goals.
5. Ask yourself about the habits and behaviors you have to engage in to develop the skills to accomplish the goals to fulfill the vision.
6. Finally, ask yourself what you need to do right now: "What specific activity do I need to engage in right now to make everything else work?"
7. Resolve to do something every day that moves you toward your major goal, whatever it is at the moment.

AMA: This assumes that your career issues are tied to corporate issues.

Tracy: Yes. If professional success is critically important to you, you have to determine the most important things that you do that relate to your career and do more and more of those things and less and less of others that contribute very little.

AMA: This would seem to make for a good dialogue between you and your boss.

Tracy: Yes. If you brought a list of ten tasks you do to your boss, you might want him or her to identify which are most important, next most important, and so on. We have found that 50 percent of time is wasted. It’s wasted on socializing, reading the paper, talking to friends, phoning home, going for lunch, whatever. The remaining 50 percent is spent on the job, and the majority of that is spent on low-value activities. One of the things that we teach when we're talking about career is to focus on contribution. What is the most important contribution that you can make? Then you focus on making that as quickly and dependably as possible before you do anything else.

AMA: How does this approach to time management differ from old-time prioritizing?

Tracy: What we say in talking to people about climbing the ladder of success is that you have to be sure that it is leaning against the right building. Many people are working very hard—and doing their work very well—but their ladder is leaning against the wrong building.

That’s why we start out in each area of life by careful analysis. In the area of careers, for instance, we ask what do you really want to accomplish—where would you want to be in three to five years and compare that to today. Next, determine what you have to do to get there. Sometimes it requires changing jobs. Sometimes it requires upgrading skills. Sometimes it requires completely upgrading priorities.

AMA: What about another area?

Tracy: Consider family and relationships. We ask our clients to consider what is really important to them about their family and their relationships. What do they value? What are their goals? What are the skills and abilities they will need to develop to enjoy the quality of their relationships more than ever before? Finally, we ask them about the habits they need to develop and the activities they need to engage in beginning right away.

AMA: So what is the focal point in work/family relationships?

Tracy: In relationships, the focal point is the amount of face-to-face time you spend with members of your family. If you master that—creating more face time—you will keep more people in your life.

The third category has to do with money.

AMA: What is the focal point there?

Tracy: Your long-term focal point is reaching that stage where you never have to work again. That becomes your long-term vision. Then your second focal point is how much you need to accumulate each and every month to achieve that vision.

Your job throughout your financial life is to increase the number of months based on your current expenditures you can live without working. So every single month you should ask yourself, "How am I doing?"

AMA: What does this mean to the average manager?

Tracy: You always have to say: When it comes to investing the time in my life, what should I be doing that will give me the greatest payoff? That’s what you focus on.

AMA: Where should we all start?

Tracy: We encourage people to work on the area of their lives with which they are most dissatisfied. Let’s say that you are happy with your career or your relationships but are unhappy with the state of your health. Maybe you are overweight. You start there. You work on those areas where improvements can make the greatest significant improvement in your overall life.

AMA: Why did you include professional development in your list of seven categories?

Tracy: A feeling of growth goes hand in hand with a positive mental attitude, high levels of motivation, a better personality. So growth is an inherent need of all of us. We encourage people to come up with a growth plan. We ask them, "What one new skill or ability would have the most positive impact on your life?" That becomes their focal point.

I say often that you are only one skill away from doubling your income. One additional skill will be just what you need to use all your other skills in a higher position.

One of the points I make in the book is that you will never get caught up. Therefore you have to decide what you are going to do more of and what you are going to do less of; what you are going to start and what you are going to stop; what to get into and what to get out of. You have to do this immediately. It isn't easy, but once you begin, you learn how. Your increase in productivity and life satisfaction is almost scary.

It’s a skill of thinking that is the most important for the 21st century.

To find out more about the book Focal Point, click here.