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We spoke about discipline and I hope that is clear. We come to the next step in realizing and achieving our life goal and that is to keep track of our day. And I’m going to teach you a very quick and small and very simple but very powerful way to do that. And that is to keep a notebook. Just get a plain notebook. Now again when I say notebook I don’t mean any digital thing. I’ve got nothing against digital things but there is psychologically speaking there is a power in the written word which is written by hand. So get a notebook and a pen and write. This notebook what you should do is on the left side the left page that will be your page of goals for the day. And on the right side will be your page of achievement of those goals. So left side is the goal and right side is the achievement of those goals. So now take this book and every day before you go to bed write down three goals. Never more than three. Once you’re finished with three then you can go and write more if you like. But at one time only three. Three goals in order of priority. Most important, next important, next important. Every day. So do not go to sleep until you have written down three goals in order of priority. Once you have written those three goals then you go to sleep and next day before you go to sleep you analyze those three goals. And you say these are the three goals that I wrote yesterday and today what of these did I achieve? Did I achieve them? Did I not achieve them? Did I partially achieve them? What happened with my goals? This is very, very important that you write your three goals every day and in the night before you go to bed you analyze that and say how did I do with these goals? What was the level of my achievement? So this is a very important exercise which I strongly advocate that you do every day and as you can see it’s a very simple thing. Nothing complicated about it. Just a notebook and you’re writing this. Now you might come to a situation where one day you have written the goals down but when you look at your… in the evening you say well you know I didn’t do too well. Doesn’t matter. That’s a wake up call. Nothing to despair about. Wake up call. Just make sure that you don’t do the same thing the next day. Make sure that you do the right thing the following day. So this is very important to do. Second thing is for each of those goals that you write create metrics. I think I mentioned this before. The guy who invented the Six Sigma Quality Standard was a man called Michael Harry. That’s how he spelled his name. Michael Harry. He worked for Motorola and he created the Six Sigma Quality Standard. On a side note, the Six Sigma Quality Standard operates on the principle that you cannot measure how well you did something but what you can measure is the number of mistakes. So now imagine this. If I tell you that I have a business, I have an activity at which I am 99% successful, 99% good. And I ask you what do you think? I mean do you think this is… am I doing it well? Do you think this is good? I’m sure you will say yes of course. 99% good is fantastic. But give me… let me explain that to you in double Six Sigma. 99% means scale it. 99% is 10,000 mistakes per million. 99% is 10,000 mistakes per million because it’s one mistake per hundred which is 10,000 mistakes per million. Six Sigma is 3.4 mistakes per million. Compare 99% with Six Sigma, 99% is 10,000 mistakes per million. Six Sigma is 3.4 mistakes per million. Now if you are flying in a plane at 30,000 feet elevation and somebody tells you that these engines of this plane were built by such and such a company which operates at 99% good, 99% success. What will you feel? 10,000 mistakes per million which means for every million miles, these engines can field 10,000 times. Not a very comforting thought, right? So 3.4 mistakes per million compared to 10,000 mistakes per million. This is the difference between Six Sigma and 99%. Now why am I saying that to you? Because this is the power of the power of metrics of measurement. Unless we measure, we don’t know what is the level of efficiency of ourselves and our actions and our operations. So it’s very critical to measure. So set metrics for each one of your goals. Whatever your goals were for the three goals for the day, metrics which will tell you how you should be doing at those goals. And then when you do your assessment in the night, you are going to be looking at your goals in the context of those metrics. And you can then see what was the performance and how you did with this money. So this is very, very important to do. Goals, metrics and assessment every day. If you do this, inshallah, you will find that your time will never be wasted. You will be occupied in actual real goal achievement, which you can measure and which you, you know, you feel nice about that. You don’t need any external affirmation. You have your own figures and numbers. And especially for those in the corporate world and so forth. This is an excellent way also of helping your managers do your own performance, appraisal and assessment, which is what they will be knowing how you. Yes, it is. So your managers will to help them do your own performance assessment, because many times people complain, they say, Oh, you know, I did all this work. My manager never acknowledges anything. And the manager is against me and so on. My submission is, I don’t know if your manager is against you or not, but it would be very difficult for your manager to ignore and not acknowledge your work if you have a daily assessment report of your work. So all you need to do if you feel that your managers ignoring you or is discounting your work is show him your daily assessment book and say, this is what I have recorded for myself every single day. So try that and it works fantastically well. Remember one thing about whatever I say to you guys, which is that it’s like, you know, my childhood, I used to read Louis Lamour books, Western Louis Lamour books. I love reading them. He’s one of them. One of my favorite writers writes fantastically well. He had a state when he said, if I tell you about a stream, it is there and the water is good to drink. Now I say the same thing about anything that I teach. If I’m teaching you, it means I have tried it and it works. If I try something and it does not work, I will never teach it. So take my word for it. All you need to do is to make some effort. But what I’m teaching you is 100% guaranteed, inshallah, that this will work and just try it. And of course, keep your comments coming, questions coming. We’ll try and give you as many answers as we can. And I appreciate the questions, especially because it helps me to think in areas which I may not have thought of, you know, on my own. Thank you very much.
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