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Do you wish you had more time? Do you feel like you are running in place? Tony Robbin's Time of Your Life is a 10-day program designed to help you create more time using the scientifically-proven Rapid Planning Method (RPM). The strategies taught in this program will free you from endless to-do lists and instead put your focus on purposeful action that drives real, consistent results
I know you are just as busy as I am so I've organized the information into three sections; The outcome and actions to achieve it, A condensed summary, and finally my full summary.
Outcome: Apply the life & time management strategies that will turn any dream into a reality.
List of Action Items
- Control your focus by asking yourself better questions about your desired result.
- Make sure you spend your time, emotion, and focus on what you can control or influence; Your state of mind, and what things mean.
- Create categories of improvement under both your personal and professional areas of management. Energize your emotional power by selecting juicy words to describe your role in each category.
- Identify and visualize your ultimate vision, purpose, resources, and goals.
- List and chunk all action items into a couple of clear and specific results or outcomes with a simple purpose.
- Follow the five master steps and plan a day; Capture ideas, create your RPM plan, commit to blocking time, schedule results, and complete, measure, and celebrate the results.
- Organize captured action items into an area of management, category, project, and RPM block
- Before your week begins, devote yourself to the weekly planning process, or hour of power; Review your vision, last week's results, active projects, and map this week.
- Think of an important decision you want to make, get resourceful, write down the situation without emotion, describe your ultimate vision, list your available resources and any limitations or constraints, then take yourself through the OOC/EMR decision making process; Outcome, Options, Consequences, Evaluate, Mitigate, Resolve
- Master everything you learned in this program by creating amazing results
- Experience Tony Robbins' Time of Your Life Program and become the master of your time and achieve fulfilling accomplishments
Condensed Content Summary
Creating An Extraordinary Quality Of Life: The Power Of Focus In order to control your time, you must learn to control your focus. Without making an effort to control your focus, you will waste time in reaction to fear, pleasure, and other people's demands. The quickest way to change your focus is to ask yourself better questions so you can get better answers and the desired result. RPM gives you a simple three-question process that will immediately focus your thinking; What do you really want? (The Result), Why do you really want it? (the Purpose), and what specific actions must you take to make this happen? (Massive Action Plan).
Time Targets: The Secret To Fulfillment The secret to destroying stress is by realizing that we have choices about where we spend our time and change our belief systems about urgency. The secret to fulfillment is doing those items that are very important to your goals but not urgent, The biggest shift in the quality of your life comes when you begin to tap into the power of leverage. You must be aware of those things out of your control and influence so you don't spend any time, focus, or emotion on them.
Creating Your Life Plan The RPM system starts with two areas of management; professional and personal. Within each of these, there are areas on which you must consistently focus and commit to constantly improve; Categories of improvement. these are areas that if you don't improve and balance, the quality of your life will suffer. You'll need to have specific goals for each of your categories that you will look at each week to see how you can improve them. Next, you need to add some emotional power by selecting empowering words to describe our experience and our roles as they relate to each category.
The Power Of Vision It's time you create a vision so compelling that you are driven to do whatever it takes to drive through the inevitable obstacles to achieve it. A vision you keep in front of you daily and each time you see it you believe you can achieve it and you really want to follow through. Next, define your ultimate purpose, roles, three areas to focus on, resources, 1-year results or outcomes, and finally RPM action items. You can break the yearly goals down into quarterly goals.
RPM: How To Get What You Really Want An RPM plan is a system of thinking in which you have a clear result, a compelling purpose to drive you, and a massive action plan that gives you unlimited choices about how to achieve your outcome. Creating a result-focused, purpose-driven, massive action plan is based upon three questions. What is the clear and specific result I want to achieve? What is my simple purpose that fuels follow through? What are all the specific actions do I need to take to achieve this result Next begins the process of taking a whole bunch of tasks and turning them into only one or two ideally-sized pieces which can be used effectively to produce the results you want. Remember don't focus only on the action items, in fact, you don't even need to complete all the action items, because it is all about the outcome or results you really want.
The Five Master Steps Of Planning There are five master steps to planning and producing results. The first step in the process is capturing the ideas out of your head and onto paper quickly then chunking together action items that have a natural relationship. Create your RPM plan by answering the three RPM questions. What is the specific result you want? What is the purpose that will drive me to follow through? What specific actions must I take in order to achieve this outcome or result? Commit to blocks of time when you will work on specific outcomes, then intelligently schedule each result. Finally, complete what it is you're going after to get your result, Measure whether you're on track or not, and then celebrate your results.
Projects: Turning Dreams Into Reality Remember an RPM plan, whether it's for a project, a week, or a day, will use the five master steps; Capture, RPM plan, commit, schedule, and complete, measure, and celebrate the results. Using the RPM system at first may take longer but you will begin to see patterns that will save you time, energy, and complications. When a result requires more than one action item then it becomes an RPM block, more than one RPM block creates a project, multiple projects that all relate to one another can all be organized under categories, and your categories are related to one of your areas of management. Each RPM plan requires a result, purpose, and action items. A result or outcome is a specific, measurable result that you want to achieve. Your purpose gives you the emotional reasons why you want to follow through. Action items are the specific activities that may be required to complete in order to produce the outcome or result that you are committed
to.
How To Get Started: The Weekly Planning Process With the weekly planning process of the RPM Life Management System, or hour of power, you will put your focus back on what you're really after. You have to turn your goals into reality through effective planning, follow-up, and belief you can reach them. You have done the same for every seemly impossible accomplishment you have today. The Weekly Planning process is reviewing your ultimate vision and your categories of improvement, reviewing last week's top 10-12 accomplishments and the most important things that needed to get done but didn't, reviewing your project to determine which actions must be taken this week, creating your 5-step master plan, and highlighting your top 3-5 outcomes or results that are the most important to focus on this week.
The Power Of Effective Decision Making Every decision can be converted into an RPM plan that will show up on a daily basis for you so that your dreams are quickly turned into reality. Your brain is constantly making three decisions; What am I going to focus on? What does this mean? and what am I going to do? The four reasons why people put off making decisions are fear, uncertainty, weak decision-making muscles, or feeling overwhelmed. The four rules for decision making are that they must be made on paper, must be clear about what you want and why you want it, are based on probability, and must be ordered by importance. The six steps to effective decision making (O.O.C. / E.M.R.). Be clear about the outcome, your purpose, and their order of importance to you, write down all of your options, What are the positive and negative consequences, use a evaluate the consequences of each option to eliminate some of the surpluses of options, resolve to select the options that provide the greatest certainty you will meet your desired outcomes and needs. If you are in the midst of a full-blown problem or crisis then you will want to take 4 simple steps before going through the six steps to effective decision making; get resourceful, define the current situation, get a clear vision for what you really want, and list the resources available to you and any constraints or limitations you may have.
The Ultimate Victory: Celebrating Your Life Your driving force section is an overview of your life containing your categories of improvement, ultimate vision, ultimate purpose, identity, code of conduct, and goals. Your monthly calendar is for you to keep track of scheduled meetings or events that must happen at a specific time. Your daily planner must include a section for capturing ideas and scheduling your actual time for the day. The weekly planner section is the overview of your week. Your project planner differs from your weekly planner because a week consists of several different outcomes, a project consists of several outcomes that are all related to the major result you want to produce. Use a free-form journal notes page as a place to capture your ideas, thoughts, and magic moments as well as a place to acknowledge your progress and solve the inevitable challenges that accompany leading a life of significance. Use a Communication planner for a typical address and
phone log but in addition, you should actually turn your communications into a clear conversation with a specific outcome. Your Code of Conduct is your set of standards for how you're going to be every day of your life that will create extraordinary results and amazing levels of fulfillment.
If you are not getting the results you want, perhaps it is because you are simply not paying enough attention to them. Tony Robbin's RPM system will transform your dreams into reality but you have to do the work. This is certainly not another planner but must learn to change your thinking. My summary only bearly scratches the service of the full power of this system. I wholeheartedly recommend you to attend a Tony Robbins conference or purchase the 10-RPM system.
For additional and more detailed information on Tony Robbins' Rapid Planning Method or if you want to read my full content summary continue reading below.
Full Content Summary
Creating An Extraordinary Quality Of Life: The Power Of Focus
To do things for your reasons will give you a lasting sense of drive instead of just a momentary feeling of motivation. Motivation is temporary; drive is permanent.
Do not mistake momentum for success. You may gain momentum from doing the right things but success comes from doing the right things long enough.
"Repetition is the mother of skill"
There is a difference between a goal and an outcome. People don't always achieve their goals, but they always attain an outcome.
"Success Without Fulfillment Is Failure." -Anthony Robbins
R.P.M. stands for A Results-Focused Purpose-Driven Massive Action Plan. RPM is a simple system of thinking that creates extraordinary results and an amazing level of personal fulfillment.
Time is driven by emotion. For this reason, a minute can feel like an eternity when you're not fulfilled but when you love what you're doing time literally ceases to exist. Anthony Robbins' system for life mastery is designed for you to set up your life in a way that keeps you consistently fulfilled, doing what is most important, and finding balance so that all the areas of your life work together in harmony. First, you must learn to control your focus. By changing your focus, you instantly change the quality of your life because you get or feel what you focus on. The power of the RPM system is that it causes you to consistently focus on what you want in life.
If you don't make a conscious effort to control your focus, you will soon find yourself living in reaction rather than living a life plan you've designed for yourself. Have you ever felt like you were simply crossing off items on a never-ending to-do list? The three areas that consistently demand our focus in the absence of a plan are fear, pleasure, and other people's demands. All human beings have a survival instinct to avoid pain. Focusing on future pain will guarantee drama, stress, and reactivity rather than fulfillment. Other people's demands are a form of pain too because we recognize that in order to maintain relationships with people we must meet their needs. Pleasure captures our attention because it gives us an immediate sense of accomplishment or distraction. The way to come out of reaction is to focus on where you want to go and not on fear, pleasure, or other people's demands.
In order to take control of your focus, first, you must learn to see the situation as it is, not worst than it is, create a vision for the situation to be better than it is, and develop an effective plan to make the situation the way you vision it.
The quickest way to change your focus is through the questions you ask yourself. The process of thinking is nothing more than the conscious or unconscious process of asking and answering questions. In order to get better results or outcomes, you must ask yourself better questions so you will come up with a better answer. Think of the different answers between "why can't I ever lose weight>" and "How can I lose weight and enjoy the process?". A new planner or piece of software will not change your life, only a new way of thinking and asking yourself some new questions.
RPM gives you a simple three-question process that will immediately focus your thinking; What do you really want? (The Result), Why do you really want it? (the Purpose), and what specific actions must you take to make this happen? (Massive Action Plan). With the RPM system, you don't need to do your whole to-do list; 20% of your actions will give you 80% of the results. The sequence in which you answer these questions totally affects the outcome. For example, you may know all the individual digits in a person's telephone number, but unless they are in the right sequence the numbers are useless. Those who succeed are always totally clear about the final result they are after.
The power of focus is obviously a both personal and business skill required for success. I'm sure you have known people who are more focused on Facebook than doing their jobs. Or perhaps your business dreams keep getting pushed further away because you can't seem to focus on completing the activities required to launch it. From this point forward, begin asking yourself better action-provoking questions to make progress to your goals.
Time Targets: The Secret To Fulfillment
In today's complex world, people tend to live in a state of stress; achieving things instead of experiencing the joy we truly desire. The secret to destroying stress is learning to live your life in the zone of fulfillment by realizing that we have choices about where we spend our time and change our belief systems about urgency. When you get too many important and urgent 'must' in your life, you're going to feel stressed. The zone of fulfillment means focusing your time on the things that really matter.
"So many of us are caught up in the act of making a living instead of designing a life."-Anthony Robbins
If you want to be fulfilled and achieve at a much higher level you must spend an average of 40-70% of your time in the zone of fulfillment.
More time is not a result of changing your schedule, but of changing your level of fulfillment. When you love what you're doing, time disappears.
Along with the zone of fulfillment the other time targets are the dimensions of distraction, delusion, and demand. The dimension of distraction refers to items that are not important and not urgent. this is where most of us go when we're stressed and we want something that requires no thinking. The dimension of delusion refers to items that are urgent but not important. People who spend their time in this zone delude themselves into believing that they have to do all these crazy things that keep them from doing the more important and fulfilling things in their lives. The dimension of demand refers to items that are urgent and important. There are always certain things that cannot be planned for that must be immediately dealt with but the goal is to be proactive and spend time anticipating doing those important things before they become urgent. Finally, the goal is the zone of fulfillment are doing those items that are very important but not urgent. A dimension in which your primary focus is on doing things that are with a sense of true purpose.
Do what you do best, Get other people to do the rest. What are the things that someone else could do for you? If money is a factor for you, then get creative. What service could you offer as a trade? The biggest shift in the quality of your life comes when you begin to tap into the power of leverage. Also, look for the patterns of the little things that tend to show up consistently for you. Are there systems you could put into place rather than repeating the same actions over and over again? Remember, there is always a way if you're committed.
The ultimate waste of time is to waste your thoughts, your focus, and your emotions stressed about things you cannot control. The only thing you have absolute control over is yourself and your emotional response to whatever happens in life. Some of the things you cannot control, you can influence. You must be aware of those things out of your control and influence so you don't spend any time, focus, or emotion on them.
If you have ever said you don't have time to work on your business, then perhaps this is the answer. You have been spending too much time on things not important to your ultimate goal. If you free up some of the time wasted then you would have created the time you need to be successful.
Creating Your Life Plan
"Simply by changing your habitual vocabulary, you can instantaneously change how you think, how you feel, and how you live." -Anthony Robbins.
How can you possibly plan your time if you don't have a plan for your life? The RPM system starts with two areas of management; professional and personal. Within each of these, there are areas on which you must consistently focus and commit to constantly improve; Categories of improvement. these are areas that if you don't improve and balance, the quality of your life will suffer.
Brainstorm the areas of your personal life and your professional life that you have decided are critically important to constantly improve. Imagine them as spokes in a wheel. If the center represents 0% and the outside of the circle represents 100% of where you want to be in this area of your life, where are you currently in each area? If this were a tire on your car called life, how would the car run at 20 mph?; or 100 mph? You need to find a way to round off your 'wheel' and create balance in your life so you are putting your time, energy, and focus into all the areas that matter most to you and can work at the highest level.
You cannot manage what you don't measure. You'll need to have specific goals for each of your categories that you will look at each week to see how you can improve them. Next, you need to add some emotional power. For most people, just changing one word completely changes what something means to them, and therefore how they feel. We can change how we feel in a moment simply by selecting different words to describe our experience.
What are the energizing roles you play as they relate to each category? List two or three playful, fun, and juicy roles so you can't wait to spend your time there.
After completing this step, instead of 100 to-dos on a list, you would have only a handful of outcomes you are determined to make happen. Organizing my thoughts in this way has relieved a lot of stress and allowed me to see and think clearer. Also, This part is not so unique that you can't just add categories that other people have mentioned that you think should be an area you want to improve as well. I imagine health is in the majority of everyone's categories of improvement.
The Power Of Vision
We all need a vision for our lives that inspires us and gives us enthusiasm for life. All successful people have passion and enthusiasm. It's time you create a vision so compelling that you are driven to do whatever it takes to drive through the inevitable obstacles to achieve it. The mechanics of how you manage your time are really only 20% of what it takes to get the results you want. 80% of your results in life are directly affected by your psychology.
"Where there is no vision, the people perish.." Proverbs 29:18
"Leaders go first and produce the results to make it possible for others to do the same." -Anthony Robbins
Habituating your psychology of fulfillment simply means making sure that the critical components of your life are constantly in front of you to remind you and keep you inspired. What do you need to keep in front of you daily so that you really want to follow through?
Everyone is on a success cycle but which direction are you going? The downward cycle means you believe you have limited potential, so you take a little bit of action, get limited results, and reinforce your belief. You are on an upward cycle you believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can get the result you want. So you tap into it with massive action and potential; reinforcing your belief. The only way to break out the downward spiral and get back on the success cycle is to get results in advance through a powerful vision. Before you change your actions, you must change your beliefs.
Create your life plan by using the magnificent seven pyramids for unstoppable momentum. Start by defining your ultimate vision, then your ultimate purpose, roles, three areas to focus on, resources, 1-year results or outcomes, and finally RPM action items. You can break the yearly goals down into quarterly goals.
Envisioning an amazing future is harder for some to do than others. Actually chasing it is harder still. Perhaps you have been in a downward spiral for some time and visualizing a better future seems impossible. The beauty of Tony Robbins' system that I have found is that you don't have to create only one vision and you're done. What if you created a more realistic vision, one that you could actually see happening if everything went right from now on? The momentum effect will kick in when you start to achieve that smaller vision and the realistic possibilities start to open up. The trick is to start somewhere, start anywhere, but start today!
RPM: How To Get What You Really Want
Chunking is the process of turning more into less!
Most people don't change or take action until they reach an emotional threshold.
In order to turn your dreams into reality, you have to have a system to make them happen. A goal is an idea with a deadline that becomes an outcome when you actually begin to develop a plan for how you are going to achieve it.
An RPM plan is a system of thinking in which you have a clear result, a compelling purpose to drive you, and a massive action plan that gives you unlimited choices about how to achieve your outcome. Creating a result-focused, purpose-driven, massive action plan is based upon three questions. What is the clear and specific result I want to achieve? What is my simple purpose that fuels follow through? What are all the specific actions do I need to take to achieve this result?
In order to succeed at anything and not be stressed, you have to be able to group the variety of action items together so that they help you accomplish a common outcome. Whether you try to take on a project all at once or make it into too many small steps, it's equally daunting, overwhelming, and frustrating. The process of getting good at something is learning to take a whole bunch of tasks and turn them into only one or two ideally-sized pieces which can be used effectively to produce the results you want. RPM is a visual chunking device. Remember don't focus only on the action items because it is all about the outcome or results you really want.
Chunking is a powerful tool when applied. It turns crazy million-dollar goals into easily achievable $10,000 goals. Time is usually the factor that I miscalculate. Going from $0 to one million in one week is nearly impossible but creating a million in 5 years is a simple process. Mastering the chunking process requires some trial and error; you will not get it right for you the first time. The more you pay attention the better you will become at the process and the closer you will be to accomplish even the biggest results you want to achieve.
The Five Master Steps Of Planning
There are five master steps to planning and producing results. Whether you're planning your day, your week, or a project, they're the same. The five master steps are to capture your ideas, wants, and needs, create your RPM plan, commit to blocking time and resolving your 'musts', schedule and anticipate the results and rewards, and complete, measure, and celebrate the results.
You cannot manage what you don't measure.
You can be winning when you think you're losing if you don't keep score.
One of the things we often do is to condition ourselves to believe we have no time by saying that we're so busy we don't have time for anything else.
"To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream; not only plan but also believe." - Anatole France
The first step in the process is quickly capturing your ideas, phone calls, and communications. In this step, you're simply getting the ideas out of your head and onto paper quickly. The second half of this step is to chunk together action items that have a natural relationship.
Creating your RPM plan is the critical step in creating real results by reviewing your chunked capture list and answering the three RPM questions. What is the most important result or outcome I must produce in order for this day, week, or project to be both successful and fulfilling? Why do I want to do this? What is my purpose? How will it make me feel to produce this result or outcome? What are the reasons that will drive me to follow through? What specific actions must I take in order to achieve this outcome or result? What's the very first thing I must do in order to achieve this outcome/result? Once you've completed your RPM blocks juice them up significantly by prioritizing the most important action items, identify the 20% of your actions that would make 80% of the difference, establish the amount of time it will take to complete each action item, and uncover the leverage you have available through being creative.
No plan will be worthwhile unless you bring the emotion to the plan; it's 80% of the battle. The other 20% is mechanics; you must commit to blocks of time when you will work on specific outcomes. Then, once you've committed your time you can intelligently schedule blocks of it.
To schedule your day, you must schedule those items that must take place at a specific time, such as meetings, telephone conversations, etc. These are items that must occur at a specific hour and cannot fluctuate.
Finally, complete what it is you're going after to get your result, Measure whether you're on track or not, and then celebrate your results. To ensure you are measuring your progress daily at the end of each day, go through each RPM block and check off the items that are done, cross off any items that you decide are not necessary to achieve your outcome, and carry over uncompleted items to the next day. Once you've achieved your results, it's important to celebrate! Remember, any thought, feeling, emotion, or behavior that is consistently reinforced will become a habit. Keep score of your wins.
This step is where I think your dream is no longer a dream but a possible future. For the better part of my life, I continuously failed to complete this step. The result was me telling everyone that one day I would be a millionaire but couldn't pay my rent. This step does require discipline so it is important you have a real purpose driving you through the toughest parts. Having a plan on paper is an amazing feeling because it feels real.
Projects: Turning Dreams Into Reality
"The way to expand our lives is to model the lives of those people who are already succeeding." - Anthony Robbins
Sometimes in order to achieve a large outcome or result, you must first achieve several smaller outcomes. Thus, you need more than one RPM block, which constitutes a project.
Identify the key results needed to accomplish a project, each of these key results will turn into an RPM block. Remember an RPM plan, whether it's for a project, a week, or a day, will use the five master steps; Capture, RPM plan, commit, schedule, and complete, measure, and celebrate the results.
People who are really good at something, utilize the power of pattern recognition. If you want to achieve a common result such as losing weight, then it would save you time and energy, and get a competitive edge if you don't start from scratch. As you are learning to create your RPM plans, you will begin to see patterns that will save you time and energy. What may have once taken you a significant amount of time to accomplish will be handled much more quickly once you put the RPM system into practice. Meaning, using the RPM system at first may take longer but over time your will be able to accomplish results faster than before.
Our goal is to constantly simplify. The RPM system of thinking organizes even the most complex life or business into manageable chunks. Instead of a million action items, we can narrow our focus first to one of the two areas, either personal or professional; then to one specific category in that area; then to one project, one RPM block, and finally down to individual action items. An action item is one simple, specific, measurable action that you can take today. RPM blocks require more than one action item to accomplish their own outcome and purpose. An RPM block might take a day, an hour, or a week to complete. Projects can take a week or even months to accomplish and require more than one RPM block to achieve the result you're after. A project that has so many outcomes that it feels overwhelming might be a mega-project. Ongoing categories, each with its own vision and goals, are the central components in making it easier to mage your life. Finally, most people only need two areas of management. personal and professional, but if you're responsible for managing a division, a team, or an entire company, you might want a third area of management.
When something requires more than one action item then it becomes an RPM block, more than one RPM block creates a project, multiple projects that all relate to one another can all be organized under categories, and your categories are related to one of your areas of management.
The criteria for categories of improvement is an area of your life that requires constant and consistent focus and improvement, has several projects associated with it, and will likely extend throughout a quarter, year, or longer. The criteria for projects is that there are multiple outcomes required to achieve the result you're after and will require more than a week or even months to accomplish. The criteria for an RPM block is that the result you're after requires more than one action most likely to be done in a day or a week. Criteria for an action item is one simple, specific, measurable action that you can take today.
A result or outcome is a specific, measurable result that you want to achieve. Could your outcome be made more specific? Use words like create, establish, determine, begin, resolve, maintain, or make progress. Your purpose gives you the emotional reasons why you want to follow through. Use words that give you power rather than words that just sound important. Action items are the specific activities that you must complete in order to produce the outcome or result that you are committed to.
Creating RPM plans takes way more time than just creating a to-do list. The difference is every time you complete a to-do item there are always more items to complete. In the end, you do not complete any real results or obtain the desired outcome. An RPM plan helps you focus on the actual result you are looking for and gives you the pleasure of completion. As a bonus, you can enjoy the process knowing it has an achievable and rewarding end.
How To Get Started: The Weekly Planning Process
People often say they don't have time for their goals because they are responding to the synthetic demands of our culture. With the weekly planning process of the RPM Life Management System, or hour of power, you will put your focus back on what you're really after. First, you have to realize that goals are not enough; they are just a place to start. You have to turn your goals into reality through effective planning, follow-up, and belief you can reach them.
The following exercise was designed to help you restore your certainty that your goals really do matter. In fact, you have already been using RPM for most of your life! Take a few moments to write down a list of big and little things in your life that at one time were desires, dreams, or goals that you now have but at the time seemed extremely difficult or impossible to achieve or acquire. Next, take two items you once thought were virtually impossible and write down the steps you went through to turn each of them into reality. See if there's a similar process or pattern that you can identify. By doing this, you should have discovered that you've been using RPM all along. anytime you achieved something significant, you developed a clear goal (result), a burning desire (purpose), ad figured out some action items to make it work.
The Weekly Planning process begins with connecting to your driving force. Review your ultimate vision, ultimate purpose, true identity, code of conduct, values & rules, and virtues. Next, own your categories, roles, goals, and resources for your personal life, professional life, and any other area of management you have. Create an RPM plan for an outstanding week. Learn for the last week by reviewing the top 10-12 accomplishments and the most important things that needed to get done but didn't. Review your project to determine which actions must be taken this week. Create your 5-step master plan; capture, create your RPM plan, commit to blocking time, schedule it, and complete, measure, and celebrate. Finally, select and highlight your top 3-5 outcomes or results that are the most important to focus on this week.
If you ever felt like you wasted your entire week, month, or year it is probably due to the fact that you didn't plan to succeed. Those to fail to plan, plan to fail. In my experience, mapping out your week doesn't always mean you will achieve the success that week but doing it every week ensures that you won't waste any more than one week not chasing after what you really want. At the very least you will be able to identify the things that are holding you back from real results and work on removing them so you can then accomplish real results. Just like Tony said, in the beginning, this will seem like it takes more time and is pointless but it works, recenters you, and provides you will the momentum to accomplish anything you set out to.
The Power Of Effective Decision Making
Maturity is anticipating the consequences of your decisions in advance of making them.
Success is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience. Experience is often the result of bad judgment.
One option is no choice, two options are a dilemma, but three options are a choice.
Every decision carries consequences that will affect the quality and direction of your life. This section is designed to teach you a strategic process to make decisions so you create choices for your life that empower you. Every decision can be converted into an RPM plan that will show up on a daily basis for you so that your dreams are quickly turned into reality. Your brain is constantly making three decisions; What am I going to focus on? What does this mean? and what am I going to do? RPM provides a model for ensuring that you are answering these three questions consciously so that you move in the direction of what you want.
The four reasons why people put off making decisions are fear, uncertainty, weak decision-making muscles, or feeling overwhelmed. Many people are afraid of failing or making the wrong decision but remember the only failure is failing to decide. Once you have made a decision, the rest is easy. Most people have an illusion that decisions are made based on certainty, but the truth is they must be made based on the greatest probability. The only way to strengthen your decision-making muscles is to make more decisions. if you make the wrong decisions then learn quickly and make more. We are constantly pressured to make decisions based on the information that surrounds and overwhelms us, that is why we need a system that will cause us to focus on our outcomes and produce results that will benefit us most in the long term.
The four rules for decision making are that they must be made on paper, must be clear about what you want and why you want it, are based on probability, and must be ordered by importance. Do not make decisions in your head! This causes a 'looping process' that makes effective decision-making difficult and drives people crazy. The only way you will know you have achieved your outcome is with the evidence of it having been written down. Rarely will you have the luxury of absolute certainty, make timely and intelligent decisions based on probability. Often, you will have several outcomes you want to achieve simultaneously so you must be clear about the order of importance of all these outcomes.
The six steps to effective decision making (O.O.C. / E.M.R.). Be clear about the outcome, your purpose, and their order of importance to you, write down all of your options, What are the positive and negative consequences, use a evaluate the consequences of each option to eliminate some of the surpluses of options, resolve to select the options that provide the greatest certainty you will meet your desired outcomes and needs.
If you are in the midst of a full-blown problem or crisis then you will want to take 4 simple steps before going through the six steps to effective decision making; get resourceful, define the current situation, get a clear vision for what you really want, and list the resources available to you and any constraints or limitations you may have. To get resourceful you must decide you're going to solve this. You must stop focusing on the problem and start focusing on the solution. Get perspective from others who have successfully dealt with such a problem before. Remember what pulled you through a tough time in your life and uncover if you can utilize that resource in this situation. Believe that if you're committed, there is always a way. You must define the current situation as factually as possible without your 'story' altering the situation. Write down exactly how you want this situation to turn out. List all the resources you could utilize to help solve this problem. List only the real limitations or parameters to solving this problem.
All success begins with making a real decision. I believe most people who fail, never actually made the decision to try. I usually hear the phrases like "let's just try and see" or "this probably won't work but I'll give it a try" The problem is until you make an unchangeable decision, you don't put in the amount of energy it requires to succeed. If you want to lose weight then it is not enough to simply go to the gym and walk leisurely on the treadmill. Like Tony Robbins says, the only way to get better at decision-making is to make more decisions. Once you make a decision, follow through until you get an outcome.
The Ultimate Victory: Celebrating Your Life
Now that you have made it to session 10, you have the equivalent of a master's degree in managing your life. In this session, you will learn how each section of your RPM Life Planners works. Remember, RPM is a system of thinking not just another planner.
Do not follow me, for I am not your leader. Do not lead me because I will not follow you. Please, walk beside me now and be my friend.
Your driving force is an overview of your life. Every week you will use this section to do your weekly planning as it contains your categories of improvement, your ultimate vision, your ultimate purpose, your identity, your code of conduct, and your goals.
Your monthly calendar is for you to keep track of scheduled meetings or events that must happen at a specific time. Remember, you do not want to use your monthly calendar to write a "to-do" list or anything else. You just need to be able to book new events that don't conflict with scheduled commitments for the current month, quarter, or even year.
Your daily planner must include a section for capturing ideas, results, actions, projects, communications, and follow-ups, scheduling your actual time for the day filled first with appointments and meetings and then with block times to work on the outcomes you want to achieve that day and your RPM master plan for the day.
The weekly planner section is the overview of your week, planned out before the week starts, You will use this section anytime during the week that you think of something you want to do but don't have a specific day to need to do it. Guide all captured items into your RPM master plan.
Your project planner differs from your weekly planner because most projects will happen over a longer period of time than a single week. A week consists of several different outcomes, a project consists of several outcomes that are all related to the major result you want to produce.
If your life is worth living, it's worth recording. Use a free-form journal notes page as a place to capture your ideas, thoughts, and magic moments as well as a place to acknowledge your progress and solve the inevitable challenges that accompany leading a life of significance.
Use a Communication planner for a typical address and phone log but in addition, you should actually plan your communications. Consider the people you speak to daily, weekly or even monthly. You should have a designed place to capture anything you want to communicate to them and turn them into a clear conversation with a specific outcome. For your most important conversations, you will actually create an RPM Master Plan. Keeping a communication planner will allow you to capture commitments made by you and others during conversations. You can group contacts together by subject matter, such as inspiring quotes or jokes.
The emotional flood process is designed to help you take control of your life and focus on the positive. Eliminate your old problems and visualize blasting them out of your life, flood yourself with positive images, feelings, and the most enjoyable memories of your past, step into the future by seeing the images and feeling the emotions you will experience when you finally achieve what you're really after in life.
Your Code of Conduct is your set of standards for how you're going to be every day of your life that will create extraordinary results and amazing levels of fulfillment. In order to be fulfilled, we need to consistently meet our Six Human Needs; certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth, and contribution. The secret to living is giving. What emotions or states are you committed to practicing and living in every day?
You now own the key to a life of amazing results and extraordinary fulfillment. Use Tony Robbin's RPM system to design the life of results you want.
Works Cited
Robbins, Anthony. "Rapid Planning Method" Time of Your Life Program, Robbins Research International, 2017.
