THE DAY BEFORE YOU GO ON VACATION By Zig Ziglar

(Excerpted from the Jim RohnWeekend Seminar-Excelling in the
New Millennium)

How do you achieve employment security in a world where there
is no employment security? I start with a question. How many
of you consider yourself to be honest and at least reasonably
intelligent? Can I see your hands, please? Okay. How many of
you honest, intelligent people, as a general rule, get about
twice as much work done on the day before you go on vacation
as you normally get done? Can I see your hands, please?
Well…Glad to see so many honest folks. Now I am going to ask
you a long question, so stay with me all the way through. If
we can figure out why and learn how and repeat it everyday
without working any longer or any harder, does it make sense
that we will be more valuable to ourselves, our company, our
family and our community? Does that make any sense at all? The
answer is "Yes".

I want to make it crystal clear that I am going to be talking
to you about you, not going to be talking about anybody that's
not here, but to you about you. You have already confessed
that you are honest and intelligent. Now how many of you on
the night before the day before vacation, got your laptop out
or a sheet of paper out and said, "Now tomorrow, I've got to
do this and this…" How many of you did that? Can I see your
hand? We coined a very clever name for that. We call that goal
setting. So, you set your goal. Then you got them organized in
the order of their importance.

Let me encourage you to make one slight change there. If you
have got to go give Charlie the worst possible news, and he is
the 5th on the list of gotta do's, when you finish the first
one, the next order on your mind is "Gotta talk to Charlie."
Finish the second one, "Gotta talk to Charlie." See Charlie
first. Get the disagreeable things and difficult things out of
the way first. Free your mind, so you can concentrate on what
else you have got to do. You got it organized. You accepted
responsibility. You made the commitments. You know some people
are about as committed as a kamikaze pilot on his thirty-ninth
mission. They just don't make it a serious thing.

Now commitment is important whether it is to get your
education, make one more call, whether it's to keep the
marriage together, whatever. Commitment is important because
when you hit the wall, not if, when you hit the wall, if you
made a commitment, your first thought is, "How do I solve the
problem?" If you haven't made the commitment, your first
thought is, "How do I get out of this deal?" And we find
literally what we are looking for. When you make that
commitment, things happen. It shows that you really care about
the other people there. It demonstrates that you are
dependable. Even though you're leaving town, you're not going
to leave an unfinished task for the other people to do. Your
integrity comes through.

Now the beautiful thing about integrity, when integrity is
part of you as a person and is part of your life, you do the
right thing. When you do the right thing, you have nothing to
feel guilty about. With integrity you have nothing to fear
because you have nothing to hide. Now think about it, with
guilt and fear both removed from your back, doesn't it just
make sense that you can function more effectively? You will be
freer to do the right thing always. Not only that, but that's
the way you take steps up. You know Emerson said, "If you
would lift me up, you've got to be on higher ground". And
truer words were never spoken. You also, when you look at
this, what you decide to do is you're going to work smarter;
and you're optimistic you're going to get it done.

How many of you ever participated in organized, team sports?
Can I see your hands? How many of you ever went home one night
and said to your parents, "Mom or dad, you can't believe the
game plan the coaches worked out. Man alive, it was
incredible. We're going to kill those suckers tomorrow. You
can count on it." You were optimistic simply because you had a
plan of action and so you were optimistic that the next day
you were going to be able to get all of these things done.

Now some of us are born optimistic, and some are born
pessimistic. For your information the 1828 Noah Webster does
not have the word pessimist in it. It has the word optimist.
Now I am a natural born optimist. I really am. I would take my
last two dollars and buy a money belt with it. That's the way
I'm put together; but the good news is if you are a natural
born pessimist, you definitely, emphatically, positively can
change. You are a pessimist by choice because you are what you
are and where you are because of what's gone into your mind.
You can change what you are; you can change where you are by
changing what goes into your mind.

Anyway, the next day, you not only got there on time, you were
a little early, and you immediately got started. You didn't
stand around and say, "Well, I wonder what I ought to do now."
You couldn't wait to get after it. You wanted to do the right
thing, so you really got started in a big hurry. You were
enthusiastic about it. You were highly motivated. You
decisively move from one task to another. Now I am going to
camp on this one for just a moment.

As a general rule, how many of you have noticed that people
who have nothing to do want to do it with you? Can I see your
hands? Okay. Now, on this day before vacation, when you finish
one task, you move with purpose to another one. And people
will not block you for that two-minute gossip session or
four-minute or five-minute or six-minutes. I am absolutely
convinced, no doubt about it that the listener has more to do
with the gossiping than the speaker because if you don't
listen, you're not going to have the guy or gal talking to
you. They just aren't. When you move with purpose, people will
step aside and let you go.

I will absolutely guarantee you, you will save a minimum of an
hour a day in two-minute, three-minute, five minute things. An
hour a day is five hours per week is 250 hours per year. That
is six weeks of your life that you've wasted and six weeks of
combination time that you have wasted with the people who were
giving the gossip to you. What could you do with six extra
weeks every year? You focus on the issue at hand. You are
disciplined to stay with it until you finish, and the neat
thing about discipline, Cybil Stanton gave me the best
definition of it I have ever heard in her book The Twenty Five
Hour Woman. "Discipline isn't on your back needling you with
imperatives. It is at your side encouraging you with
incentives."