Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.

The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day the farmer drove up and said, ‘Sorry Chuck, but I have some bad news, the donkey died.’

Chuck  replied, ‘Well, then just give me my money back.’

The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.’

Chuck  said, ‘OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey.’

The farmer asked, ‘What ya gonna do with a dead donkey?

Chuck said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’

The farmer said ‘You can’t raffle off a dead donkey!’

Chuck said, ‘Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’

A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, ‘What happened with that dead donkey?’

Chuck said, ‘I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00.’

The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’

Chuck said, ‘Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.’

Chuck now works for Morgan Stanley.

Some people like to collect information.

Others just like to get stuff done.

Which are you?

In 2006, 1.93% of all households had annual incomes exceeding $250,000. (Wikipedia)

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

(Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)

And here’s the scary part: only 3% on North Americans are regular readers!

* The United Nations Global Audit of Web Accessibility (conducted by accessibility agency Nomensa on behalf of the United Nations) shows that 97 percent of websites fail to meet the most basic accessibility requirements.

* Robert Jaques wrote in www.vnunet.com, 07 Jan 2008: “Spam levels reached 97.02 per cent in December 2007 and viruses accounted for 0.11 per cent of email traffic, new monitoring data reveals. The figures suggest that less than three per cent of all email sent during the month was legitimate.”

How Top Achievers Set Goals: ‘Be’ vs. ‘Do’ Goals

Douglas Vermeeren writes, “For most top achievers, 80 percent of their goals are ‘Be’ goals and only 20 percent are ‘Do’ goals.

They’re more concerned with character attributes than arriving at a final destination point.

They know that character attributes often enable them to attain successful levels. So it’s not that top achievers don’t set goals; rather, they set goals differently. Rather than use the word ‘goal,’ top achievers use words like ‘destination’ or ‘performance’ or ‘habits.’ They don’t cross items off a list and forget about them, they build upon their accomplishments to reach even greater levels of success.”

Here’s how it works in practice:

The Three Percenters are WINNERS BY CHOICE. You have to BE before you can do, and DO before you can HAVE.

* The goal, “I will do what I say I will do, when I say I will do it, with no excuses”, is a DO goal.

* “I am unstoppable, determined, confident, reliable, and I never quit” is a BE goal.

Being that kind of person pretty much guarantees that you will succeed in achieving your DO and HAVE goals.

Getting into the Three Percent Club

Someone who never quits and is self disciplined, honest, and determined, will do whatever he or she has to do UNTIL he or she succeeds. Winning characteristics are a daily, continual choice and habit. A winner will work 24/7/365 and never make excuses. And those kind of people always end up at the top. The cream rises. The 97 Percenters are simply eagles that think they’re chickens.

It’s just a plain fact that business people get caught up in day-to-day activities, that makes it difficult to focus on the “right” things to do to be effective.

Time gets past you.

You find yourself putting tasks off, pushing them out to future dates or saying to yourself “I’ll get around to it”.

I’m no different.

I tend to agree to do more than I should. I hold on to tasks that should be delegated. Sometimes I’m simply inefficient.

Do you relate to this?

One of the smartest things that anybody has said to me is “schedule 2-3 hours per week and just sit there and think about the business, the big picture”.

No email, no Internet, no PC, no telephone, not interruptions.

Sounds feasible?

Well some interesting things will occur when you try this.

First of all, you will probably have to “force” yourself to actually follow-thru and make the time to do this activity. This will be especially true after the first time going thru about five times. After five weeks, it will start to become a very welcome habit.

Secondly, you may struggle to actually “do” something during your allocated time.

My first mentor insisted that even if I stared at a plain piece of paper and did nothing – that this would be OK. I would have given myself a rest from the day-to-day and given myself a chance to consider thinking strategically.

But the most productive activity that I’ve learnt to do during that time is go through your Visioneering and Journey Mapping process, which I’m going to cover next post.

Additionally, I personally add an exercise that I learnt from Chet Holmes, a masterful businessman and sales leader that used to run some of Charlie Mungers businesses. You may not have heard of Charlie, his Warren Buffets business partner and a multi-billionaire as well.

Chet devised this exercise to enforce constant and focused improvement from his management teams. www.chetholmes.com

I’ve taken Chet’s concept and adapted it for the “business” of investing.

The idea is simple – but extremely effective.

Each week, during your enforce “time-out”, take one hour and focus solely on thinking, planning, brainstorming and creating – using only pen and paper, each of the following topics. One per week for 12 weeks, then repeat.

By doing this, you’ll be devoting four quality hours per year to each of these balanced topics.

I’m not sure about you, but with no distractions, I can get an enormous amount of work done.

1. Enhance Your Skills Through Training
2. Balance Strategy versus Tactics
3. Research Opportunities
4. Enhance Your Presenting Skills
5. Enhance Your Delegation Skills
6. Refine Your Investment Processes
7. Revisit Old Opportunities
8. Time Management
9. Goal Setting
10. Model Successful Investors
11. Enhance Your Team
12. Understand Asset Allocation

One hour per week, completely focused on each topic.

The changes you make by doing this consistently, week in, week out, will be lasting and permanent.