136 You Have a Book in You Use the Four D’s to Create Focus When there’s something that needs your attention, you have four choices: you can dump it, delegate it, defer it, or do it. I call them the four D’s. Dump it is probably the most important one to learn. 吀栀is has been tough for me. When you have a certain amount of success, you’ll 昀椀nd that you’ll get all kinds of o昀昀ers. You must learn how to say no. You can choose to say yes, but you must always remember that you have the ability to say no. Only then can you really focus on the things you want and need to do. Either delegate or stagnate. Delegate a task to some- one competent and desirous of doing an excellent job. I could do accounting, but I don’t like it, am not e昀케cient at it, and have experts who love crunching my numbers, so I delegate this task to them. Defer it. It you defer a task that must be done, give yourself a calendar reminder to complete it on this day at this time. Parkinson’s law suggests that work expands or con- tracts based on the time you have available for it. When a publisher mandated a delivery of a book that Jack and I had contracted to do, but had no time or interest in, we had to use Parkinson’s law. I quickly and e昀昀ectively inter- viewed 101 individuals. I pulled out their brilliance, wis-