Tag: Time Management

Before talking about the secret to sensational success or even outlining a formula, it’s important to define success and just what it means to you. Everyone has their own individual definition of success. But there’s absolutely no way we can talk about the secret to success without first creating some definition of what success actually means to us.

Success in life has nothing to do with where you start. Sure, people who start advantageously in one area or another might have a leg up, but it has almost nothing to do with where they end up in life. Sensational success transcends circumstances.

Many people talk about success. They say they want to be successful at something. But, when prodded, they don’t provide specifics because they haven’t really created those specifics in their minds. Sure, they might want to earn more money, drive a nicer car, get a better job, or travel to some far-off destination, but they haven’t set specific and measurable goals that are written down on paper.

Secret No.1

HOW TO BREAK BAD HABITS AND BUILD ONES?

Habits become hard to break to because they are deeply wired by constant repetition into our brains. Bad habits interrupt your life and prevent you from accomplishing your goals. They jeopardize your health — both mentally and physically. And they waste your time and energy. But habits are also patterns of behavior and it is the breaking of patterns that are the key to breaking the habits themselves. Usually there is a clear trigger to starts the pattern. Sometimes the triggers are emotional — the wanting a drink or cigarette or nail-biting driven by stress. Other times the trigger is more simply situational and environmental: You see the TV and couch as soon as you hit the front door, and now your brain connects the dots, and eating dinner in front of the TV on the couch is not far behind. More often it is a combination of both — the mix of social anxiety and the party environment leads to your heavier drinking.       

Choose a habit you care about doing regularly. Don’t worry about whether other people think it’s important. For instance, don’t try to exercise every day because you think you should. It won’t be long before your motivation for doing that habit will wane and you’ll be relying on willpower alone to get you through (not a great idea—we only have so much willpower, so you want to find a way to build habits without relying on it too much).                 

If you choose, on the other hand, to walk your dog every day or to play outside with your kids, those habits might come with a lot more motivation for your personally than going to the gym. And yet, they happen to include some exercise. See how that works?                      

 Find something you’re motivated to do. You’ll need that motivation to keep you going, since habits can be an uphill battle until they become ingrained.           

 The more often you do your habit, the stronger it will become. Each repetition enforces it as a behavior and strengthens the pathways in your brain related to it. Eventually, all that repetition makes the behavior automatic, something you do without thinking about it, which is when we call it a habit.                   

 If you’re only doing something once or twice a week, it’s going to take a long time for that behavior to develop into a habit. You’re spending more of your week not doing it.                

 Try to find a habit you can track every day, or every weekday at least. The more you do it, the faster you’ll develop it into a real habit.                 

If you aim to run 5km every day after not exercising for the past two years, you probably won’t keep that up for long. To keep on track with your new habit you need to choose something achievable so you’ll always feel that if you make the effort you can do it.

The last thing you want is ability getting in the way when you’re already battling with your willpower.

If you need to choose something tiny to start with, go for it. Better a tiny habit that you do every day than a   huge one you hardly ever complete.

  Secret No.2

  HOW TO IDENTIFY WHICH ARE WASTEFUL HABITS?

Habits can be difficult to change, but it is possible to replace them with new behaviors. When you replace bad habits with activities that focus on that worthwhile 20 percent, you’ll find yourself much more successful in the same amount of–or perhaps even less–time per week.                   

         

People will always want to schedule meetings. It makes them feel more productive, but if there is nothing to gain, it ends up being just a big fat waste of time. Know what you’re getting into before stepping foot into a meeting before you just waste time talking about what could be or what could have been.               

Getting rid of bad people is probably even more crucial than bringing in great people. If you don’t get the wrong people out quickly, you’re only doing half your job. It might sound like a rationalization, but it is quite likely that you’re doing a favor to this employee if you make that decision sooner, and let them go. It can be beneficial to everyone involved, with no hard feelings.                            

Cut those customers who always want something but don’t pay. The ones that don’t value what you have to offer, and constantly question your prices. If they don’t value you now, they never will, and you’ll constantly be justifying the work you do, no matter how cheap.                         

Cut them loose. Give them the heave-ho. tell them goodbye and never look back. Only work with clients who appreciate your value.                          

We have been trained to look for shortcuts. Copy-pasting, plagiarizing, repurposing, skimming, the list goes on and on. But in my experience, shortcuts always lead to failed projects and unhappy clients.                          

Hopefully, someone will catch the mistakes inherent in shortcuts and make you fix it, or start over from scratch. You spend more time fixing the mistake than you saved by taking the shortcut; if it’s the who client catches these mistakes, not only will it cost you time and money, but also their respect and confidence.                           

Do you come into the office with a plan? Do you have an agenda for that day or week? Do you know what items you need to tackle today and in what order          

If not, then congratulations: you’re “winging it”.                   

To “wing” something means to enter any situation without a plan of action. When you “wing” your day, you get pulled into every meeting, and you usually respond to every call.                       

By starting your day with a plan of your priorities, you don’t waste time, and you know what items take priority; not only do the most important tasks get accomplished first, but you are able to finish more tasks overall because you waste less time leaving items half-finished and coming back to them later.

 Secret No. 3

HOW TO VALUE YOUR TIME & LEVERAGE IT TO MAKE ITS BEST USE?

Sure, tactics like maintaining “to-do” lists (or “done” lists), setting goals, and decreasing the amount and time of meetings can all help. But really, these are all tactics that fall into a strategical category of leveraging our time.

Leverage is an awesome force–it allows us to multiply our abilities by applying a little pressure to something.

What a sharp contrast from our modern day! Now, words are cheap: they are everywhere, constantly bombarding us with useless information and trivial tweets. Heartfelt letters to a lover are rare. More often, we see texts sent with emoticons and mutilated misspellings.

The sad truth is, few of us place value in the words we speak. We open our mouths to hear the music of our own voices, rarely considering the worth of what we are saying.

A man’s reputation can be ruined by loose lips. Just look at politics. The more we say, the more likely we are to say something stupid. The sheer volume of words issuing from our mouths statistically invites idiocy. We all have had moments when we’ve made everyone laugh a few times, but it all stops when we say something off-putting. The humor quickly evaporates, leaving us with reddened faces.

Especially when dealing with our bosses or members of the opposite sex, we can be tempted to avoid awkward silence by filling it with even more awkward chatter. This can inevitably lead to saying something regrettable and possibly offensive.

The less we talk, the more we observe! Our idle words that flow from our mouths with little consequence, are often the outpouring of our minds chattering away. When we stop talking, restraining our words, we will find that that the voice inside also grows silent. This allows us to get out of the world in our heads, and look at the world around us, seeing things that we might not have noticed before.

On the range, inattention to the world around you was dangerous. The very land itself was ready to kill you at any moment. If you were idly talking about nothing with your guard down, you wouldn’t have noticed a hostile enemy creeping up behind you with knife in hand.

While we don’t necessarily need to be worried about being scalped at the office, being absorbed in our world is still dangerous. It can range from not seeing the car pulling out in front of you or failing to observe a girl is interested in you. When we pull ourselves from the constant flow of words in our minds and out of our mouths, it frees us to really see what is going on in our lives.

When speaking to others, it is good to keep what you are saying in the right tone. Telling jokes while attending a funeral isn’t often a great idea.

Is there impact to what you are about to say? When you speak, you should have a better reason for what you say than, “I wanted to.” Ideally, everything you say should have a purpose or reason. Maybe your friend is feeling down and you know that he loves a good joke. Your girlfriend has had a bad day, so you tell her something encouraging that you love about her. The goal is to reduce the amount of unnecessary things you say, because it’s usually the unnecessary words we later regret.

No doubt, at times a cowboy would give someone a piece of his mind, regardless of whether or not it hurt the other’s feelings. This was done with courage because it could easily provoke a gunfight and had more behind it than mere spite. Today, we don’t often come to blows or gunfire over insults, but that doesn’t mean we should weigh the consequences less. Speaking the truth hurts at times. Saying off-handedly to your wife or girlfriend that the dinner she made was OK may not seem harmful; but the comment may hurt them more than you realize.

At the end of the day, we don’t have much more than our reputations. A Cowboy certainly didn’t. We should take care that our words don’t reflect badly on ourselves. The easiest way for a powerful man to seem foolish is to run his mouth off, revealing to all how little control he actually has over himself. What we choose to say often reveals our character.

Secret No.4

HOW TIME LOG SHOULD BE USED TO MAINTAIN YOUR FOCUS?

The problem with working harder is that it simply doesn’t work. The human brain isn’t designed to operate at full power all day long. Rather than helping you get closer to your goals, trying to focus for extended periods of time can fry your mental circuits, making it impossible to think clearly. As a result, your decision-making and creativity suffer, and your work slows to a crawl. Focus also involves an understanding of what is worthy of your distraction.

Many people wish they had more time to do all they want to do, but they’re ‘just so busy’.

Keeping a time log is a simple and surprisingly effective way to boost your productivity, get what needs to be done actually done, and realize just how ‘busy’ you’ve really been.

In many respects, it’s the first step you need to take because it makes you aware of just how you’re spending your time — the key to managing yourself more effectively.

Just by making the effort to record and analyze how you spend your day will itself raise awareness of your time and how you’re using it.

The time you invest to do it will almost certainly be paid back to you many times over as you become more conscious of how much your time matters?

Keeping a personal time management log helps you identify what you’re spending too long on… or not doing enough!

It’s surprising just how disruptive and destructive a break in focus can be for your productivity.

Often, it’s only when you look back that you can see just how much time was wasted on low value activities that you could easily outsource to others, or not get involved in at all.

Spot patterns that highlight what times of day you’re most likely to be productive, and also when you’re less so. Knowing your patterns of productivity is useful for planning.

Secret No.5

HOW TO WATCH YOUR PERSPECTIVE OF LIFE AND KEEP UPDATING IT?

Perspective has many definitions, such as the ability to understand what is important and what isn’t, and the capacity to view things in their true relationship or relative importance. If you are only thinking about problems and sorrows, that’s exactly what are you going to attract in your life. If you change your perspective and start thinking about solutions and opportunities, you are sending vibrations to attract an abundance of them.

Are you having trouble looking for the silver lining? Feeling burned out can negatively affect your life as well as your career.

Try writing a page or two on what you would like to do with the rest of your life. Don’t worry about grammar, practicalities or priorities. Just create that dream list.

Record your thoughts, feelings and hopes, or tell them to a trusted friend. With someone to witness them, you’ll feel responsible for making some changes.

It’s nice to have goals. The act of setting goals along makes you much more likely to achieve them.

But having goals isn’t enough. It’s far too easy to jot down some goals that make you feel good about yourself, only to then get distracted and forget about them altogether.

The key to achieving your goals is really simple. It comes down to aligning your actions with your goals — every single day.

If you want to lose weight, you need to eat better. If you want to build muscle, you need to lift weights. If you want to write a book, you need to start writing.

And if you want to grow your business, you need to start doing some marketing.

Goals are helpful to direct your steps. But more important than goals is the strong reason “why” you work for those goals.

When you know the deep reason why you seek for them, you’ll be more motivated to push through.

You’ll intentionally seek for opportunities that align with your “why”. You’ll filter your actions that do not support it. You’ll start your day with clarity. It’s never impossible for you to enjoy life and make a living at the same time. You can work hard or do more and still feel fulfilled.

You lose your journey to a fulfilling life when you settle your eyes on the metrics of others.

When you examine yourself, you slowly find out why you do certain actions.

When employees don’t know their company’s mission, vision or core values, they are left with a lack of direction. Instead, they need to be aware of how their projects fit into the overall organizational framework and how their specific contributions impact company strategy.

The key here is alignment. Employees at all levels need to be aligned on their companies’ larger goals, and those goals need to be broken down to a smaller scale to ensure that people remain engaged in day-to-day operations.

Managers who consistently provide feedback can help keep employees focused on their performance. Feedback acts as a reminder. Without it, employees get too caught up in their daily tasks and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Employees see the value in feedback, as well. Work board found that 72 percent of employees surveyed thought their performance would improve with more feedback. Job feedback should focus on growth and forward thinking by and how employees can learn from their mistakes.  

Additionally, employers should seek feedback from their staff. If employees feel that they aren’t informed properly or are missing information, they should be able to speak up.

If, for example, a tenured employee finds new directives to be off track, he or she should be able to express concerns and ask how a particular project contributes to the overall organizational goals.

Employees should know their role in each of their projects. To help them do this, you can use visuals to explain the company’s overall strategy and how each role advances toward its goals. Some project-management platforms provide real-time goal-tracking and present it in charts and graphs to demonstrate individual and group progress.

It’s also important to assign the right tasks to the right people. Use feedback and performance reviews to understand each employee’s level of competency and what his or her strengths are, to maintain and even improve productivity. If particular employees excel at closing sales deals, put them on the front line on client presentations.

Tasks, further, should challenge an employee to grow. Consistent feedback lets employers know their employees’ plan to evolve, which in turn informs the assignment of projects. If, for example, a tenured employee wants to expand his or her skill set and learn more about research and development, the employer can integrate that individual’s role with that department.

Engagement is essential to keep a company growing and reaching for its vision. When employees aren’t recognized, they lose track of their purpose. But in contrast, when wins are celebrated, employees want to win more.  

A simple expression of gratitude, such as a thank-you note or gift, shows employees that management is paying attention and notices that they are consistently working hard and succeeding at their individual goals.

When recognizing top talent, explain how employees’ efforts are pushing the company toward large-scale goals. Show how their performance is meeting and exceeding expectations to encourage more hard work and dedication.

Secret No.7

HOW TO KEEP IN MIND THAT YOUR FIRST DUTY IS TO YOURSELF FOR BRINGING SENSATION SUCCESS IN YOUR LIFE?

It’s the easiest thing in the world to give up from a failure. The only way to push on is if you have the true burning desire to succeed, to not be moved or dissuaded from your goals.

What is success to you? How to be successful in life?

To some, when they think of success, they imagine wealth; others want power; some just want to make a positive impact on the world.

All of these are perfectly valid, indeed success is a concept that means different things to different people. Though no matter what success is to you, it almost certainly isn’t something will come easily.

There are countless guides and books to being successful, however, as success is personal and unique to each individual. The advice contained in these books can often not be relevant. Therefore following the advice of a single individual can often be unhelpful.

With this in mind, considering the advice of a great many people, people whose ideas of success were different both to each other, and quite possibly, to you can be a good alternative.

Understand that life is the ultimate video game: It keeps leveling up, and you have to level up with it. Do something well enough that you make it look easy. Even if it takes 10,000 hours to get there, it’ll be worth it in the end. Figure out what your values are and stick with them. Kindness is a scarce and valuable resource. Cherish it.

Fear is the number one thing holding you back from what you want to do. Be brave enough to follow your heart. Not enough people will be.

Perspective comes when you’re not in the middle of the situation. The best view of the NYC skyline is in New Jersey, not on Fifth Avenue.

Trust your gut. When your spidery sense is tingling, pay close attention. Somehow it knows better than you do when something is right or wrong.

You will never know how much space you take up in someone else’s world.

Wounding people binds them to you more deeply than kindness. Just look at the Joker and Harley Quinn.

With that said, try to leave people better off than you found them. Leaving them worse off will have repercussions for them far beyond just you, touching everyone they interact with in the future (i.e., if you’re the first ex-boyfriend who broke her heart, she will be guarded around every man she meets after you. If you’re that first terrible boss at work, he will be jaded for the rest of his career. Just something to think about.)

Try not to use people as a means to an end. They can tell. So can you.

Most of the time, people are not trying to hurt you on purpose. Usually their actions are driven by self-interest, not malice.

Give people a second chance, if they deserve one.

Insecurity is a bitch; it bleeds into everything and can come out in unexpected ways. Be careful with your insecurities and especially careful with those of others.

The easiest way to be happy is to not be outcome-dependent.

The best relationships are like fine wine: They get better and better over time.

Whenever you can, pay it forward.

You have to have a reason for being. If your why is strong enough, then your how will fall into place. You will figure out a way.

If you’re wondering why it’s so important to do what you love, it’s because work takes up so much of your life. The vast majority of your most productive waking hours will be spent at work, so in order to love your life, you have to love what you do for a living.