Here’s a statement worth thinking about:
“The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in the long, drawn-out vacillations, and the effect of decisiveness itself makes things go and creates confidence.” (more…)
Here’s a statement worth thinking about:
“The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in the long, drawn-out vacillations, and the effect of decisiveness itself makes things go and creates confidence.” (more…)
The EEOC’s mission? To make sure workers are not unfairly terminated, harassed, or discriminated against.
Good in theory.
But many bad workers are using the agency to get money they don’t deserve. Employee “retaliation” lawsuits were up 23 percent in 2008.
1. Start on time.
2. If there’s someone with a reputation for tardiness without whom the meeting can’t take place, schedule a briefing with him 15 minutes beforehand. If he gets there on time, use that 15 minutes to discuss the big issues. If he’s 15 minutes late, he won’t hold things up.
3. Distribute a short agenda to all participants the day before the meeting.
4. Set and enforce a strict time limit for each agenda item. Discussion should end when a specific action has been determined, written down, and assigned.
5. Every five or six meetings, ask for suggestions to improve the way you’re running the proceedings.
(more…)
Like the stereotypical male who won’t ask for directions when lost, many workers clam up when they get stuck on a job.
It’s an avoidable mistake.
Getting a hand from others is an important part of being a member of any team. You’ll be better off if you mention your difficulty to a colleague. Chances are good that either of two things will happen:
1. He’ll offer a helpful hint to get you back on track.
2. Just talking about the obstacle will get you moving in the right direction.
Don’t be ashamed or afraid to ask for help from your mates. Taking a small amount of time to refocus is likely to save you a lot of time in the long run.
(more…)
Profiled in The Wall Street Journal the other day: A single mother, hit hard by the recession. She can barely keep a roof over her family’s head. Her salary was cut by 60 percent. And buying even the basics is a struggle. A story we’ve heard again and again.
“How sad,” I thought to myself, as I read the article. “How can somebody possibly be expected to live on … $150,000 a year? Wait! What?”
That’s right. This woman, a Hollywood realtor, is bitching about making more than 95 percent of Americans. (more…)
We seek it here, we seek it there. We seek happiness everywhere.
Yet it eludes us. All of our activities — our pursuit of fame and fortune, our quest for meaningful relationships, our drive to build or change things — are directed searches for this ephemeral state. We get there, but we can never heave a lasting sigh of relief because the feeling is gone almost immediately. (more…)
Sharks are said to be the most efficient eating machines on the planet. They are perfectly equipped to hunt and kill. The shape of their bodies… the way they propel themselves through the water… the sensitivity of their hearing and smell… and the construction of their jaws. (more…)
It’s a serious mistake to allow yourself to get caught up in the “what-if” and “how-to” trap before taking action. The reality is that no one can ever hope to know all the problems in advance, let alone all the solutions. (more…)
What do you do when you see a cow in a ditch?
Well, first, you get it out. Next, you figure out how it got there in the first place. Then, you make darn sure it doesn’t fall into the ditch again. (more…)
As a teenager, I had the impulses of a junkyard dog. If someone looked at me the “wrong” way, I started barking. This resulted in many scraps — most of them with bigger and more skillful fighters. I managed to “win” a great many of them, however, because I was able to tap into something inside me that fueled my aggression. (more…)
JSN was one of the best negotiators I ever worked with.
How did he do it? He took the time to prepare for every business meeting.
He thought out what he wanted to accomplish during the meeting. He considered every possible obstacle that might come up, and figured out how he would respond, jotting down notes on an index card. (more…)
Whenever you write an e-mail on a sensitive topic, leave the “To:” line blank until you’re absolutely sure you’re ready to send it. That way, you’ll never have to worry about accidentally transmitting a message before you have everything phrased “just so.” (more…)
“I’d love to be in the communications business,” Sarah, an accountant, told me. “But I’m an introvert. Plus, I’m boring. So I studied accounting in college. And though I’m doing something I’m good at, I hate my job.” (more…)
What’s the best way to surpass your peers and outdo your competitors?
Work harder than they do.
If that sounds daunting, consider this: Most people don’t work very hard.
Some spend their workdays doing as little as they possibly can. Lots more stay busy, but achieve very little. They write long memos, discuss issues that don’t need much discussion, contest insignificant points, and attend to the tedium. (more…)
If you’re old enough, you may recall a song that contains the lyric, “So it’s the meantime, meantime / All they gave me is that in-between time.” (more…)
When you are an early riser, getting up two hours later seems like you are losing half a day.
My back was cramping yesterday, so I took a muscle relaxer last night. I slept fitfully and didn’t get out of bed till 8:00. That’s at least two hours “late” for me. (more…)
One of the stupidest and most damaging myths is that you can become wealthy by pinching pennies.
Suze Orman and David Bach should be arrested for perpetuating this idiotic idea. And the media powerbrokers who give them a soapbox to stand on — starting with Oprah Winfrey — should be tarred and feathered as accomplices.
I’ve never known anyone who became financially secure by making budgets and cutting corners. And I’ll guarantee you that’s not the way Suze and David did it. They made their money the way all wealthy people make their money — by working really hard. (more…)
Judy and John are great friends of ours. They are kind and generous people who lead a very rewarding life. But what struck my wife and me when we visited them this summer is how remarkably simple it is.
Their home is tastefully but almost sparsely decorated with quality furniture, a few pieces of just-right art, household necessities, and little more.
The simplicity of Judy and John’s lifestyle made a big impression on us. It was even more striking in contrast to what we witnessed at the next stop on our road trip, the home of two other good friends.
Like Judy and John, Chuck and Laura are kind and generous people, but thousands of trinkets and knick-knacks overpower their home. There is “stuff” everywhere. You can’t even sit down without first moving a pile of something or other.
How does this happen? I can tell you from my own experience…
You begin by shuffling things around to make room for more things. Then you start buying duplicates because you can’t find the originals. (”I know it’s in here somewhere.”) At some point, you get so overwhelmed that you just stop trying to keep everything organized.
You don’t have to live that way.
Here’s how my wife and I got out from under the mess we’d created in our home several years ago…
We sat down and came up with a plan. We would do one room at a time, one each weekend. Anything we hadn’t used recently or that had no sentimental value was fair game. Big items would go to charity or a yard sale. Other things, I’d put up on eBay.
Soon thereafter, shelves and closets were emptied and space began reappearing.
The feeling of freedom was palpable.
[Ed. Note: Ready to take charge of your life and get your goals back on track? Check out Early to Rise's Total Success Achievement program. With success mentor Bob Cox, you'll learn how to set and achieve all you want out of life.]
For more of Charlie’s thoughts and insights, check out his blog at http://CharlieByrne.BlogSpot.com.]
Way back in January, you set a goal for yourself. Let’s say you wanted to lose 10 pounds by July 1. After months of hard work and discipline, you’re down nearly 12 pounds! Success!
Now… how do you keep yourself from slacking off and erasing everything you’ve achieved so far? Here are three ways to maintain your success:
1. Work hard even when no one is watching.
Commit yourself to excellence without the need for someone else’s approval. Yes, it is wonderful to receive a “pat on the back” from friends, family, or coworkers. But it’s much better to develop your own personal sense of pride and accomplishment.
2. Never arrive.
This may sound counter-intuitive. But one of the best ways to sustain success is to think of your goal as a construction project that’s always in progress and yet to be completed.
Never see yourself as having finished your goal journey. Condition yourself to actively keep learning. Learn more about your field when your goal is to advance in your profession… learn more about technique when your goal is to advance in a physical skill… and learn more about what everyone else in your industry is doing when your goal is to advance your business.
3. Be persistent.
If you keep going the extra mile – or even taking one more step after everyone else has given up – you will keep getting results. Over time, this will become a way of life… and you will be unstoppable.
[Ed. Note: If you have dreams you want to achieve and goals you want to accomplish, you CAN do it on your own. But you could reach success so much faster with step-by-step guidance from success mentor Bob Cox. Bob - who has worked one-on-one with four billionaires and monitored the techniques they used to succeed - can help you determine exactly what you want out of life and the exact steps you need to take to get there. Find out how to become one of Bob's proteges right here.]
“I just can’t make the time management seminar tomorrow,” Amy announced to the editorial team during a recent meeting. “I’m so busy, it’s going to kill my productivity this week!”
Amy expected Charlie to excuse her from the seminar. Instead, Charlie asked, “Have you heard that old allegory about the two lumberjacks?”
“Lumberjack A never takes time to sharpen his axe because he’s so busy chopping down trees. But Lumberjack B sharpens his axe every week, no matter what. Guess who cuts down more trees? Lumberjack B with his super-sharp axe.”
If you’re like most folks, you are constantly busy. There are a hundred things on your low-priority to-do list that you just never get to. So why would you take time you don’t have to go to seminars on marketing… or workshops about growing your e-mail subscriber list… or industry conferences?
Charlie’s allegory says it all: Taking time to “sharpen your axe” can actually save you time.
A time management seminar can help you learn how to be more efficient and get more done. A marketing seminar can help you reach more customers, faster, and improve your sales. An industry networking event can put you in contact with potential partners or employees who could take some of your work off your shoulders.
[Ed. Note: Think you don't have time to make it to ETR's 5 Days in July conference? Once there, you can put together a fully functioning business in 5 days. Which means more income for you. Which could mean cutting back at your current job and having more time to spend doing the things you enjoy with the people you love. Check out the details here]
The average American adult reads about 150 words a minute. At that rate, a 500-page book would take 24 hours to finish. If you had two hours a day to devote to it, you could read a book every two weeks.
Twenty-six books a year. That’s just a fraction of the great business books that are published – books that can help you work smarter. And when you consider everything else you read – magazines, newspapers, business reports, e-mails, etc. – it’s obvious that you can’t gather enough of the information you need by going about it in a conventional way.
To read for success you need two things: (1) a way to select good stuff to read, and (2) a way to read that good stuff faster.
How to Select the Good Stuff to Read
Deciding what to read is by far the most important part of this. Your brain is fundamentally a sophisticated computer. If you put good stuff into it, you will get good stuff out of it. If you fill it with junk, your thinking will be junky.
When you read for success, you read with a purpose. You are looking for ideas that can inspire you, strategies that can inform you and facts and figures that can help you do a better job. But since you will never have time to read 95 percent of what is published in your field, you need to be sure that the 5 percent you can read is the best.
Unfortunately, most of what is out there is useless or banal or both. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”
In other essays, I’ve pointed out that just about every experience in life – including reading – can be categorized as enriching, neutral, or negative. I have labeled these categories golden, vaporous, and acidic.
Some of what you choose to read will be acidic – downright bad for you. Most of it will be vaporous – neither hurting nor helping you. And only a small portion of it will be golden – changing you for the better.
Promise yourself that you will read only gold from now on. Make a deliberate decision to do that by creating a reading list
Your reading list should include books (both business books and works of fiction), magazines, and newspapers – in print and/or online. And it should have two parts: a must-read-this-year section and a wish list of everything you’d like to read but don’t have time for.
The must-read section has to be limited to what you can actually read. The wish list can be almost any length, and is useful as a resource to draw upon at the end of the year when you create the next year’s must-read list.
I keep my wish list on my computer. It includes such books as Harry Potter and War and Peace, such magazines as The Nation and Esquire, and such newspapers as The London Times and Le Monde. My must-read-this-year list is much longer. It includes three newspapers, four magazines, 24 e-zines, 52 business books, and 12 works of fiction.
I don’t read every issue of every magazine and e-zine on my “must” list. Nor do I read all three of those newspapers every day. I have developed a method of rotating through them each week so that I am constantly stimulated with good ideas. And when I read business books, I use a speed-reading technique that I’ll explain in a minute.
The point is that having a reading list allows me to make a conscious decision once a year about what I’m going to read. It’s not up to impulse. It’s not up to someone else. It is based on my own judgment about what will be good for me. I’m looking for the gold. I don’t have time to spend on anything else.
How to Read the Good Stuff Faster
When I was a teenager, I was taught how to speed-read. I tripled my reading speed, but soon lost much of that skill because I didn’t practice it.
As an adult, I’ve read a number of books and articles on speed-reading and have developed my own system. Using this method, I have read a 359-page book on marketing in 55 minutes, four weekly magazines in 31 minutes, and the Sunday New York Times in 16 minutes (a rate that even my high-school speed-reading teacher couldn’t match). More important, I still remember (and use) a million-dollar idea I learned from that book, a time-management technique I got from one of those magazines, and a handful of interesting facts from that issue of The Times.
Reading stuff fast, after all, is not what’s important. Retaining it… and using it… that’s how you change your life. “The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it,” as James Bryce once said.
Here is my system for reading business books and magazines:
• First, skim the table of contents. This will give you a quick idea of what the book or magazine has to offer.
• Next, highlight one or several items you want to read. Don’t be greedy. You don’t have time to read everything, and it would be foolish to try. Select the content that you think might have the greatest long-term impact on your career.
• Now review those highlighted items and see if there is a common thread. What you are looking for is a Useful Big Idea (UBI) – a principle or perspective that is new to you and that can make you smarter, happier, or more successful.
Your job is to find that UBI, to understand it and figure out how it fits in your life. With that limited objective in mind, you will be able to sprint through the material – ignoring everything that is tangential and/or irrelevant to your purpose.
• When you find what you are looking for – the UBI – highlight the sections of the book or article that help you understand it. Continue speed-reading until you have what you need. Then stop.
• Make it a point to bring up the UBI in a conversation or e-mail communication. Do that within 24 hours so it sinks in and begins to stimulate you. Do it again within the next 24 hours. And then do it one more time.
Studies show that we forget 80 percent of what we learn within 24 hours and most of the remaining 20 percent in the week that follows. By focusing your attention on one UBI and referencing it three times in 72 hours, you will find that it will stay with you and eventually find its way into your decision-making process.
Of course, some business books have more than one UBI. A good example would be the book MaryEllen Tribby and I co-wrote, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business. It is a goldmine of ideas. Each of its 12 chapters teaches you how to master one important marketing channel.
To speed-read a book like Changing the Channel, you would review the table of contents, looking for two or three chapters that you believed could have an immediate impact on you career. (Immediate is the key word here. You don’t want to spend your valuable time learning skills you can’t implement right away.) Of those two or three you would select one and look for its UBI.
You might, for example, decide that you wanted to learn about telemarketing, e-mail marketing, and print advertising… in that order. So you would start by reading the chapter on telemarketing, looking for its UBI and highlighting the paragraphs that best explained it to you. Then you would use what you learned in conversations over a three-day period. By that time, what you had learned would have sunk in. Then you would go on to the chapter on e-mail marketing and the next UBI.
This method works. I’ve been using it for just over a year, and I’m much better at applying the stuff I read than I was before. Phrases come to mind. Terminology. Titles and authors.
It makes my thinking more “linked.” I am starting to see how certain popular business and financial ideas correspond to ideas about art and literature. It also makes me speak more confidently. And I believe it makes my arguments more credible.
I’m convinced that this is the smart way to gather information:
1. Read less, learn more. Don’t feel you have to take in the entire content. Search for useful big ideas. Focus on one UBI at a time. Get it. Repeat it. Put it to work.
2. Learn to scan. When reading books, give prefaces and/or first chapters your greatest attention because they are likely to contain most of the useful big ideas. Then read the first paragraph of the rest of the chapters and the first sentence of each paragraph below the first one. This technique will help you locate the big ideas fast.
3. Make it fun. The purpose of learning is not necessarily to have a good time, but if you care about what you are doing, and do it seriously, it will be fun.
Read less. Read better. Read faster. Have fun and learn.
[Ed. Note: Get more of Michael Masterson's surefire strategies for getting ahead in business in True Path to Profits: A Master Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Success. Find out more (including how you can get a bonus subscription to his VIP newsletter, Ready Fire Aim) here.
Discover how you could be making $50,000 to $5 million starting this year right here .]
A major reason for procrastinating on important tasks is that they appear to be so formidable when you approach them.
One way to cut a big task down to size is with the “salami slice” technique. With this method, you lay out the task in detail, and then resolve to do just one piece of the job for the time being – like eating a roll of salami, one slice at a time.
Psychologically, you will find it easier to start on a single, small piece of a large project than to start on the whole job. And once you have completed that small piece, you will feel like doing just one more “slice.” Before you know it, the entire job will be done.
[Ed. Note: Time is valuable, and learning how to use it to your advantage is a vital skill that every top achiever should master. Learn how to zero in on the critical tasks, organize each day, get more done faster, and get the right things done with Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog. .
For dozens of strategies that can help you accomplish your dreams faster, sign up for ETR's Total Success Achievement Program. Success mentor Bob Cox will provide you with all the tools you need to succeed in 2009 and beyond.]
If the thought of eating cloned meat doesn’t appeal to you, make sure you’re buying only pasture-raised meats.
In January of this year, the USDA officially defined “naturally raised” livestock as being raised:
Protect yourself by looking for “pasture-raised” and “grass-fed” and “organic.” Visit the EatWild website for a directory of companies you can trust (e.g., U.S. Wellness Meats).
[Ed. Note: Eating right goes a long way toward helping you stay healthy and live longer. Pick up a copy of nutrition expert Kelley Herring's collection of recipes for dozens of delicious and guilt-free desserts today. .
For more advice on which foods you should - and shouldn't - be eating to stay in top health, sign up for ETR's free natural health newsletter. ]
It was a warm Friday morning in Kona, Hawaii… and there I was eating my breakfast with five of my friends, all members of the Transformation Leadership Council.
Suddenly, that all-important topic of distractions came up. So I seized the opportunity to ask all five thought leaders the single most important entrepreneurial productivity question that I routinely ask my students, friends, colleagues, and even my mentors:
“What’s the number one distraction you inevitably face each day in your personal and professional life?”
All five gave the same answer – the same answer I hear from my students, my friends, my colleagues, and my mentors.
E-mail!
Imagine that. The number one distraction faced by just about everyone today didn’t even exist for them a decade ago.
Most successful businesspeople have come up with ways to reduce the negative impact e-mail has on productivity. For example, Michael Masterson recommends checking e-mail once, maybe twice, a day. But no matter how efficiently they manage their inboxes, it’s surprising to me how many ultra-successful entrepreneurs experience feelings of guilt, shame, and even contempt for the number of e-mails that go unopened and unresponded to.
Guilt? Shame? Contempt? Wow! How can an innocent form of communication originally designed for convenience create so much tension, stress, and worry for so many people?
I have no idea how to answer that question, but I do have a simple three-step process to do something about it.
Your 3-Step E-Mail Elimination Plan
If you have the courage to give this proven method a fair try, you can eliminate those unopened and undeleted e-mails (and the negative feelings attached to them) in less than 60 seconds.
I do this every month, and I encourage you to do it too. It will liberate you and free your mind so you can get it back where it belongs – on revenue generation.
Step 1:Categorize your e-mail messages in reverse chronological order (most recent at the top to the least recent at the bottom).
Step 2: Quickly scan all of your messages and make certain there aren’t any critical ones that you’ve opened but haven’t yet responded to. (You’ll take care of those as soon as you finish this 60-second elimination procedure.) Then highlight all e-mail messages – opened and unopened – that are over 72 hours (three days) old.
It’s as simple as breathing so far, right? Well, Step #3 isn’t as easy for most people
Step 3: After all those old e-mail messages are highlighted, take a 10-second deep breath… and then take five seconds to put your index finger on the DELETE key and press it down firmly.
Uh, yeah… that’s it.
MaryEllen Tribby does something similar. When she returns from vacation or a business trip, she deletes the hundreds of e-mails that have accumulated. (Before she leaves, she sets up an autoresponder message to let people know she’s away and ask them to re-send their e-mails if they still require her attention.)
Any e-mail that’s over three days old is a dinosaur by 2009 standards. People who e-mail you want responses and want them fast. If you can’t satisfy their need for urgency, delete their e-mails so you can remove the guilt, shame, or contempt they make you feel.
Look, if their message is really that important to them, they’ll e-mail you again, right?
As MaryEllen has found, most of them won’t. Urgent problems and “issues” somehow get taken care of. And for those few that still need your attention, you’ll get a second chance to do something about them within 72 hours… and you’ll do it stress-free!
I know this sounds a little harsh if you’re used to being responsive to everyone who e-mails you. But keep in mind that the more successful you become, the more e-mails you’re likely to get… and the less likely it will be that you’ll have time to respond to all of them.
Bottom Line: This simple three-step method puts you in control of your time. And that’s what it is – YOUR TIME.
I even take it a step further. Not only do I do this 60-second cleansing every 30 days or so, I actually change my private e-mail address every year.
Working from a “zero base” e-mail inbox means no leftover e-mails that cause me stress and worry. I typically read and respond, read and ignore, or read and delete.
Try it.
[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian knows a thing or two about marketing. He has generated over $233 million in sales for his clients. And in the past three years, he increased his own revenues from $1.5 million to $5 million. You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at AlexMandossianToday.com.
Permanently regain control of your time by following our step-by-step goal-setting system. It will help you de-stress your life and accomplish far more than you ever thought possible. Learn more here.]
“I’m a college professor. As you might be aware, college teaching is a little different from other professions. What advice can you offer for better organization, time management, and the like?”
Jeffrey P.
Birmingham, AL
Dear Jeff,
I used to be a college teacher, so I know what you mean. As a professor, you have the following types of work:
• Preparing your classes
• Teaching your classes
• Giving tests
• Grading tests
• Meeting with students
• Meeting with faculty/administration
• Furthering your own research and writing
Of these seven activities, you have to decide which is the most important to you. If you want to get to the top of your field, it will probably be the research and writing. This falls into the important-but-not-urgent category of your planning process. Thus, that is what you must give your greatest attention.
I like to do my top-priority tasks first thing in the morning. That way, I do them when I have lots of energy, and they don’t get crowded out of my schedule by less important but “more urgent” items. If your schedule permits, I would recommend you do this. Devote at least an hour a day – preferably two – to your research and writing.
Aside from that, you should spend some of your priority time networking with key people in your field. Everything you need to do in this regard has been explained in past issues of ETR. It also will be covered in a new book ETR is publishing at the end of the year titled How to Master Plan Your New Life.
The rest of your schedule should be organized around your classes. Limit the amount of time you spend at faculty meetings and with students. You don’t want other people to dictate your time. You want to be captain of your fate.
Finally, in addition to everything I just mentioned, look into the time-management techniques recommended by success mentor Bob Cox in ETR’s Total Success Achievement Program.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: As a special thank you to our best customers, Michael has started a new VIP service in which he gives insider business-building advice usually reserved for his private clients - a twice-weekly newsletter called Ready Fire Aim: The Michael Masterson Dispatch. If you have bought an ETR product or attended a conference and are not receiving Ready Fire Aim, please let us know by sending an e-mail to Michael@ETRfeedback.com.]
When you’re at a crossroads in your career – when your heart tells you to go in one direction, but your family and friends are trying to convince you to take a more practical path – what do you do?
In his very good book, The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss says that when it comes to deciding how you want to spend your life, the two most important things to remember are (1) The timing is never right and (2) Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
1. The timing is never right.
“For all the most important things, the timing always sucks,” says Ferriss. “Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up all the pins either. Conditions are never perfect.”
2. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
“If it isn’t going to devastate those around you, try it and then justify it,” says Ferriss. “People – whether parents, partners, or bosses – deny things on an emotional basis that they can learn to accept after the fact. If the potential damage is moderate or in any way reversible, don’t give people the chance to say no.”
So if you’re torn between pursuing a wild dream and following the common sense advice of people who care about you, what do you do?
I say… go for it! When I have followed my heart on career decisions and ignored the well-meaning advice of others, I have done very well.
Make your decision and then “sell” your loved ones on the value of being supportive of your new venture. As an ETR reader, you know how to do that: Make an honest, enthusiastic sales pitch highlighting the many ways that following your passion will benefit them… not you. Make promises. And keep them!
“Someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you,” says Timothy Ferriss. To that I would add this: The only thing worse than “someday” is “later.”
[Ed. Note: Twenty-nine percent of people fail to keep their New Year's resolutions after TWO WEEKS, thinking "I'll come back to this someday." Don't let YOUR dreams fall by the wayside. Learn how to get easy-to-follow advice and powerful success strategies that have been proven to work right here.]
It’s easy to hit “information overload”. Rich Schefren (www.StrategicProfits.com) reveals how you can prevent yourself from getting bogged down in too much information, and only take in the most relevant, valuable advice you can find.
I discovered long ago that if I wanted to continually improve my company and my own performance I need to leverage my past experience for all it’s worth. Stated more simply – to make 2009 the best it can be, you need to analyze what took place in 2008.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people and companies don’t learn enough from their mistakes or their accomplishments. It’s like they’re simply plugging along with their heads down – like Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, in the hilarious movie Groundhog Day. But instead of repeating the same day over and again, they repeat the same outlook, approach, and strategies.
Look, no matter how good or bad your results, you can always do better. Yet the single biggest key to improving both performance and results is ignored by almost everybody. If you want to be at the top of your game, you absolutely must learn from what has already happened. I am going to share with you how I do it. Follow my lead, and you can make 2009 your very best year (so far).
All you need to do is answer five questions. If you’re serious about your success, you should do this today! Ready, set, go…
Even if 2008 was the worst year of your life, odds are, if you look hard enough, there’s something somewhere to be proud of. If 2008 was a great year for you, that makes answering this question even easier.
After you’ve listed all your accomplishments, go back to them. This time through, identify several takeaways for each one – what you learned from or were reminded of by it.
Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That’s a shame, because this is where the best learning comes from.
No matter how well everything is going, we all make mistakes. The trick here is to examine what preceded them, what you could have done differently, and how you can prevent making the same mistakes in the future. Even though 2008 was the best year of my life (so far), I still had my share of disappointments, both personally and professionally. I won’t bore you with the details.
As you did with your accomplishments in 2008, list your biggest disappointments – and then identify several takeaways for each one.
Were there certain actions you took or didn’t take that came back to haunt you? You need to bring these self-defeating actions to the surface, shine light on them, and, most important, determine what you must do differently to make sure you don’t limit yourself the same way all over again. Here are just a few of mine…
Once again, make a list and identify the takeaways. For example, one of the self-defeating actions on my list was not reviewing my goals on a daily basis (even though I know better). And when I don’t review my goals daily, I get sucked into what’s currently happening and distracted from what’s most important. That caused me to miss the mark on a few goals I had set for myself in 2008. The takeaway: I’m determined not to make the same mistake in 2009.
This is where it gets interesting. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better but to actually to use what you learn to make certain that 2009 trumps 2008.
What are your main takeaways from the first three questions? What do you now know about yourself or your business that you didn’t realize or weren’t thinking about before? Here are two random nuggets from my complete list of 62…
You should shoot for as many takeaways as possible, because it’s here that the rubber meets the road. It’s these takeaways that’ll practically guarantee that 2009 will be the best year of your life.
Of course, it’s not enough to just make your list (although that, by itself, will get you partway there). You still need to take this information and USE IT!
And that’s where our final question comes in…
The idea is to take everything that surfaced in your answer to Question 4 and build it in to your schedule, your interactions, your management style, and so on. For example, I’ve already scheduled on my calendar two hours a day of content creation and 10 minutes every morning to review my goals. Plus, I’ve slotted a weekly 20-minute appointment with myself to surface and then analyze whatever concerns I have.
There’s lots more on my list – but you get the point. And besides, what’s important here is not what I am going to do to make 2009 great for me… it’s what you are going to do to make 2009 great for you.
[Ed. Note: Making 2009 the best year of your life starts with answering the 5 simple questions Rich Schefren recommends. But you may need a little extra help to get moving and keep yourself motivated. Get year-round success strategies, motivational resources, and goal-achieving tools right here.
Rich Schefren, known in marketing circles as "The Guru's Guru," is an online business exploder whose clients rake in more than $500 million every year - piling up more than $1 billion in sales every two years. Visit his blog to learn how to streamline your business while skyrocketing profits.]
On very rare occasions, I like to unwind in front of the TV with an episode of Law and Order. In one of my favorite episodes, Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy was enticed to take on a high-profile case, but he refused. You see, the case involved working against his boss, District Attorney Adam Schiff. When asked why he refused, Jack said, with a wry smile, “There were many reasons to say yes and one better reason to say no.”
That phrase has stuck in my mind. And I believe it can be a potent reminder to stay the course when working toward your goals.
Yes, achieving your goals can be difficult. It can be time-consuming and frustrating. At times, you may feel like throwing in the towel – and that’s when you need to remember Jack McCoy. There are many reasons to quit, but there is one better reason to keep going.
I’ve had my share of failures. But I’ve had even more successes in my life. And those happy accomplishments were often dependent on how fervently or how often I said “YES!” to moving forward.
Why make goals for yourself if you know you’re going to feel like quitting? That’s a good question. You need to take a good hard look at what you want to get out of life. Then realize that setting goals can actually help you get past those negative feelings and achieve success.
• Goals give you a clear starting point.
Let’s say you are sick of feeling winded every time you climb the stairs. You’re tired of wearing extra-large clothes. And you want to feel attractive again. So set a goal for yourself. Resolve to lose 20 pounds in 2009. Just setting that goal gives you a jumping-off point for feeling healthier, more attractive, and better about yourself.
Not only that, but setting the goal gives you a blueprint for how to achieve it. Once you know you want to lose 20 pounds this year, you can break that bigger objective into smaller, easier-to-achieve chunks: Lose 10 pounds by June, lose 5 pounds by March, and so on.
And once you accomplish the goal, you’ll find that it “transforms” into a new goal – a starting point for maintaining the weight loss and/or becoming even more fit and healthy.
• Goals help you define what is important.
It’s always easier to accomplish things that are important to you. Simply setting goals for yourself is a great way to announce – to yourself and the world – what’s meaningful and significant in your life.
Starting your own business this year says “Financial independence is important to me.” Losing 20 pounds says that you take your health seriously. Joining a family bowling league says that your family means a lot to you.
• Goals help you set priorities.
One you’ve chosen a goal that’s important to you, that goal will dictate your priorities.
Let’s say your primary goal is to start your own Internet business this year. That makes it a top priority in your life. So instead of going out for drinks after work, you might work on your website. Instead of sleeping in on Saturday morning, you might write your weekly e-newsletter. Instead of saying yes to dinner with that couple you hate, you can spend time on creating a new information product.
Your goal moves to the top of your list of responsibilities, and takes precedence over everything else.
As I said earlier, it’s not easy to do what you have to do to reach an important goal – and there will be times when you’ll be tempted to quit. But you have a better reason to keep going: the amazing feeling of – finally! – accomplishing it.
Here’s a story from my personal experience…
I would sometimes dream of going to an airport, hopping on a plane, going down the runway, and soaring into a clear blue sky.
I had this dream several times a year for more than 20 years, and I often thought about it. Then one July morning I woke up, realized my 56th birthday was a few days away… and I had a compelling urge to turn my dream into reality.
So off I went to a nearby FBO (Flight Base Operations) airport to sign up for flying lessons. My wife, Karin, had tried to stop me. “Bob,” she said, “it’s raining. Why don’t you go tomorrow?”
Not a chance! My decision had been made and a new goal (to obtain a private pilot license) was set. I wasn’t going to put it off any longer. The rain was irrelevant!
It took me almost eight months, and involved more time, money, sweat, and tears than I ever imagined. Yet I stayed the course and didn’t quit – even when quitting made good sense. After all, I was surrounded by young pups (students and flight instructors in their early 20s). I had absolutely no background in aviation or engineering. How was I going to be able to understand the instrument panel? Flying an airplane is not like driving a car. You don’t just turn the key and go.
On March 17, 2006 I took my FAA check ride and passed. Karin was at a Spring Training baseball game when I called with the joyous news. I could hear the crowd cheering for a home run, and I felt like they were cheering for me.
My initial goal to get a private pilot license then transformed into new aviation-related goals that I continued to pursue. I had no idea when I started that I would eventually own my own airplane and set two world airspeed records.
It began with a recurring dream. The dream turned into a goal – something that was important to me, no matter how much time and energy I had to devote to it. And it ended with the realization of a 20-odd-year fantasy.
What about you? Do you want to learn to play a musical instrument and give a recital? Do you want to enjoy working in your garden and create a hybrid rose named after you? Do you want to write a collection of poems? Do you want to build or buy your dream home?
Start on that goal now… and don’t give in to all the reasons that will come up for quitting. Turning your dream into reality is the one better reason to say YES.
[Ed. Note: Success mentor Bob Cox - who has worked with four billionaires during his career - strongly believes that setting goals can help you make your longest-held dreams come true. Learn 3 more powerful but surprisingly simple success strategies from Bob Cox right here.
Bob can also give you the "insider secrets" that helped four Average Joes become billionaires. Best of all, you can master these billionaire success techniques in just 30 days. Learn more here.]
Whatever your goal is for 2009 – to lose 20 pounds, to start a business, to learn how to play the guitar – you can reach it much faster if you apply Bob Cox’s two success strategies.
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Throughout much of my life, I paid little attention to the miracles that surrounded me. I was too busy thinking about business and money… too busy being annoyed by annoying people. I had no time to think about the real world – the world that matters. Nature and I were perfect strangers.
Funny how life plays out. Who would have thought that some of my best friends would turn out to be trees?
I know that people often say a dog is man’s best friend – and I like dogs… so long as someone else feeds them, walks them, and, well, does all the rest of the stuff that goes along with having a dog as your best friend. But what I like best about trees is that they take care of themselves… and, unlike dogs, they usually outlive you.
My favorite trees are the 75 or so that jut out from the back-left corner of my house at a 45-degree angle, like a perfectly drilled platoon. I visit my leafy pals – who shield me from the outside world – just about every day. In the slightest breeze, they whisper their secrets to me.
A few weeks ago, my trees were having a special evening. Their leaves had turned multi-shades of gold, brown, and reddish-purple. There was a chill in the air, and it was as though they were letting me know they were packing it in for the winter.
On this fine evening, Ravel’s “Bolero” felt right. I hadn’t played that CD for more than a year, but for some reason my hand pulled it off the shelf. As I watched my trees and listened to the music, I thought about the man I used to be. Then I thought about my new best friends… whispering to me through their fluttering leaves… with Ravel’s “Bolero” capturing their message symphonically.
The magical music also brought to mind Dudley Moore in the classic film 10. Remember Dudley Moore, that funny little English guy with the club foot… obsessed with Bo Derek… and, his ultimate fantasy, ending up in bed with her in the posh Las Hadas Hotel in Manzanillo, Mexico… with Ravel’s “Bolero” playing triumphantly on the soundtrack? How in the world could I have possibly known that less than 10 years later I would live in a villa right next door to that very hotel, and that my son would be born in Manzanillo?
Hard to believe, but Dudley Moore has been dead for more than six years now. And Bo Derek, the 23-year-old “10″ in the film is now 52 years old, a grown woman fending for herself… her outrageously handsome svengali of a husband, John Derek, having passed on a full decade ago. These wandering thoughts brought a nostalgic smile to my lips. Yet, at the same time, made me feel sad about how relentlessly life moves forward.
My eyes and thoughts shifted back to the trees.
Soon, I thought to myself, most of the trees will be bare and their appearance will once again be somber. Happily, they are reborn every spring, live life to the fullest in the summer, enter the twilight of their lives in the fall… then, finally, they seemingly die. But not really. In truth, they merely hibernate. It’s more like recycling than death.
Death is but an illusion. And not just for trees in the winter. When a human being dies, he, too, is recycled. Not one atom of the body is lost. The atoms are simply rearranged when the soul moves on. How are they rearranged? It’s not our job to figure that out. As Deepak Chopra put it in his book Life After Death:
“A drop of water becomes vapor, which is invisible, yet vapor materializes into billowing clouds, and from clouds rain falls back to earth, forming river torrents and eventually merging into the sea. Has the drop of water died along the way? No, it undergoes a new expression at each stage. Likewise, the idea that I have a fixed body locked in space and time is a mirage. Any drop of water inside my body could have been ocean, cloud, river, or spring the day before. I remind myself of this fact when the bonds of daily life squeeze too tight.”
When Chopra says “the bonds of daily life squeeze too tight,” it sounds very much like the pressure I felt back in the days when business and making money were the only things I thought about… and still feel occasionally. Perspective is a magic tool for easing those bonds.
Which brings me back to my Ravel’s “Bolero” evening a few weeks ago. My thoughts drifted away from the movie 10, and I began thinking about the recently deceased Paul Newman and a scene from one of his most memorable films, Cool Hand Luke.
Newman’s character, Luke, had escaped from a prison chain gang earlier in the day, and a posse was closing in on him. He takes refuge in an old abandoned church and begins talking to God about what a hard case he has been all his life.
Finally, he gets down on his knees and asks God what he should do. Just then, his fellow escapee, Dragline (George Kennedy), bursts in the side door and frantically warns him that the police are outside. Whereupon Luke, displaying that classic Newman grin, looks up at the ceiling and says, “Is that your answer, Old Man? You’re a hard case too, ain’t you?”
I’ve thought about that scene many times over the years, because the truth is that none of us has a clue about what the “Old Man” has in store for us, and it seems to me that it takes a great deal of arrogance to claim otherwise.
I often think that the world we are so bogged down in is nothing more than a gigantic hoax that nature has played on us. I’m talking about the world we spend most of our time focusing on – the world of media pundits who spew the same old cliches at us day after day… politicians who offer to give us more of our neighbors’ wealth if we will just agree to give them power over our lives… multi-millionaire athletes who lead us to believe that their triumphs will somehow make our own lives more worthy and fulfilling… nonsense and illusions that must surely cause nature to smile at us condescendingly.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that what we normally think of as the real world isn’t real at all. It’s as though we’re all children acting out a play on a spherical stage spinning around in space.
But the trees… and everything else that we call “nature”… perhaps they know the answers to all the questions whirling around in our heads: How did we get here? Why are we here? Where are we going? The fact is that we just don’t know. Walt Whitman may have come up with an answer that transcends all others when he wrote, in his poem Miracles, “To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”
And speaking of miracles, the miracle of spring isn’t as far away as you might think. I love spring, because it invigorates the soul by serving as a reminder that nothing ever really dies. If you, too, sometimes feel the need to ease the bonds of daily life, I highly recommend that you start taking a closer look at the real world – the world that’s all around you – and spend less time thinking about the shallow, insane world that most of the human race only believes is real.
[Ed. Note: Improving your life starts from the inside out. Yes, you need to take action in order to move yourself forward to success. But sometimes you need a little push to get yourself going... and some simple techniques to help you accomplish your dreams. Discover 189 ways to get everything you want out of life.
For a treasure chest of proven ideas, strategies, and techniques for increasing your income many times over, check out Robert Ringer's best-selling dealmaking audio series. And be sure to sign up for his Voice of Sanity e-letter.] http://www.robertringer.com/]