Today I bring you the completion of my series of articles on how you can manifest positive change in your life. A warning, if you’re looking for strictly business or marketing advice, the usual theme of articles on my blog – this series isn’t about that. Creating positive change in your life can certainly include [...]
Posts Tagged ‘personal-development’
63 Ways to Build Self-Confidence
September 10th, 2010 |
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Confidence is a tool you can use in your everyday life to do all kinds of cool stuff, not least to stop second-guessing yourself, manage your fears and become able to do more of the things that really matter to you.
But not many people realise that their self-confidence works just like a muscle – it grows in response to the level of performance required of it. Either you use it or you lose it. That’s why I’ve given you 63 ways to grow your confidence so that you can become a giant.
- Learning is a Good Thing, so sign up for that evening class and enjoy it.
- Get out of your own head by asking your partner or best friend what you can do for them today.
- Hit the gym. The physiological effects will leave you feeling great.
- Go to a networking event and focus on how you can be helpful to other people rather than being nervous about your own stuff.
- Get crystal clear on the things that truly matter to you. If they’re not in your life, you need to bring them in.
- Write a list of the things you’re tolerating and putting up with in your life, then write down how you can remove, minimise or diminish each one.
- Look at a great win or success you’ve experienced and give yourself credit for your part in it. Recognising your achievements is not egotistical, it’s healthy.
- Next time you’re at a social event, don’t just stick with the people you know – go and have a conversation with someone you don’t know and you never know what – or who – you’ll discover.
- Next time you talk yourself out of doing something (a party invite, a challenging project or whatever else), say ‘What the Hell’ and go do it anyway.
- Do one thing each day that makes you smile (on the inside or on the outside).
- Look for the patterns of thought that take you to a place where you start second-guessing or over-thinking. Now imagine that your best friend went through exactly the same thought process and ended up holding themselves back – what would you want to say to them?
- Ask out that girl or guy you fancy the pants off (only if you’re single, don’t want to get you into trouble).
- You have to keep your mind well fed, so write a list of 20 things that keeps your mind feeling nourished and make sure you’re giving them room in your life.
- Stop playing different roles and squeezing yourself into boxes based on what you think people expect you to act like.
- Learn to catch yourself every single time you tell yourself that you can’t have, won’t get or aren’t good enough to get what you want.
- Take yourself off auto-pilot – make deliberate decisions on what really matters to you.
- Next time you come up against a risk or a challenge, listen to what you tell yourself and look for a way that that inner dialog can be improved. Ask yourself, “What would make this easier?â€
- Scared of looking silly? You and everyone else. It’s no biggie so don’t let it stop you. Say it with me – “It just doesn’t matter.â€
- Don’t think for a second that you can’t be confident. There are already loads of things you do with natural self-confidence, you just have to notice them and get familiar with how it feels. Look for the things you do where the question of whether you’re confident enough never arises.
- Listen to your doubts but be ready to make deliberate decisions once you’ve heard them. Sometimes your doubts are there to let you know what you need to prepare for, so you can use them to your benefit as you move forwards.
- Think of a time when it felt like a whole bank of switches in your head flicked to the on position and you were firing on all cylinders. What were you doing and what’s the reason it felt so great?
- You’ve got a whole bunch of out-dated rules that determine what you do, don’t do, should do and shouldn’t do. These rules limit your thinking and limit your behaviour. Tear up your rule book and notice how free you are to make great decisions.
- Do you get annoyed with yourself because you didn’t make the most of something or stepped back form an opportunity? Don’t beat yourself up because that’s just going to make you feel worse. Instead, be brutally honest and ask yourself what you gained from the situation and what you lost out on. Based on this win/lose balance, what’s a different choice you can make next time?
- If you’d already done everything in life you’d have no need to be scared. Don’t ever think that being scared means you’re not confident, it simply means you’re going somewhere new.
- If there’s someone in your life who puts you down or makes you feel small, you owe it to yourself to let them know that you expect something different from now on. You deserve better.
- Flirt. It’s a harmless way to play around with connecting with people and having fun.
- Reveal a little bit of the real you in a relationship that might feel like it’s in a rut.
- Acknowledge and welcome all of your experiences – the good stuff as well as the bad stuff. It’s all equally valid and hiding things away because you don’t like them is just creating conflict.
- Always recognise that you’re more than a match for any situation you might find yourself in, no matter how tough the going gets.
- Don’t get swept up in the drama of what’s happening right now, look for more useful ways of engaging with what happens in your life.
- Don’t automatically give in to the instant pay-off – it often means you’re selling yourself short.
- When you feel like stamping your foot and yelling “I deserve better than this!â€, take a step back and say “I can BE better than this.â€
- Confidence sometimes means admitting you’re wrong – always be ready to hold your hands up and change your mind.
- Trust your instincts. They know what they’re talking about.
- Fear is a way of letting you know that you’re about to stretch yourself and grow your confidence. That’s a good thing, so use it to take yourself forwards rather than run away.
- Imagine you’re visited by a successful, confident, attractive and vibrant version of you from the future, a version of you who’s everything you hope to be. What do they want to tell you?
- Don’t feel like you have to do everything yourself – sometimes the most confident thing to do is ask for help.
- Take a chance on something tomorrow. Anything, big or small, just take a chance.
- You need to be around people who make you feel like YOU, so spend more time with the people who support and encourage you and less with those who undermine you.
- Stop struggling against the things you don’t like in your life – create a congruent environment around you that flows and allows you to be you.
- No man’s an island, and you need to be a part of the world you around to feel confident. What can you participate in that’s important to you?
- Forget the pro’s and con’s – do something bold in the face of your challenges and fears.
- Work on developing the skills you need to win at the things that matter to you. What can you practice that would radically improve your chances of winning?
- The body is a mirror for the mind, so shifting your body into a confident state can have surprising results.
- Don’t get disheartened or demotivated when you get to 90% with something you’re working on – push through and you’ll see that the last 10% is where the magic happens.
- Keep comparing yourself to others? Stop it, don’t try to validate yourself through comparison – you’re just peachy as you are.
- Put your head above the parapet at work and speak up if there’s something you think could be improved or if you have an idea you think has legs.
- If there’s something you’ve been struggling to understand for a while, stop trying to understand it. Accept it just as it is, fully and wholly.
- Shy with new people? Not a problem, there’s nothing wrong with being shy and it doesn’t mean you’re not confident. Just don’t overthink it, start beating yourself up or thinking you’re less than because you’re shy – the more you think like that the worse it gets.
- Your environment directly impacts your self-perception, so if you’re surrounded by clutter, paperwork and rubbish put a morning aside to clean up your stuff and get organised.
- Write yourself a list of the amazing things you’d love to do in your life, and make a start by simply looking into the first one or two things that leap out at you.
- Don’t make your happiness or self-worth dependent on being in a relationship or being validated by someone else. Find your inherent value first, and your relationships and confidence will be immeasurably better.
- Your strengths can be used to overcome any of your weaknesses. We all have weaknesses but they only undermine your confidence if you let them.
- The longer you leave that big thing on your to-do list the more it’ll drain you and the bigger it’ll seem – get it done and free yourself up.
- What golden threads, themes, patterns and passions have always been in your life? If those things aren’t present in your life right now, you need to shift your priorities.
- Your body image does matter, because if you have a bad relationship with your body you won’t be feeling confident in yourself. Get trim if you need to, just make sure you get along with your body.
- Being confident is an ongoing process. It isn’t a goal or an end-point that you reach and then stop. Keep playing to the best of your ability and your confidence will always be there to support you.
- Try a new path.  The well-trodden paths of your life can easily turn from familiarity to apathy and disconnection. A new path wakes you up.
- Don’t say “Yes†to taking on a task simply because you don’t want to rock the boat – you can politely decline requests you can’t meet and don’t need to create an excuse for it.
- Look at the people you respect who seem confident – don’t copy them, but identify what it is they do differently that conveys confidence and what you can learn from it.
- Make a plan to do something, then make deliberate choices to follow through. Seeing progress gives you important self-reinforcement.
- When you feel yourself focusing inwards and becoming paralysed with doubt or fear, switch to focusing outwards at what you can engage and interact with.
- Still beating yourself up for failing or screwing up? It might not be a barrel of laughs but it’s not going to help you get through it. Much better to recognise that everything, whether it turns out or not, is how you practice living a rich life.
Steve Errey almost died at age 5 as he choked on a grape. Today, Steve is a leading confidence coach for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, with a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Read more at The Confidence Guy and follow him on Twitter. He still loves grapes, despite the risks.
Love, Change And The Reason For Your Existence
July 23rd, 2010 |
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It’s time to switch gears slightly and return to my series on creating positive change in your life. If you’re looking for pure money making tips, you might want to skip this article, although if you do you will miss out on one of the most powerful articles I’ve written about becoming wealthy, so you [...]
8 Ways to Recharge a Tired Old Job
July 2nd, 2010 |
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There’s been speculation that as the economy recovers, many people who’ve been stuck in their jobs and unable to find new ones, will suddenly pick up and move to greener pastures. In contrast there are also predictions of a “jobless recovery,†which may mean being stuck in a lackluster job longer than these people (or maybe you) expected or would prefer. If that scenario plays out, it’s vital to recharge while still in your current job. Both near-term success and preparing for future successful moves make this essential.
Having been in one company for way longer than I ever expected, I had to reinvent myself multiple times to stay sane, productive, and continue to grow personally and professionally. These 8 strategies can help you recharge your job if you feel you’re getting stale:
1. Document the lessons you’ve learned.
Having been around the block a few times at your job you’ll have learned many lessons about what works and doesn’t in your profession, your company, and your industry. Thinking back on the strategic lessons you’ve learned provides an opportunity to start a blog, do presentations, record a podcast, or write an ebook. Sharing your knowledge in this way can build your stature with a broader audience to help pave the way for your next career move.
2. Reuse, recycle, and revamp.
If you’ve been a student of what you do, you should know a variety of techniques, models, and strategies that make you more effective. Having previously worked through them to understand what and how they deliver results, you’re in a unique position to begin tweaking them more aggressively. Rather than being stuck doing things one way over and over, you can modify certain elements to test for improved performance in subsequent uses.
3. Simplify business models, processes, or messages.
Mark Twain had a famous quote apologizing for the long length of a letter, mentioning he didn’t have the time to make it shorter. Most of us face the same challenge – it takes time to simplify things. Having been in your job for some time however, you’re in the perfect position to bring simplicity to your job and what your company does. Every business can use more simplicity. Take advantage of your tenure to create greater value by being the person who has the experience to make things easy, clear, and free of unnecessary detail.
4. Devote yourself to new learning.
Smart kids who are bored with school get into trouble when they aren’t challenged. Same thing happens in careers, too. The difference is in a work setting, you typically have to find ways to challenge yourself. If your mental energies aren’t fully engaged currently, get yourself going mentally with additional reading, training, or just plain experimenting with new techniques in your chosen field. You’ll become even more valuable in today’s job and whatever lies ahead for you.
5. Become a mentor.
What better way to take advantage of expertise you’ve developed from having been in one place for a while than by sharing it with others in your company? It’s not only beneficial for another person; mentoring pays dividends for you as well. You’ll learn new angles on what you know through explaining it to someone else. You’ll increase the size of your “fan†base within the company. Ideally, you’ll also prepare someone to be your own replacement, helping free you for other opportunities inside your company should you elect to stay longer.
6. Redesign your job.
Use your knowledge and view of the business to identify areas where you can make a stronger contribution or fix problems that exist today. Document your thoughts and start introducing them to your boss toward redesigning your job. Just remember this: focus on the results and benefits you’ll deliver for the company, not on what’s frustrating you about your current position. Doing so will make your boss a lot more likely to hear you out and consider your proposal.
7. Find new ways to use your talents.
If you’ve delivered results in your current job, you’re obviously known for the talents you possess. Build off that success to find new places to apply your talents inside your company. The key is to generalize what you do. For instance rather than thinking of yourself as a “finance person,” recast that as having “an aptitude for numbers and measurement.†All of a sudden, you might be able to look at a variety of metrics and monitoring-oriented positions such as project management, marketing analysis, call center management, etc.
8. Be a bolder you.
Early in a new job, you may feel pressured to dial back your personality to fit in. As you gain comfort, it’s time to introduce more of your personality into what you do. Are there talents, hobbies, or other passions you have which only get time and attention outside work? If so, look for ways to introduce those elements into your work. Maybe you’ve developed knowledge and experience in social media. Look for ways to bring that to your work setting to help drag your company into this century.
Try these strategies while you’re seeking something better. You may improve your current gig so much that staying actually becomes viable!
Image: an untrained eye
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Mike Brown leads The Brainzooming Group, helping organizations succeed more rapidly by expanding their strategic options and efficiently implementing innovative plans. He authors the Brainzoomingâ„¢ blog, shares innovation ideas on Twitter, and wrote the ebook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation.†He’s also a frequent keynote presenter.
8 Ways To Bring Your Creative Passions to Work
June 22nd, 2010 |
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A “creative” person I worked with at a “trucking company” developed a reputation as frustrated and bitter over her 30-year career. At her retirement, I inquired about her plans, particularly since she was relatively young. Asking if she hoped to create more art since she was now freed from cranking out corporate brochures, she told me, “No.” Instead, she was going to work at a garden center, since she loved plants and being outdoors.
While her answer was startling, the next time I saw her confirmed the impact this life change made. She was barely recognizable! Her long white hair was cut short and stylishly, she was tanned, and had a huge smile you couldn’t wipe off her face. All this, a result of finally expressing her creativity as she truly enjoyed.
Makes you wonder why, if your creative passions involved the outdoors and plants, you’d sit in a cube for 30 years working on sales collateral while your bitterness festered? Maybe she felt stuck because she didn’t think a garden center job would pay enough. Yet surely, there were other alternatives.
Many people find themselves in similar situations. You have creative pursuits you enjoy OUTSIDE work, but can’t imagine incorporating them into your day job to make it more enjoyable. If you feel that’s your situation, it doesn’t have to be. Using my “graphic artist in a decidedly non-creative trucking company friend” (let’s call her Betty) as an example, here are 8 ways to incorporate your creative passions into your job:
1. Don’t complain about your situation. Start figuring out how to adapt it.
Betty was all about complaining, which stopped people from wanting to work with her in new, creative ways. Instead of griping, invest your energy in thinking strategically about how you could adapt your work to be more creative. What co-workers, customers, situations, projects, programs, products, and critical business needs might be waiting to incorporate the creative skills you’re truly passionate about using?
2. Map out how your interests could tie to your job.
Step back to generalize and innovate on how your creative passion could connect to your current company’s business. This will start creating potential hooks you can use to attach your passion to your job. In Betty’s case, working with plants at a garden center could be generalized to cultivating and growing things, design, customer interaction, outdoor settings, etc. Once you’ve moved from “working in a garden center” to “what happens at a garden center,” you have the seeds (pun intended) to plant in your regular job for new sources of creativity to spring up.
3. Do some thinking on your own to imagine hidden opportunities.
After thinking about your outside passion, consider your company and where it might need the same talents, experiences, and results related to your creativity. In the trucking company example, Betty’s list could have included: landscaping around our headquarters, design and planning for field facilities, plants in offices and common areas inside our building, sprucing up corporate meetings and conferences, and employees’ club fund raising projects and events. Any of these (and more) could easily have components tied to gardening and design.
4. Put your interests into the language of business.
When trying to introduce creativity, you’ll hit brick walls if you talk in the language of your creative passion. If Betty walked in and announced, “I want to work with flowers here at the trucking company,” her ideas would have been dead on arrival. Instead, consider the language you can use to express your interests. Betty could have used vocabulary related to events and facilities to initiate conversations.
5. Find like minded people.
Ask others about their outside creative interests: “What do you like to do for fun? How do you express yourself creatively?” If the company is of any size and your creative interests are anywhere near the mainstream, you’ll likely discover others who share your passions. Learn what ideas they may have and how they react to your possibilities for bringing your creativity more squarely into the workplace.
6. Volunteer for smart opportunities even if they’re out of the spotlight.
Start expending energy to insert yourself into smart opportunities you’ve identified. In Betty’s case, the first stop should have been the company employees’ club since it offered opportunities to help plan a summer get together (being outdoors), coordinate a holiday party (floral design and decoration), sponsor fund raisers (a plant sale), and at one time, send floral arrangements to hospitalized employees (direct interaction w/ florists). While Betty’s is a specific instance, the same concept applies for you. Map out and implement the plan to seize opportunities (even if they’re small ones) and increase your workplace creativity.
7. Begin doing even more.
Once you start to get a reputation for contributing successfully in innovative ways, the word will spread, and new opportunities will surface. In our company, we ultimately started sponsoring major events for hundreds of customers – both meetings and NASCAR events. New and enhanced creative approaches were always desirable and could certainly have included floral design as an element. Since no one wanted to work with Betty, however, she was never asked to participate. Being able to realize those first small successes, however, can lead to new opportunities to do even more creatively.
8. If it’s not working, don’t stick around and be miserable.
Betty chose to stay 30 years making herself and those around her miserable. If you try this approach, and for whatever reasons it doesn’t work in your particular company, look for another job rather than fuming. In a similar situation, our neighbor was a nurse who also wanted to work at a garden center. One day, she quit her nursing job and made the switch. The garden center only paid about 1/3 of what nursing did, so after a few years of blissful work at a garden center, she went back into another area of nursing. Not only does she have the memories to sustain her, she still works part-time at the garden place, keeps in touch with friends she made, and always knows she can make the switch again in the future. She’s happy, not miserable, realizing she has options.
I used these tips in the same not particularly creative company as Betty to uncover ways to introduce my love for art, music, and speaking into my job to make it much more fulfilling. While it wasn’t always exactly how I wanted things to be, it was so much better than never being able to exercise my creative passions. Whether you try just one tip or use them in sequence as a personal success plan, make sure you get started today!
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Mike Brown leads The Brainzooming Group, helping organizations succeed more rapidly by expanding their strategic options and efficiently implementing innovative plans. He authors the Brainzoomingâ„¢ blog, shares innovation ideas on Twitter, and wrote the ebook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation.†He’s also a frequent keynote presenter.
Becoming Your Best Self
May 12th, 2010 |
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If I asked you were it possible for you to get into the best shape of your life, we could agree that it is. If I asked you were it possible for you to become smarter than you’ve ever been, I think we could agree that you could work hard, study, learn, and practice more than you ever had. But strangely, the idea of becoming the “perfect version” of ourselves seems so unobtainable. It seems impossible.
But it isn’t. It just requires you to work harder and more diligently than you ever have before. Is it worth it? Just ask yourself this. Would you like to be the smartest, best looking, fittest, funniest, best dressed, most compassionate, loving person you’ve ever been? Would you like to be your own definition of the perfect person?
If, like me, you answered yes, then you’ve taken the first step to becoming your best self. The journey is long, the obstacles hard. The plan, though, is simple. Define, plan, execute, redefine, plan again, execute again, etc. Let’s go over the plan in a little more detail.
Plan – think about your perfect self. What does he or she look like? How does he speak? How does he think? How does he eat? How does he interact with others? What do people think of him? What is he capable of, that you aren’t? Define your perfect self in adjectives that are measurable and obtainable. Things like “he is lean and strong, with a low body fat percentage and a good amount of visible muscle,” or “she speaks well, avoids idle conversation, and is listened to and respected by all of those that she communicates with.”
Take those descriptions and plan out how long it would take for you to achieve each and every one of them. For instance “if I am at 17% body fat, and I can lose 1 lb per week, it will take me 20 weeks to get to my goal body fat percentage,” or “I speak often without thinking about what I’m saying. This lends to people not caring about my thoughts or respecting my opinions. I need to spend the next 3 months focusing on my idle talk.”
Then implement a “snowball method” towards becoming your perfect self. Start with the shortest timed goals. “I will floss every day” will only take about a week or two to perfect, whereas “I will be able to run a marathon” might take much longer. As soon as you’ve made a description habit, move to the next one (while continuing the first, of course). With each habit you introduce into your newly constructed lifestyle, you will be 1 step closer to your perfect self. You will also gain momentum with each goal, which will motivate you towards the next goal. By the time you reach the goals that could take months or even years to implement, you’ll be so full of new skills and motivation that you’ll tackle them with no problem.
Remember that each of your goals should have purpose. You may found as I have that a couple of months (or years) down the line that a certain goal of yours no longer suits your best interest. Maybe there is no good purpose for being 10% body fat, but instead you find it important to have functional strength and cardiovascular stamina. In this case you would align your plan to fit your new goals. Instead of focusing on body fat percentage, you would plan workouts that focused on increasing strength and stamina.
With the victory of each goal implemented into your lifestyle you’ll be one step closer to becoming your vision of your perfect self. Each victory will mark a decision you made and plan that you carried out, work that you did to make yourself better. You’ll feel better about yourself with each victory, and with the learning of each new skill or the discipline of each new focus, you’ll find it that much easier to move to the next goal.
It’s a long journey to the top of the mountain, but it’s completely obtainable, and totally worth the effort. Start climbing today, and you’ll be well on your way before you even start feeling the pain. Good luck, and I’ll see you at the top!
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Ibrahim Husain is the founder and editor of TwentiesLife.com, an online lifestyle magazine geared towards improving your twenties life, in pretty much every aspect you could imagine. He also founded his own web design/development company Finest Designest. Follow him on twitter @ibhusain.”
Is There A Force Behind Everything In Life?
April 15th, 2010 |
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If this is the first time you have read this series on how to create Positive Change in your life, please read the previous chapters in the series before continuing -
Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want
Why [...]
How I Realized My Sense Of Self And Why It Changed Me Forever
April 7th, 2010 |
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Welcome to the next article in this series on positive change. By now you should have had a chance to read the first four articles, in the following order. If not, please do so before you read this article.
Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
What I Can Teach [...]
42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself
April 2nd, 2010 |
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Are you someone who likes to grow? Do you constantly seek to improve yourself and become better?
If you do, then we have something in common. I’m very passionate about personal growth. It was just 4 years ago when I discovered my passion for growing and helping others grow. At that time, I was 22 and in my final year of university. As I thought about the meaning of life, I realized there was nothing more meaningful than to pursue a life of development and betterment. It is through improving ourselves that we get the most out of life.
After 1.5 years of actively pursuing growth and helping others to grow through my personal development blog, I realize there is never an end to the journey of self improvement. The more I grow, the more I realize there is so much out there I don’t know, so much that I have to learn. For sure, there is always something about ourselves we can improve on. The human potential is limitless, so it’s impossible to reach a point of no growth. Whenever we think we are good, we can be even better.
As a passionate advocate of growth, I’m continuously looking for ways to self-improve. I’ve compiled 42 of my best tips which might be helpful in your personal growth journey. Some of them are simple steps which you can engage in immediately. Some are bigger steps which takes conscious effort to act on. Here they are:
- Read a book every day. Books are concentrated sources of wisdom. The more books you read, the more wisdom you expose yourself to. What are some books you can start reading to enrich yourself? Some books I’ve read and found useful are Think and Grow Rich, Who Moved My Cheese, 7 Habits, The Science of Getting Rich and Living the 80/20 Way. I’ve heard positive reviews for The Tipping Point, Outliers and The Difference Maker, so I’ll be checking them out soon.
- Learn a new language. As a Singaporean Chinese, my main languages are English, Mandarin and Hokkien (a Chinese dialect). Out of interest, I took up language courses in the past few years such as Japanese and Bahasa Indonesian. I realized learning a language is a whole new skill altogether and the process of acquainting with a new language and culture is a totally a mind-opening experience.
- Pick up a new hobby. Beyond just your usual favorite hobbies, is there something new you can pick up? Any new sport you can learn? Examples are fencing, golf, rock climbing, football, canoeing, or ice skating. Your new hobby can also be a recreational hobby. For example, pottery, Italian cooking, dancing, wine appreciation, web design, etc. Learning something new requires you to stretch yourself in different aspects, whether physically, mentally or emotionally.
- Take up a new course. Is there any new course you can join? Courses are a great way to gain new knowledge and skills. It doesn’t have to be a long-term course – seminars or workshops serve their purpose too. I’ve been to a few workshops and they have helped me gain new insights which I had not considered before.
- Create an inspirational room. Your environment sets the mood and tone for you. If you are living in an inspirational environment, you are going to be inspired every day. In the past, I didn’t like my room at all because I thought it was messy and dull. A few years ago, I decided this was the end of it – I started on a “Mega Room Revamp” project and overhauled my room. The end result? A room I totally relish being in and inspires me to be at my peak every day.
- Overcome your fears. All of us have fears. Fear of uncertainty, fear of public speaking, fear of risk… All our fears  keep us in the same position and prevent us from growing. Recognize that your fears reflect areas where you can grow. I always think of fears as the compass for growth. If I have a fear about something, it represents something I’ve yet to address, and addressing it helps me to grow.
- Level up your skills. If you have played video games before especially RPGs, you’ll know the concept of leveling up – gaining experience so you can be better and stronger. As a blogger, I’m constantly leveling up my writing skills. As a speaker, I’m constantly leveling up my public engagement abilities. What skills can you level up?
- Wake up early. Waking up early (say, 5-6am) has been acknowledged by many (Anthony Robbins, Robin Sharma, among other self-help gurus) to improve your productivity and your quality of life. I feel it’s because when you wake up early, your mindset is already set to continue the momentum and proactively live out the day. Seth recently wrote a waking up early series which you should check out to help cultivate this habit.
- Have a weekly exercise routine. A better you starts with being in better physical shape. I personally make it a point to jog at least 3 times a week, at least 30 minutes each time. You may want to mix it up with jogging, gym lessons and swimming for variation.
- Start your life handbook. A life handbook is an idea I started 3 years ago. Basically, it’s a book which contains the essentials on how you can live your life to the fullest, such as your purpose, your values and goals. Sort of like your manual for your life. I started my life handbook since 2007 and it’s been a crucial enabler in my progress.
- Write a letter to your future self. What do you see yourself as 5 years from now? Will you be the same? Different? What kind of person will you be? Write a letter to your future self – 1 year from now will be a good start – and seal it. Make a date in your calendar to open it 1 year from now. Then start working to become the person you want to open that letter.
- Get out of your comfort zone. Real growth comes with hard work and sweat. Being too comfortable doesn’t help us grow – it makes us stagnate. What is your comfort zone? Do you stay in most of the time? Do you keep to your own space when out with other people? Shake your routine up. Do something different. By exposing yourself to a new context, you’re literally growing as you learn to act in new circumstances.
- Put someone up to a challenge. Competition is one of the best ways to grow. Set a challenge (weight loss, exercise, financial challenge, etc) and compete with an interested friend to see who achieves the target first. Through the process, both of you will gain more than if you were to set off on the target alone.
- Identify your blind spots. Scientifically, blind spots refer to areas our eyes are not capable of seeing. In personal development terms, blind spots are things about ourselves we are unaware of. Discovering our blind spots help us discover our areas of improvement. One exercise I use to discover my blind spots is to identify all the things/events/people that trigger me in a day – trigger meaning making me feel annoyed/weird/affected. These represent my blind spots. It’s always fun to do the exercise because I discover new things about myself, even if I may already think I know my own blind spots (but then they wouldn’t be blind spots would they?). After that, I work on steps to address them.
- Ask for feedback. As much as we try to improve, we will always have blind spots. Asking for feedback gives us an additional perspective. Some people to approach will be friends, family, colleagues, boss, or even acquaintances, since they will have no preset bias and can give their feedback objectively.
- Stay focused with to-do lists. I start my day with a list of tasks I want to complete and this helps make me stay focused. In comparison, the days when I don’t do this end up being extremely unproductive. For example, part of my to-do list for today is to write a guest post at LifeHack.Org, and this is why I’m writing this now! Since my work requires me to use my computer all the time, I use Free Sticky Notes to manage my to-do lists. It’s really simple to use and it’s a freeware, so I recommend you check it out.
- Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). I’m a big fan of setting BHAGs. BHAGs stretch you beyond your normal capacity since they are big and audacious – you wouldn’t think of attempting them normally. What are BHAGs you can embark on, which you’ll feel absolutely on top of the world once you complete them? Set them and start working on them.
- Acknowledge your flaws. Everyone has flaws. What’s most important is to understand them, acknowledge them, and address them. What do you think are your flaws? What are the flaws you can work on now? How do you want to address them?
- Get into action. The best way to learn and improve is to take action. What is something you have been meaning to do? How can you take action on it immediately? Waiting doesn’t get anything done. Taking action gives you immediate results to learn from.
- Learn from people who inspire you. Think about people you admire. People who inspire you. These people reflect certain qualities you want to have for yourself too. What are the qualities in them you want to have for yourself? How can you acquire these qualities?
- Quit a bad habit. Are there any bad habits you can lose? Oversleeping? Not exercising? Being late? Slouching? Nail biting? Smoking? Here’s some help on how you can quit a bad habit.
- Cultivate a new habit. Some good new habits to cultivate include reading books (#1), waking up early (#8), exercising (#9), reading a new personal development article a day (#40) and meditating. Is there any other new habit you can cultivate to improve yourself?
- Avoid negative people. As Jim Rohn says, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. Wherever we go, there are bound to be negative people. Don’t spend too much of your time around them if you feel they drag you down.
- Learn to deal with difficult people. There are times when there are difficult people you can’t avoid, such as at your workplace, or when the person is part of your inner circle of contacts. Learn how to deal with them. These people management skills will go a long way in working with people in the future.
- Learn from your friends. Everyone has amazing qualities in them. It’s up to how we want to tap into them. With all the friends who surround you, they are going to have things you can learn from. Try thinking of a good friend right now. Think about just one quality they have which you want to adopt. How can you learn from them and adopt this skill for yourself? Speak to them if you need to – for sure, they will be more than happy to help!
- Start a journal. Journaling is a great way to gain better self-awareness. It’s a self-reflection process. As you write, clarify your thought process and read what you wrote from a third person’s perspective, you gain more insights about yourself. Your journal can be private or an online blog. I use my personal development blog as a personal journal too and I’ve learned a lot about myself through the past year of blogging.
- Start a blog about personal development. To help others grow, you need to first be walking the talk. There are expectations of you, both from yourself and from others, which you have to uphold. I run The Personal Excellence Blog, where I share my personal journey and insights on how to live a better life. Readers look toward my articles to improve themselves, which enforces to me that I need to keep improving, for myself and for the people I’m reaching out to.
- Get a mentor or coach. There’s no faster way to improve than to have someone work with you on your goals. Many of my clients approach me to coach them in their goals and they achieve significantly more results than if they had worked alone.
- Reduce the time you spend on chat programs. I realized having chat programs open at default result in a lot of wasted time. This time can be much better spent on other activities. The days when I don’t get on chat, I get a lot more done. I usually disable the auto start-up option in the chat programs and launch them when I do want to chat and really have the time for it.
- Learn chess (or any strategy game). I found chess is a terrific game to learn strategy and hone your brainpower. Not only do you have fun, you also get to exercise your analytical skills. You can also learn strategy from other board games or computer games, such as Othello, Chinese Chess, WarCraft, and so on.
- Stop watching TV. I’ve not been watching TV for pretty much 4 years and it’s been a very liberating experience. I realized most of the programs and advertisements on mainstream TV are usually of a lower consciousness and not very empowering. In return, the time I’ve freed up from not watching TV is now constructively used for other purposes, such as connecting with close friends, doing work I enjoy, exercising, etc.
- Start a 30-day challenge. Set a goal and give yourself 30 days to achieve this. Your goal can be to stick with a new habit or something you’ve always wanted to do but have not. 30 days is just enough time to strategize, plan, get into action, review and nail the goal.
- Meditate. Meditation helps to calm you and be more conscious. I also realized that during the nights when I meditate (before I sleep), I need lesser sleep. The clutter clearing process is very liberating.
- Join Toastmasters (Learn public speaking). Interestingly, public speaking is the #1 fear in the world, with #2 being death. After I started public speaking as a personal development speaker/trainer, I’ve learned a lot about how to communicate better, present myself and engage people. Toastmasters is an international organization that trains people in public speaking. Check out the Toastmaster clubs nearest to you here.
- Befriend top people in their fields. These people have achieved their results because they have the right attitudes, skill sets and know-how. How better to learn than from the people who have been there and done that? Gain new insights from them on how you can improve and achieve the same results for yourself.
- Let go of the past. Is there any grievance or unhappiness from the past which you have been holding on? If so, it’s time to let it go. Holding on to them prevents you from moving on and becoming a better person. Break away from the past, forgive yourself, and move on. Just recently, I finally moved on from a past heartbreak of 5 years ago. The effect was liberating and very empowering, and I have never been happier.
- Start a business venture. Is there anything you have an interest in? Why not turn it into a venture and make money while learning at the same time? Starting a new venture requires you to be learn business management skills, develop business acumen and have a competitive edge. The process of starting and developing my personal development business has equipped me with many skills, such as self-discipline, leadership, organization and management.
- Show kindness to people around you. You can never be too kind to someone. In fact, most of us don’t show enough kindness to people around us. Being kind helps us to cultivate other qualities such as compassion, patience, and love. As you get back to your day after reading this article later on, start exuding more kindness to the people around you, and see how they react. Not only that, notice how you feel as you behave kindly to others. Chances are, you will feel even better than yourself.
- Reach out to the people who hate you. If you ever stand for something, you are going to get haters. It’s easy to hate the people who hate us. It’s much more challenging to love them back. Being able to forgive, let go and show love to these people requires magnanimity and an open heart. Is there anyone who dislikes or hates you in your life? If so, reach out to them. Show them love. Seek a resolution and get closure on past grievances. Even if they refuses to reciprocate, love them all the same. It’s much more liberating than to hate them back.
- Take a break. Have you been working too hard? Self-improvement is also about recognizing our need to take a break to walk the longer mile ahead. You can’t be driving a car if it has no petrol. Take some time off for yourself every week. Relax, rejuvenate and charge yourself up for what’s up ahead.
- Read at least 1 personal development article a day. Some of my readers make it a point to read at least one personal development article every day, which I think is a great habit. There are many terrific personal development blogs out there, some of which you can check here.
- Commit to your personal growth. I can be writing list articles with 10 ways, 25 ways, 42 ways or even 1,000 ways to improve yourself, but if you’ve no intention to commit to your personal growth, it doesn’t matter what I write. Nothing is going to get through. We are responsible for our personal growth – not anyone else. Not your mom, your dad, your friend, me or LifeHack. Make the decision to commit to your personal growth and embrace yourself to a life-long journey of growth and change. Kick off your growth by picking a few of the steps above and working on them. The results may not be immediate, but I promise you that as long as you keep to it, you’ll start seeing positive changes in yourself and your life.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article or anything about personal growth. Feel free to share your thoughts in a comment below and I’ll get back to you! If you have any other suggestions to add to the list, please share with us too!
Image © kevindooley
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I’m Celes and I write at The Personal Excellence Blog, where I give my best advice on achieving personal excellence. If you like this article, you might enjoy reader favorites like 101 Things To Do Before You Die and Are You Sleepwalking Your Life Away?. Get my RSS feed directly and add me on Twitter @celestinechua.
How To Be In The Right Place At The Right Time More Often
April 1st, 2010 |
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Ever wonder how some people seem to have all the luck? Whether or not you believe in luck, there’s something to be said for being in the right place at the right time. For example, say we were walking together and saw a sign offering $5,000USD to any responder who could write a 250-word article on a topic revealed at the start of a 20-minute time window.
We’re both decent writers and the price is right so we follow up on the sign. Within minutes, we’re each sitting before a computer. The monitors blink on, the countdown starts, and our assigned topic is displayed. “Write about the development of cold-hardy peach varietals.” I stare at my monitor, deflated. I type a few lines about liking peaches but that’s it. Today wasn’t my lucky day.
Your story is different though. You know the guy who developed the premier cold-hardy strain of peach tree. You know enough about the topic to produce a satisfactory article in the given time and walk away with a check for $5,000USD. It’s your lucky day! But it wasn’t really luck, was it? We were both in the same place at the same time with the right skills to make the most of the situation. You just happened to have that extra bit of information that allowed you to succeed while I lost out. Why does that happen? How was it that you had the right information at the right place and at the right time? Why were you lucky?
Your good luck, as well as the luck enjoyed by most successful people, can be attributed to the combined force of three simple elements:
1. Proximity
“You cannot catch a fish without being near the water.”
The people you think of as lucky often put a lot of effort into being near as many pertinent opportunities as possible. In my example, we both had a shot at getting lucky because we weren’t just two idiots reading a random sign. We were skilled writers looking at a writing opportunity. We were both close to the opportunity. Not just in skill or location but in timing as well. Most of life is less random than my example. You can put yourself in the right place at the right time more often by identifying an area in which you have the necessary skills and knowledge to capitalize on sudden opportunities.
Questions: What are you doing to make timing right for you? What area have you put yourself in a position to “get lucky” in? Is there a skill you can improve for knowledge you can gain that will allow you to better capitalize on opportunities you discover?
2. Practice
“The fish not caught on the first try is larger when finally caught.”
Ask any professional athlete about a shining moment in their athletic experience and they’ll tell you that “luck” came only after long hours of practice. Wide receivers practice catching the ball thousands of times for every touchdown catch they make. Web developers create hundreds of applications before bringing the perfect one to market. And you? You read (possibly) millions of words before arriving at this article. In every case, the practice that precedes the instance of “luck” is just as important as the crowning moment itself.
Questions: Have you given up on practice only to wonder why you’re not improving in your field and experiencing the same luck as others? What steps can you take today in order to hone your senses and polish your skills so the next opportunity can be turned into a lucky moment?
3. Persistence
“If you do not fish often, the fish have little chance to bite.”
One sad truth of existence is that most people give up long before they should. Being in the right place at the right time involves being in a lot of places at a lot of times that might seem inconvenient or even painful. You’ve heard that luck favors the well-prepared but what about luck favoring the tenacious? Ever successful (you might say “lucky”) person I know has come very close to giving up many times. They’ve looked failure directly in the eyes and said, “not yet.” Sure, they’ve closed businesses, lost clients, and left relationships. But they never stopped trying. They never gave up.
Questions: Do you have a tendency to give up on things too early? Think of the last project you gave up on. What might have happened had you stuck with it? Are you currently giving your everything to the project or relationship at hand?
Ever wonder why some people seem to have all the luck? By paying close attention to your proximity to opportunities and following through with practice and persistence, you may soon become one of the people we look at and wonder how you got to be in the right place at the right time. Just luck, right? =)
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I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
What Do You Need To Let Go Of?
March 25th, 2010 |
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I like the concept of letting go. It’s mostly where I find joy, calm, peace and purpose. It’s so much easier than chasing. And so much more effective. Rather than chasing happiness, the Buddhist philosophy suggests that we simply choose to let go of that which makes us unhappy. The very notion of chasing something has a sense of urgency about it, doesn’t it? And, of course, with urgency comes anxiety. And with anxiety comes illness. And with illness comes unhappiness.
Maybe our gentle robe-wearing friends are on to something. Some people spend their lives chasing acceptance and approval. Perhaps it’s time for some of us to let go of the need to seek the acceptance, approval and even permission of others? Perhaps we’re good enough all by ourselves? Perhaps we should stop giving away our power? Perhaps in the letting go we’ll find the only acceptance we need: self-acceptance. Some will spend their lives chasing physical perfection. I have some expertise in this area. While it’s great to be in shape, it’s not great when our confidence, self-esteem and sense of self are dependant on our physical appearance.
Considering that we spend most of our lives in a slowly deteriorating physical shell, this pursuit is an exercise in frustration. This desire for physical perfection arises out of fear. Fear of not being pretty enough. Good enough. Desirable enough. And, of course, fear is at the root of unhappiness. Some will spend their lives chasing financial wealth, only to wake up one day and discover that all they’ve created is emotional and spiritual poverty. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being wealthy, except when that wealth defines us. If only we taught our kids (and ourselves) that being rich has nothing to do with money or material possessions. Some of us have spent years (and years) trying to ‘find’ ourselves.
Maybe it’s time to stop looking and simply let go of everything that isn’t us? When I let go of everything I am trying to do, be, create and own, there I am. And while I might do, be, create and own much in my life, I am none of those things and they are not me. I can’t be found in things. And neither can you.
What do you need to let go of?
Image: source
Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host, motivational speaker and university lecturer. For the past 25 years he has been a leading presenter, educator, motivator and commentator in the areas of personal and professional development. You can visit Craig’s blog at Motivational Speaker.FREE eBook – So… You’ve Decided to Get in Shape (Again) Craig’s FREE eBook takes 20 – 30 minutes to read, and addresses the REAL getting-in-shape issues based on his 25 years of experience. To get Craig’s FREE eBook click here, weight loss books.
Do You Have A Morning Ritual?
March 23rd, 2010 |
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This article is the 3rd in the 6-part series, Lifehack Challenge: Become An Early Riser In 5 Days. If you’d like to join, leave a comment that includes your promised wake-up time. The hard part is actually getting out of bed!
Do you have a morning ritual? For years my grandfather started his day the exact same way. At 4:30am he’d wake, put on his bathrobe, walk to the kitchen and put two eggs on to boil. Then he’d put on a pair of slippers (or boots in the winter) and walk to the end of his very long driveway to pick up the day’s newspaper.
When he arrived back at the kitchen, he’d pour the boiling water off the eggs to make coffee. (Kinda gross, but it worked for him.) By the time the coffee was ready, the eggs had cooled enough to eat with a slice of well-jammed bread as he read the entire paper.
This week’s challenge is about rising early. But more than rising early, it’s about rediscovering productivity at the start of your day. You need not wake at the crack of dawn in order to have a productive start to your day. But you do need to take a close look at how you start your day and figure out how to get more from it. Establishing a morning ritual is one good way to do just that.
Why a Morning Ritual?
A morning ritual is something you do every day as part of your morning. My grandfather enjoyed egg water coffee over a newspaper as part of his morning ritual. You might enjoy yoga, singing ABBA tunes at the top of your lungs, or sipping coffee in quiet reverie. What you choose to do doesn’t matter as much as why you do it and what you get out of doing it repeatedly. There are some specific benefits to maintaining a morning ritual:
- A morning ritual gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. We all need something to get out of bed for! Once you’ve found the right mix of action and stillness, sound and silence that gets your day off to a perfect start you’ll never want to miss out on your ritual.
- It becomes as much a habit as getting out of bed at a certain time. Your alarm goes off and there’s no need to think about what you’ll do next. You simply do what you always do.
- Starting your day with a few simple tasks is an easy way to begin a cycle of results that’ll power you through your day. Something as small as a nicely made bowl of oatmeal may not seem like a big accomplishment until you’re having a hard day and realize that going through the motions of your morning ritual makes the day easier.
- Your morning ritual will help you enjoy the luxury of time you’ve given yourself by rising at an appropriate time. (Notice I didn’t say “early.” You might be working on an evening ritual!)
- A morning ritual is entirely about you. Sure, you’ll have to deal with other people at some point in your morning. If you’re lucky, you’ll get at least a few minutes of time just for you. This is your chance to center yourself and embrace your day instead of fleeing before it.
Once you’ve decided that you’d like to have a more structured morning ritual, you’ll want to set aside some time to experiment with what works best for you. The easiest way to get such a block of time is by waking a bit earlier than you would otherwise.
Getting Started
Getting started with a morning ritual isn’t especially difficult because we each have things we’re already doing every morning. The thing to keep in mind with a morning ritual is that you’re hoping to achieve a certain state of mind in going through the motions of your morning.
5 Steps to putting your morning ritual into place:
- Draft a short list of the things you do each morning and what you’d like to add.
- Figure out how much time it’ll realistically take to do everything on your list.
- Adjust your wake time to accommodate your new ritual.
- Go through your list each morning for at least 2 mornings before making adjustments.
- Once your adjustments are made, enjoy!
You can use these steps no matter what your perfect wake time. It might be good to have your list handy until you can get everything done through your brain’s early morning fog without issue. If part of your ritual involves exercise, that fog won’t stay around for long!
Then What?
Once you have the basics of your morning ritual in place, it’s time to optimize for increased productivity. Is there a personal project you’d like to get a head start on with a few minutes of focused attention each morning? Do you want to write a book, learn a foreign language, correspond via snail mail, or build a blog? We all know the value of putting time each day toward reaching a certain goal. The rhythm of your morning ritual will lend itself to daily participation in projects you might never get around to otherwise.
Remember when you’d rush out of bed, barely shower, and head out the door on your way to work without noticing the world around you? Those stressful starts can be gone for mostly-ever if you’re willing to put the time and effort into creating a morning ritual that adds joy to your day. That’s what lifehacks are supposed to be about anyhow, yes? Figuring out the shortest path to a better life? I hope so.
If you have any tips to add or even a summary of your morning ritual, we’d love to read it!
Here are a few links to readers blogging about their Lifehack Challenge experience.
- Wrongstyle – Waking early with a partner & winter weather
- Hightekvagabond – Awesome outline for all 5 days
- Dennis Kempin – Even more tips for rising early
Want your blog included in an upcoming article? Make sure to include a link in your comment. I’ll pick a few to share with tomorrow’s post.
Follow Lifehack on Twitter here
Image: source
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
Do You Have A Morning Ritual?
March 23rd, 2010 |
No Comments
This article is the 3rd in the 6-part series, Lifehack Challenge: Become An Early Riser In 5 Days. If you’d like to join, leave a comment that includes your promised wake-up time. The hard part is actually getting out of bed!
Do you have a morning ritual? For years my grandfather started his day the exact same way. At 4:30am he’d wake, put on his bathrobe, walk to the kitchen and put two eggs on to boil. Then he’d put on a pair of slippers (or boots in the winter) and walk to the end of his very long driveway to pick up the day’s newspaper.
When he arrived back at the kitchen, he’d pour the boiling water off the eggs to make coffee. (Kinda gross, but it worked for him.) By the time the coffee was ready, the eggs had cooled enough to eat with a slice of well-jammed bread as he read the entire paper.
This week’s challenge is about rising early. But more than rising early, it’s about rediscovering productivity at the start of your day. You need not wake at the crack of dawn in order to have a productive start to your day. But you do need to take a close look at how you start your day and figure out how to get more from it. Establishing a morning ritual is one good way to do just that.
Why a Morning Ritual?
A morning ritual is something you do every day as part of your morning. My grandfather enjoyed egg water coffee over a newspaper as part of his morning ritual. You might enjoy yoga, singing ABBA tunes at the top of your lungs, or sipping coffee in quiet reverie. What you choose to do doesn’t matter as much as why you do it and what you get out of doing it repeatedly. There are some specific benefits to maintaining a morning ritual:
- A morning ritual gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. We all need something to get out of bed for! Once you’ve found the right mix of action and stillness, sound and silence that gets your day off to a perfect start you’ll never want to miss out on your ritual.
- It becomes as much a habit as getting out of bed at a certain time. Your alarm goes off and there’s no need to think about what you’ll do next. You simply do what you always do.
- Starting your day with a few simple tasks is an easy way to begin a cycle of results that’ll power you through your day. Something as small as a nicely made bowl of oatmeal may not seem like a big accomplishment until you’re having a hard day and realize that going through the motions of your morning ritual makes the day easier.
- Your morning ritual will help you enjoy the luxury of time you’ve given yourself by rising at an appropriate time. (Notice I didn’t say “early.” You might be working on an evening ritual!)
- A morning ritual is entirely about you. Sure, you’ll have to deal with other people at some point in your morning. If you’re lucky, you’ll get at least a few minutes of time just for you. This is your chance to center yourself and embrace your day instead of fleeing before it.
Once you’ve decided that you’d like to have a more structured morning ritual, you’ll want to set aside some time to experiment with what works best for you. The easiest way to get such a block of time is by waking a bit earlier than you would otherwise.
Getting Started
Getting started with a morning ritual isn’t especially difficult because we each have things we’re already doing every morning. The thing to keep in mind with a morning ritual is that you’re hoping to achieve a certain state of mind in going through the motions of your morning.
5 Steps to putting your morning ritual into place:
- Draft a short list of the things you do each morning and what you’d like to add.
- Figure out how much time it’ll realistically take to do everything on your list.
- Adjust your wake time to accommodate your new ritual.
- Go through your list each morning for at least 2 mornings before making adjustments.
- Once your adjustments are made, enjoy!
You can use these steps no matter what your perfect wake time. It might be good to have your list handy until you can get everything done through your brain’s early morning fog without issue. If part of your ritual involves exercise, that fog won’t stay around for long!
Then What?
Once you have the basics of your morning ritual in place, it’s time to optimize for increased productivity. Is there a personal project you’d like to get a head start on with a few minutes of focused attention each morning? Do you want to write a book, learn a foreign language, correspond via snail mail, or build a blog? We all know the value of putting time each day toward reaching a certain goal. The rhythm of your morning ritual will lend itself to daily participation in projects you might never get around to otherwise.
Remember when you’d rush out of bed, barely shower, and head out the door on your way to work without noticing the world around you? Those stressful starts can be gone for mostly-ever if you’re willing to put the time and effort into creating a morning ritual that adds joy to your day. That’s what lifehacks are supposed to be about anyhow, yes? Figuring out the shortest path to a better life? I hope so.
If you have any tips to add or even a summary of your morning ritual, we’d love to read it!
Here are a few links to readers blogging about their Lifehack Challenge experience.
- Wrongstyle – Waking early with a partner & winter weather
- Hightekvagabond – Awesome outline for all 5 days
- Dennis Kempin – Even more tips for rising early
Want your blog included in an upcoming article? Make sure to include a link in your comment. I’ll pick a few to share with tomorrow’s post.
Follow Lifehack on Twitter here
Image: source
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
5 Tips For Becoming An Early Riser
March 22nd, 2010 |
No Comments
This article is the 2nd in the 6-part series, Lifehack Challenge: Become An Early Riser In 5 Days. If you’d like to join, leave a comment that includes your promised wake-up time. We’d make participation more complex but you’ll have enough on your hands trying to get out of bed in the morning!
If you’d like to become an early riser, there are some things you should know before you run off to set your oft-ignored alarm clock. Here are five tips I’ve discovered to be most helpful in making the transition from erratic sleeper to early morning wizard:
1. Choose to get up before you go to sleep
You’re not very good at making decisions when you’ve just woken up. You were in the middle of a dream in which [insert celebrity crush of choice here] is serving you breakfast in bed only to be rudely awakened by the harsh tones of your alarm clock. You’re frustrated, angry, confused, and surprised. This is not the time to be making decisions about whether or not you should stay in bed! And yet, most of us leave the first decision of our day to be made in a blur of partial wakefulness.
No more! If you want to be a consistently early riser, try making your decision to rise at a specific time before you go to sleep the night before. This frees you from making the decision in the morning when you’ve just woken up. Instead of making a decision, you have only to follow through on your decision from the night before. Easier said than done? Of course. But only for the first few times. Eventually your need for raw willpower to get out of bed will diminish and you’ll be the proud parent of a new habit!
Steve Pavlina suggests you practice getting out of bed during the day to get a few of the “practice sessions” out of the way without the early morning fog in your head.
2. Have a plan for your extra time
Let’s say you’ve actually made it out of bed 2 hours before you normally would. Now what? What are you going to do with all this time you’ve discovered in your day? If you don’t have something planned to do with your extra time, you risk falling for the temptation of a “morning nap” that wipes out all the work you put into getting up.
What to do? Before you go to bed, make a quick note of what you’d like to get done during your extra hours the following day. Do you have a book to write, paper to read, or garage to clean? Make a plan for your early hours and you’ll do more than protect yourself from backsliding into bed. You’ll get things done and those results will fuel your desire to build rising early into a habit!
3. Make rising early a social activity
While there’s obvious value in joining a Lifehack Challenge in order to get you started as an early riser, your internet buddies just don’t have enough pull to make your new habit stick in the long term. The same cannot be said for the people you spend time with as part of your early morning routine.
Sure, you could choose to read blogs for two hours every morning. But wouldn’t it be great to join an early breakfast club, running group, or play chess in the park at 5am? The more people you get involved in making your new habit a daily part of your life, the easier it’ll be to succeed.
4. Don’t use an alarm that makes you angry
If we’re all wired differently, why do we all insist on torturing ourselves with the same sort of alarm each morning? I spent years trying to wake up before my alarm went off so I wouldn’t have to hear it. I got pretty good, too. Then I started using a cellphone as my alarm clock and quickly realized that different ring tones irritated me less but worked just as well to wake me up. I now use the ring tone alarm as a back up for my bedside lamp plugged in to a timer.
When the bright light doesn’t work, the cellphone picks up the slack and I wake up on time. The lesson learned? Experiment a bit and see what works best for you. Light, sound, smells, temperature, or even some contraption that dumps water on you might be more pleasant than your old alarm clock. Give something new a try!
5. Get your blood flowing right after waking
If you don’t have a neighbor you can pick fights with at 5am you’ll have to settle with a more mundane exercise. It doesn’t take much to get your blood flowing and chase the sleep from your head. Just pick something you don’t mind doing and go through the motions until your heart rate is up. Jumping rope, push-ups, crunches, or a few minutes of yoga are typically enough to do the trick. (Just don’t do anything your doctor hasn’t approved.)
If you live in a beautiful part of the world like me, you might want to use a bit of your early morning to go for a walk and enjoy the beauty of the world around you. If you have a coffee shop open within walking distance, dragging yourself out of bed for a cup of coffee to savor on your walk home as the world wakes around you is a wonderful experience. Try it!
Do you have a tip to add? I look forward to reading it!
Challenge participants: If you’re a part of this week’s Lifehack Challenge, make sure to leave a comment telling us how your first try at rising early went. Also, if you’re blogging your experience and have some tips about becoming an early riser that the rest of us would enjoy, make sure you leave a link to your post!
Image: source
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
Lifehack Challenge: Become An Early Riser In 5 Days
March 20th, 2010 |
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You’ve read the articles and heard about all the benefits of rising early. On the rare occasion that found you out of bed early, you enjoyed a more relaxing and productive morning. You don’t need to be convinced that being an early riser is a good thing.
You just need to actually do it. You need to start getting up early on a regular basis and building the early riser habit into your lifestyle.
Lifehack is here to help you do just that! A Lifehack challenge make sense for a few reasons:
- You can do anything for 5 days.
- It’s much easier to do something hard when you have friends along.
- A bit of accountability goes a long way in the forming of new habits.
So what’s the challenge?
Be an early riser for 5 days in a row.
When does the challenge take place?
We’ll be starting on the morning of March 22 and ending after you get out of bed on March 26th.
Sound interesting? Here’s what you need to do:
Leave a comment confirming your participation in the early riser challenge and include your target wake time for each morning.
For example: “Yeah, count me in! I’ll be waking up 3hrs earlier than usual each day so 9am it is for me!”
If you’re going to be blogging about your challenge experience, make sure to include a link to your blog when you leave a comment. Why? Because I’ll be choosing a few blogs to feature in an update/check-in post each day. Once you have your day well underway, you can stop by the daily update post and share your thoughts on what went well and what you’re struggling with. I’ll be sharing tips, featured blogs, and questions in a daily post you can look for each morning.
If we do this as a community, and I say “we” because I’ll be doing it myself as well (I’ve been slacking off on my early mornings lately), we’ll get better results and have more fun. At the end of the week, if you decide early rising isn’t for you, no harm done and you’ll have made some new friends from all across the world!
Sounds good, right?
Leave a comment below (with wakeup time) if you’re up for the challenge! (Remember, we start Monday, March 22nd!)
Image: Source
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
5 Keys To A Better Love Life
March 17th, 2010 |
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I recently asked 5 of the most successful couples I know for their best advice on how to create a fantastic love life. They laughed at first. They thought I was asking about sex. I assured them I wasn’t. I wanted to know what they’d done to keep their love alive for 100+ combined years of life together.
What came next surprised, inspired, and frustrated me all at once. These ideas were so simple, so straightforward. Why weren’t more couples putting them to use in their own relationships? Richard, happily “living in sin” with Debbie for 39 years, said it best. “Most people just don’t seem to care enough to put a bit of effort into their relationship every day.”
If you really do care then you’ll have what it takes to put the following concepts to use and reap the benefits. In spite of all the complexity that love serves up, these keys will make short work of adding joy to your relationship.
1. Ask For Praise
Expecting your partner to notice things without prompting is often very unfair and can lead to resentment. Keep the beast away by speaking up and bringing attention to things you’d like your partner to notice. If you’ve done something you’d like your partner to take notice of, say something! Got your hair did? Say something! Fixed the dining room table so it doesn’t teeter? Say something!
You did this instinctively when you were a child. Remember running up to a parent or guardian and asking them to look at a picture you’d colored or cape you’d made out of an expensive tablecloth? For most of us, the response was one of amazement (if a bit contrived) and vocal appreciation for our obvious talents.
You’re not so very different now. You still love to be praised when you’ve done well. Even if it’s something you should have done earlier in the week or missed a detail on. How to get that praise? Ask for it and agree to give it when your partner asks you for some appreciation. You know not to crush a child’s spirit by ignoring their efforts to impress you. Are you as smart about your partner?
2. In Everything, Give Thanks
Say “Thank You” and make an effort to regularly demonstrate your genuine gratefulness for all your partner does for you. There are going to be times when this will seem an impossible chore. Perhaps you’ll be furious with your partner over something or other and they’ll point out something they did, hoping for praise. How will you respond? Will you offer your praise and thanks then deal with your anger separately? Or will you close up like a shell and torture your partner with inconsolable silence?
You care about making your relationship work so I expect you’ll swallow your momentary pride and say thank you. After all, your partner deserves at least the same courtesy you’d give to a complete stranger. When you cannot be gracious, be polite. Make a habit of offering thanks to your partner, even for the tiniest of things, and a sapling of thankfulness will grow into something strong enough to support you both.
3. Schedule Time For Each Other
If you were worried about killing spontaneous romance by scheduling time with your partner, Â you wouldn’t be reading this. For the rest of us with busy lives and hectic schedules, an exhausting Wednesday is easier to handle knowing that Thursday at 6pm we get a few hours with our best friend.
All that’s left is to actually be present with your partner during the focused time you have together. This, according to all voices heard in my less-than-scientific survey, is one of the hardest parts of any long-term relationship.
Dinner with kids at the table doesn’t count as real presence. Sitting on the couch while you both have laptops running in front of you doesn’t count either. In fact, most of the things we do as couples fall into the realm of proximity instead of true presence. A simple test (thanks, Debbie!) is to see if you need to get your partner’s attention before talking for them to hear what you say. If you do, they weren’t really there to begin with.
You’ll be tempted to use your regular time together as the time for you to angrily vent and argue. Don’t do it! This is your time to catch up with the person you love. If you can’t think of something wondrous and warm to say, chew on silence and just be. There’s something about focused presence with a loved one that helps troubles sink away just a bit. Make the most of your time together!
4. Agree On How To Argue
Sometime when you’re not even a little angry with each other, sit down and talk about how you fight. Then lay down some rules you both agree to follow during future arguments.
Mary, a 74 year-old mother of four and widow of two shared three of her rules:
- Nobody leaves during an argument without saying where they’re going.
- Arguments that last longer than 3 days are obviously stupid and will not be allowed to continue.
- An argument will never mean that the relationship itself is in question.
Mary’s final rule resonated with me because that’s something I work very hard to do in my own relationships. One of the most difficult but smartest things to say during an argument is, “I love you but I’m so pissed at you about/for/because [insert argument here].” Keeping the argument separate from the relationship status is key to getting things back on track. You could call it a shortcut through very dark woods.
5. Say You’re Sorry Every Day
Apologizing is a lot like learning a foreign language. The more you practice it in real-life situations, the better you become at it.
If you don’t do something worth saying sorry for every day, you’re either an angel or completely blind to your own inadequacy. You need not commit some great damage against your partner before saying you’re sorry. Just be yourself. In the course of being yourself you’ll say something without thinking, forget to pick up something from the store, or complain about your day without asking about your partner’s. You’re a master at making mistakes! =)
The more you ask for forgiveness, the easier it will be to admit to and gain forgiveness for all the things you do that might drive your partner away if not taken care of. Its never easy to swallow your pride and admit to screwing something up. But you need to do this and make a habit of it if you want to make your relationship the best it can possibly be.
There were many more tidbits and some hysterical stories shared but those 5 tips ranked highest on the list of useful bits of advice.
Feedback Time!
What do you have to say? Is there something you’ve found works really well for you and your partner? I’d appreciate your input!
If 100 people go home from work today and communicate better with their partner because of reading this, we’ll have changed part of the world with just one article! Thanks for sharing it!
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
How to Do What You’ve Always Wanted
March 16th, 2010 |
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I’m willing to bet that there’s something you’ve always wanted to do.
It could be that you’ve always wanted to write a novel. Maybe you want to visit Africa or want to see the Northern Lights. Perhaps you’d love to open a little coffee shop or brasserie in your neighbourhood or maybe you’ve had brainwave for a neat little product that just might change the world.
You’re not alone. We all have things we dream about and things we’d love to do, and it’s rare that these things ever see the light of day.
Fear steps in – sometimes in the guise of practicality and sometimes wearing the hat of playing it safe – and provides all kinds of reasons why you can’t have what you want.
So you persuade yourself that it’s a pipe dream and that it could never actually happen because you wouldn’t know where to start, couldn’t afford it and it probably wouldn’t work anyway.  You lose faith in your ability to make your dream reality, and lose a little faith in yourself in the process.
The tragedy is that the more you apply a filter to what you wish for and train yourself to think small, the less confident you become in your ability to do anything that matters very much. Worse than that, you set yourself tiny dreams that aren’t hard to reach, and you reach them.
But hang on a second. What if those big things were possible?  What if you really could make some or all of it happen?  What if it turned out that you did have what it takes to see something special come to life?  Wouldn’t that be something you’d leap at?
Here are my 3 steps to doing what you’ve always wanted to do.
1. Open it up
First of all you need to do some leg work. Investigate what might be needed to get going, look for resources that can inform and help, seek out other people who might have done something similar and talk to those who’ve been there, done that.
There’s no risk here – it’s simply learning about what’s involved, picking up the key strategies that have been used successfully before and gathering together the ideas and resources that you believe will help you to get things moving.
Write down all the questions you have about what you want to do and then go answer them. It’s possible that as you open things up you find that the reality isn’t what you expected and that it isn’t really your thing after all. That’s fine – now you know. But the opportunity to answer the questions you have and fill in those blanks is invaluable, and you might just find yourself getting pretty darn excited about what you’re discovering.
2. Make your choice
You’ve opened it up and answered a heap of questions you had – now you need to make your choice. There are 2 ways to help with this decision making.
- Look at what really matters to you, not what doesn’t matter. If engaging with this project is something that really resonates with you then listen to that. If you’ll grow and get enjoyment out of doing this, no matter how it turns out, then listen to that. Don’t let any fears you have squash and stamp on what matters.
- Consider where your priorities are and what might need to change. You have other things going on (your family, finances, career, hobbies, relationship, etc) and you need to be clear about what’s at the top of your list. You need to figure out what compromises you’re willing to make in terms of the time and energy you have available, and you need to figure out the boundaries and deal breakers of your priorities. You might find that your priorities are such that now isn’t the right time to get going with this, but that doesn’t have to be the end of it. Just figure out what criteria needs to be satisfied for you to start.
Once you’ve figured those 2 things out, make your choice and commit to it. That commitment is what will carry you through, and it’s an attitude and a way of behaving that shapes your experience and behaviour as you go forwards.
3. Do one thing
When you’ve made your choice to start, do one thing today.  Just one thing.  Then do one more thing tomorrow.
That’s all.
Do one thing, then another, then another (no matter how big or small) and you’ll make progress. By doing just one thing a day you’ll be 365 steps forward a year from now. Don’t get overwhelmed with the apparent size or complexity of what you’re tackling. No task is bigger than your capability and you just need to chunk it down into bite-sized pieces and tackle each one in turn.
And if something doesn’t turn out the way you expected or hoped, don’t sweat it. You have the next day to try things a different way or tackle things from another direction. You’ll never be able to control how everything turns out so don’t beat yourself up – just keep checking where you are, making your choice and taking another step.
These 3 steps can be applied universally to do the things you’ve always wanted. So tell me, what do you want?
Image: source
Steve Errey almost died at age 5 as he choked on a grape. Today, Steve is a leading confidence coach for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, with a reputation for talking sense and getting results. Read more at The Confidence Guy and follow him on Twitter. He still loves grapes, despite the risks.
11 Simple Ways To Avoid Burnout
March 10th, 2010 |
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Are you exhausted, annoyed, and ready to throw in the towel on something that once made you leap out of bed with joy every morning? I know that feeling well. It’s one I suffered from often in the past and still encounter occasionally. It typically signals an impending burnout.
Not the type of burnout you get from dropping your 93 Honda Civic into 3rd gear at 6,000 rpm’s. The type of burnout that makes you avoid work, question the value of your existence, and eat large quantities of Oreo cookies while watching bad television.
How can you avoid burnout and stay in a productive rhythm? Here are 11 ways you can start safeguarding your life against burnout:
1. Schedule regular social activities
Remember when you used to spend time with people you were neither working with nor sleeping with? You watched movies, ate meals, played games, and went on trips. You were active and you had fun!
You can regain some of that emotional fulfillment by contacting some of your old pals and scheduling regular activities. It doesn’t need to be anything crazy. Sure, rafting in Alaska would be fun but a monthly brunch with people you don’t see every day will do just fine. The point of this exercise is to expand your social horizon and crush the feeling that you’re stuck doing the same thing every day.
2. Follow a fitness plan
Why we give up exercise in order to sit in a chair and work for an extra hour at a lower level of intensity is beyond me. I used to do it myself. I dealt with stress by eating and worked instead of working out. The result? Not only did I burn out but I got really chubby, too!
If you want to avoid burnout, resurrect that New Year’s Resolution and figure out what it takes to get you exercising on a regular basis. Apart from all the physical benefits of exercise, you’ll enjoy the mental satisfaction of knowing that you’re taking good care of yourself again.
3. Pursue a hobby
Pick a hobby that has little or nothing to do with what you spend most of your week doing and pursue it with passion! A hobby that uses an entirely different skill set can provide your heart and mind with a satisfying break from the weekly grind and set you on a good path for increased productivity.
You probably won’t even need to worry about picking a new hobby out. The one you abandoned when you sold your soul to the work week is waiting for you to return. Shine up those golf clubs, get out the fishing gear, or buy a new pair of boxing gloves and get moving!
4. Volunteer
Nothing brightens the soul or warms the senses like giving to another for no reason other than to give. If you’re feeling run down by life, I implore you to seek out somebody less fortunate than yourself and work to help them.
Reach out to your local soup kitchen or professional organization and ask for referrals to local places that need your help. They’ll be glad to get you started and you’ll soon forget about badly you thought you had it!
5. Write a manifesto
Have you forgotten what you want out of life? It’s easy to lose track of time and even easier to forget about what makes us glad to be alive. What can you do to bring back that focus? Take a day or perhaps an entire weekend and write a manifesto, a declaration of purpose, for yourself.
The process will give you focus as you put your intentions into writing. You’ll also discover that stepping back and looking at your life as a whole has a way of putting the stresses of the moment into perspective.
6. Ask for help
This is a tough one, especially if you’re a resourceful I’ll-do-it-on-my-own type of person like me. But it’s worth the time it takes to ask for help making sense of something that’s been dragging you down. It’s worth the embarrassment of admitting that you can’t do something on your own to really get help.
Whether your struggle is with a particular part of a project or with something general, like time management, asking for help will get you to a solution faster than you could ever hope to alone. If you want to avoid burnout, you’ll need to swallow your pride on occasion and reach out for help.
7. Make others laugh
Humor keeps us sane even through the most stressful of circumstances. Laughter is fun and a great way to reduce stress. Even better, finding ways to make others laugh doesn’t just reduce stress for all involved. It allows you to begin viewing yourself as a source of fun and laughter in your social or work group.
You’ll find it hard to be glum and entertain unhappy thoughts when the people around you are excited and happy to be near you. There’s no need to be a genius comedian. Start out by learning a few good jokes and add as you go!
8. Make an escape list
An “escape list” is a list of everything you’d need to do in order to escape a situation that’s driving you nuts. In a work context, your escape list might include things like turning in a final presentation or asking for a raise. It might also include smaller things like submitting your resume to a new opportunity or drafting a letter of resignation!
You might never follow up on the items in your escape list but the process of writing one will help clarify in your mind that you are not truly stuck. You have options. Perhaps not the best or most fun options, but you are certainly not stuck.
9. Embrace a morning ritual
Are you starting your day on the wrong foot by waking up late, rushing about, and skipping out the door at the last minute? Try slowing down your morning instead. Set your alarm a few minutes earlier than usual and spend the “extra” time sitting in a sunny spot in your living room with a cup of coffee and a good book.
As you slowly add more to your morning, you’ll develop a fierce attachment to “your” time. Why? Because you’ve chosen to start your day with a focus on taking care of yourself instead of busting out of bed like a bomb squad.
10. Stop making excuses
Is everything that’s dragging you down right now because of something your boss, partner, friend, or client did? Getting caught up in how much everybody else is screwing up will put you on the fast track to gray hair and a stupendous burnout.
The fix? Accept responsibility for your part of the problems that plague you. Then start digging your way out. Once you’ve given up on blaming others you’ll start seeing more of the good in your life and the sordid claws of desperate solitary thought will no longer draw you down.
11. Be accountable
Accountability is something we’re all familiar with but rarely put into useful practice. You can use accountability to drive your personal development and avoid burnout. The trick is find somebody you can trust to give the down and dirty on what you’re trying to do and how you’re moving forward.
For best results, have your accountability partner NOT be a relative or somebody you’re dating. They typically won’t have the capacity for objective review of your progress. People who love you will often make excuses for you and you want to avoid excuses at all costs.
“Accountability breeds response-ability.†~Stephen R Covey
Avoiding burnout is a matter of constant vigilance and regular maintenance. What are you doing to avoid burnout? Do you have any tips to add? I’m glad for your thoughts!
Seth Simonds is an editor here at Lifehack.org. Have a lifehacking tip and want to be featured in a future article? Follow @lifehackorg on Twitter, say hello, and we’ll go from there.
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
9 Ways To Handle Interruptions Like A Pro
March 8th, 2010 |
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Are you easily distracted? I bet you are. If I told you this link led to a list of funny pics of deranged kittens, you’d likely click through and quickly forget our conversation.
That won’t happen this time!
Interruptions do the most damage when we allow their appearance to affect us long after we’ve returned to our initial task. This can happen for a few reasons:
- We treat any break in our work flow like it’s a fracture in the final product.
- We resent our seeming inability to avoid distractions and end up treating their appearance as a personal weakness.
- We view distractions as a change in our journey instead of just another bend in the river.
What can you do about it?
1. Embrace Your Fear
You are not, contrary to what your mother may have told you, different from the rest of us. We all get distracted. We all get annoyed when a productive moment is interrupted. We all get fed up when scheduled events don’t go as planned. If you allow trepidation to sneak into your mind at the prospect of distractions, you’ll cripple your productive abilities.
Fearing distractions also fosters resentment against the ones doing the distracting. Recognize that you will be distracted sometimes and accept those distractions as opportunities to improve. You can’t stop distractions but you can keep them from taking over your day. This is your time!
2. Plan For Interruptions
Effective planning is a cornerstone of the productive lifestyle. Planning for interruptions might seem impossible. Does it to you? Here’s an easy visualization that will help you get started with your planning:
Start each work session by drawing a few squares on a small piece of scrap paper. These represent distractions that will almost certainly pop up. As you encounter and conquer distractions, put a check mark in the appropriate box. After awhile you’ll be able to do this in your head. Sounds easy, right? An expected distraction has no power over your day. You still have control.
3. Delegate And Postpone
Once you’ve identified an interruption as something that needs attention and not just a nascent longing to goof off, try to postpone your involvement. The brute way of doing this is to shout out, “I don’t have time right now. Don’t bother me!”
The classy option is a bit more involved. Take a moment to understand what the distraction involves. Is somebody dying? Is there a deadline you’ve forgotten? Is there a networking opportunity here? If it turns out that you’re not facing an emergency, postpone your involvement and delegate as much of the detail work to somebody with available resources.
4. Attack Procrastination
It’s safe to say that most of us welcome far more distractions than we should. Why? Because we’re chronic procrastinators and distractions offer us a way to slack off without being overtly lazy. The simplest way to attack procrastination is to synthesize urgency with truncated deadlines. If it normally takes you 3 hours to do something, hit the bathroom, grab a glass of water, set a timer for 90 minutes, and tear into your work! This won’t work for every project but it’s a lot of fun when it does!
5. Split Your Day Into Targets
Distractions are most dangerous to the person working without short-term goals. You can keep yourself out of the danger zone by setting targets throughout your day. You’ll probably only need to do this for tasks you really don’t want to complete. For example:
- Send uncomfortable email by 9am
- Complete meeting agenda by 12pm
- Say pleasant thing to annoying boss by 2pm
The power in this process is that you now have time-sensitive targets to steer toward once you’ve escaped distractions. That 8:45am phone conversation that might have gone on for an hour? Nixed by the email deadline. Crops dying on Farmville at 11am? Overruled by the meeting agenda!
6. Limit Inputs
The more you limit channels people can use to distract you, the less likely it is that you’ll be distracted. It takes strength of character to ignore social media and your ever-friendly smartphone. It takes trust in the people who work for you to step away from the rush of business and crunch numbers in the back room. It’s hard to disconnect because we often feel a tinge of irrelevance when we step out of the rush.
Do it. Your results will be proof that it was worth the effort.
7. Batch Outputs
Responding to emails in batches and scheduling a block of time to make phone calls can seem like a dreary way to do business but it’s a highly effective way to keep distractions at arms length. Batching is even more effective in minimizing the collateral damage caused by Twitter and other social networks if you jump in without a set time frame.
To get started, make a list of the things you must do every day to maintain good communication in your business and throughout your social networks. Give each tool or action it’s own time slot and allow a bit of margin at the end. You won’t get the momentary social high of constant real-time interactions but the long-term benefits will make up for your loss.
8. Communicate Your Schedule To Others
When it comes to managing people-based distractions, communication is key. Need to finish a project? Let the people in your work group know that you’ll be off-limits until a certain time. Trying to finish a freelance project in a houseful of kids? Let them know that unless somebody is dying or the house is burning down, you’ll murder a kitten if they interrupt you.
Obviously, if you haven’t taken the time to create a realistic schedule for yourself, sharing that schedule won’t help as much.
9. Begin With The Main Point
When you encounter a distraction, get to the heart of it immediately. Your “get to the point” style may go over badly with some people who prefer to give back story before sharing their main point. Apologize for any possible rudeness and ask for the main point anyway.
Once you know the main point you can ask for supporting information and make a smart decision about what to do before getting back to work.
Getting back to work is what you were about to do, wasn’t it?
If you’ve found a particular tip or trick helpful in your quest to beat distractions, I hope you’ll take a moment to share it!
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ~Thomas Edison
Seth Simonds is an editor here at Lifehack.org. Get even more tips by following Lifehack on Twitter or subscribing via RSS.
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.